Diary – 10 April 2004

I gave up smoking 11 months ago. It had reached the point where I had come to regard eating as an inconvenient interruption to smoking. People keep asking me if I feel any better but I don’t really. I have a permanent cold, excessive catarrh, I experienced hay fever last summer for the first time, and I have insomnia in the early hours. I’m told by ex-smokers that this can last for two years as the body adjusts. I was smoking too much: 60 Silk Cut Extra Mild a day and, thanks to successive chancellors, was spending about £5,000 a year on the habit. I began buying nicotine replacement patches at £17 for a week’s supply and then discovered they could be bought on prescription at just over £6 for a month’s worth. The government’s drive to curtail smoking costs £50 million a year and has been criticised by a Treasury committee as being too much for a low success rate.