Happy New Year's Resolutions!
A very Happy New Year to you all. I hope you had a safe and enjoyable New Year’s eve - I wonder what remains from any celebrations today?
A full recycling bin? A bit of a hangover perhaps? Maybe you went the whole hog and made a resolution or two that you’re already regretting, especially if you’re feeling a bit dusty today.
You might be having a Berocca to replenish vitamin B and fluids. Perhaps a fried breakfast to soak up the alcohol, or some Panadol - good luck with that. You may even be having a hair-of-the-dog to steady the ship. My personal recommendation is a nice cool swim and some flat lemonade with lots of ice. Either that or don’t get drunk the night before - but it’s probably a bit late for that at this point.
So any resolutions? Maybe you want to drink less, or eat healthier, perhaps join a gym?
Of course New Year’s resolutions are notorious for not working. Sure they sound good leading up to the end of the year - no need to do anything now, you’re going to make that change at New Year.
You might have told some people about a resolution last night - are you cringing? Or kept your plans to yourself. Either way odds are that New Year’s resolution is probably going to fail and at the end of the year you’ll be having the same thoughts - “I can’t believe I paid for a gym for the whole year and only went twice!”
I sat down yesterday thinking about what to write for the first newsletter of the year. Predictions were the obvious choice but I’ve just finished writing all about the events of last year and didn’t really want to start with a list of those for this year.
What about something a bit more momentous, something focused on the future - like Climate Change? I quickly knocked out a start. A thousand words or so of frustration with the lack of progress or even any sensible conversation taking place. I read it back and thought about you folks with your morning cuppa, feeling a bit rough maybe and thought - Yeah Nah.
There will be time enough for all that a bit later. So I kicked that can down the road - it’s what we do with Climate Change - right?
A quick glance at Facebook, my memories came up and there was one about stopping smoking. I hadn’t thought about it but I realised it was twenty years to the day since my last cigarette. That most cliched of New Year’s resolutions - quitting smoking - actually worked!
Apologies if that sounds smug, rest assured it was not my first attempt to give up. The important thing if you do want to make a change is not whether it occurs on some largely arbitrary date. For example I gave up drinking alcohol in September 2021 - but that is a another story for another time.
So, back to twenty years ago - New Year’s eve 2002. Fi and I were drinking in our local “The Parish”, just round the corner from where we lived in Wembley Park.
I imagine the regulars were there - the Black Cab drivers and the rail workers we drank with often. It wasn’t a casual socialising sort of place, from the outside it looked like a pub in Belfast during the troubles. People went there to drink and to smoke. Ten pints, twenty fags, greasy chicken and chips on the way home, a standard evening.
Memories of that particular evening are a bit vague, but I do know it was the last time I ever smoked a cigarette. A quick “back of a fag packet” calculation yesterday - if I had kept smoking at the same rate I’d have had about 150,000 cigarettes over those twenty years - assuming I was still alive. I haven’t had a single one.
People have commented that you must have saved an enormous amount of money but sadly I haven’t come across any large piles of cash just sitting there since - more is the pity. It does make me wonder where on earth all that money would have come from otherwise though.
I didn’t grow up in a household where anyone smoked, my parents didn’t - once in a blue moon my father would have a cigar, that was it. My siblings never smoked. There were aunts and uncles and cousins that did, but no immediate influence. I started smoking, I guess, because it was rebellious and it was cool - I can’t think why else.
Aside from the odd puff as a kid I first started smoking in 1986, my fourth form year - or year 10. My friends and I smoked More cigarettes for a while, you might remember them - they were brown and like thin cigars. I think we imagined we looked quite sophisticated - I don’t think that is a word many observers would have used!
Getting cigarettes was no issue at all, they were quite affordable I could buy them with my paper run money. Shopkeepers certainly didn’t care, in fact the dairy across the road from school would happily sell individual cigarettes to students for 10 cents each from a jar on the counter - just as if it was a jar of lollies.
My mates and I smoked through high school, occasionally we’d get a detention but mostly they left us alone. Smoking every break in a big old tree by the school gates.
