DANCE OF THE HOURS

It all started for me way back in the late `40s when I was given my first cigarette by Micky Bartlett round the back of his parents` dairy in Jones Lane, Hythe. I was eight at the time and so was Micky, but it was obvious that he was already an experienced smoker, whereas I struggled to come to terms with the whole experience which left me puzzled, slightly dazed and wondering what it was all about.

In those far off days, there was a culture which actively encouraged smoking and later, as a teenager, it was expected that I would join the ranks of the addicted as a sign of growing up - a rite of passage almost. And so I did.

Some years later, having moved to Kent, I joined a local Cricket Club and I recall feeling a bit puffed when cycling home from an evening practice session, whereupon I threw away the remains of my packet of 10 Bachelors into a nearby hedge, thinking that would be the end of my smoking career. It wasn`t, of course - I was well and truly hooked by then, so I scraped together the 1/3d for another 10 Bachelor and off I went again.

Into National Service and even exhausting drill sessions on the Catterick square were halted for `smoke breaks.` When I joined my regiment (10th Royal Hussars) in the green hell of BFPO 16, one of the first events I attended was a Squadron `Smoker.` Cigarettes and the coupons by which they could be bought very cheaply were part of the currency of army life but guess what? It was during that time I decided to stop smoking. The reasons escape me now, but it may have had something to do with the economics of the `market` in selling coupons to the local populace.

February, 1962 - and demob from the 731 days of enforced confinement saw me take up smoking again, just as it became more expensive to do so with the absence of coupons in civilian life. Great move. Not. From then on the years of stress, responsibilities and the sheer hell of it saw me continue my addiction in smoke filled rooms and beyond where I felt that the world was my ash tray. And all this despite my family imploring me to stop. On one occasion, my youngest son, then aged about six, came home from school one day with a message for me which read, "You should not smok." (sic.)

And then one Christmas about 15 years ago, both Mrs. Snopper and I had a bout of `flu. Proper `flu with bells on - the kind that knocks you sideways and you know it`s the real thing rather than just a bit of a cold. Christmas was cancelled and despite valiant attempts, I found out that I couldn`t smoke even though I wanted to. The `flu went on for days and it dawned on me that this was the chance not so much to stop smoking but, rather, not to start again.

69 not out

Easier said than done? Well, we all have our own ways of doing things and in this instance mine was to go back to my cricket playing days. Now, when batting at cricket, I never set out to score fifty or a hundred - just 10. And if I managed 10, the next target would be 20 and so on. So I set myself the first target of going 100 hours without a cigarette, then 168 hours, which was a week, of course, then another 100 hours and so on.

After six weeks and reaching the 1,000 hours mark I seemed to stop counting the hours and stopped thinking quite so much about smoking. So, it was possible to stop smoking in one hour or even one minute all those years ago - proving that, as my now 41-years old youngest son has more recently said, the longest journeys starts with just one step.