Then I left school to do a music course for unemployed musicians (that wasn’t the official title) and everyone smoked constantly. Playing in bands there was a lot of time waiting around - playing pool, drinking jugs, and of course smoking cigarettes.
After my eldest son was born I actually gave them up, I didn’t want to smoke around kids. I stayed off them for nearly five years through band times and then through most of Uni. By this time my first marriage had broken up, it was 1996 and I met this girl. Her name was Fiona and she was a smoker. Within a short period so was I again.
My first job out of Uni was like a number of jobs in the coming years - all the cool kids were smokers. We’d take a cigarette break each hour or so and pop outside to chat, sometimes about work but mostly not. We were always hanging around in the car park smoking - the company produced medical software.
In 97 Fi and I headed off overseas to travel and to live in the UK, laws were a lot more relaxed over there that in NZ. I spent a couple of years working in Hertfordshire for Epson, the printer folks. The older guys who got in early like me just smoked at their desks until the bosses arrived. Downstairs was the canteen, one end was smoking and the other end was non-smoking, but it was all just one room. You could even choose a smoking room when you booked a meeting.
We loved to travel, one trip we did was to the Middle East. I recall the Egypt Air flight from London to Cairo was smoking, even as a smoker it was absolutely disgusting - this was only as recently as 1999!
On that trip I remember sitting outside a cafe in Jordan drinking apple tea and smoking, the waiter asked me “why do you let your wife smoke?” It was bizarre, Fi and I looked at each other like it was something from another world. I didn’t have the heart to tell the waiter that she wasn’t my wife.
We did a long trip to South America and decided that would be the perfect opportunity to give up. By the end of the first night in Buenos Aires in a smoky bar we agreed we could either break up or keep smoking and stay together, we chose the later. Giving up cigarettes is no fun at all, two of us doing it at once was unbearable.
Fi didn’t give up smoking that night in 2002, she carried on until at the end of 2003 in Thailand we found out she was pregnant with our first child together, our Johnny. She hasn’t smoked since that day.
As I write this the house is full of sleeping teenagers. There was loud music although it stopped reasonably early. A couple of them drank a bit much but most were pretty responsible - I was impressed by how well they looked after their mate who was rather worse for wear. It reminded me of being a teenager seeing them having fun but with one difference - no one was smoking.
I’ll be glad for them if they never have to give up the tobacco - which as many of you know is an unpleasant few days. In particular if they never have to miss something they enjoyed. Mainly of course that they never have the health effects from smoking.
If you’re making some sort of change this year good luck, whether you succeed this time or in five attempts time.
A happy, healthy, New Year to you all.
Quite a saga about smoking! I grew up with parents who smoked. My Mum was a social and stress smoker, and gave up quite easily when the evidence about the health effects started to circulate. She started smoking because it looked glamorous in the movies. My Dad was a chain smoker who lit his next cigarette while still finishing the last one. He started smoking in Egypt in the Second World War. Although he made several attempts to stop, the big change for him came when he required gall bladder surgery in his seventies, which required three weeks in hospital, during which time he was not allowed to smoke. That broke the pattern, and he never smoked again. My brothers and I never smoked, after trying it as teenagers in the sand hills at St Clair, and feeling very sick!
Happy New Year to you all. My resolution is the same as it has been for years - be generous, have fun, and do some good in the world.
My parents both smoked, and it must have been enough to put us kids off. None of us 5 have ever smoked, and we're in our 60s and 70s now. I'm glad I didn't start - my inability to cut back on sweet foods indicates that I wouldn't have done well at stopping!
Mum died at 58 of lung cancer. She missed out on such a lot. Sad. My late husband smoked. He gave up the day his brain tumour was diagnosed, and although that particular cancer isn't considered to be connected to smoking, who knows? I was amazed at how easily he stopped, and wondered... Could he have done that 30 years earlier?
I lived in France for a year a few years ago, and struggled with the social acceptance of smoking. At the high school I was teaching at, during breaks the kids and teachers would smoke together on the footpath!
Anyway, enough grumbling about smoking from me. You can tell I don't like it! But I understand how hard it must be for people to give up.