Day 14: I Worry About Pork Pies And Cigarettes

I smoke like a beagle. I am always surrounded by smoke. Lines of it drift out of my car window. Empty packets of fags lie around, filling up entire dustbins. Ashtrays, lighters, bits of loose tobacco on the car floor. Enormous wodges of fivers (plus a bit) set alight and making me wheeze. I smell like a pikey old bird serving cheap beer in a council estate pub. I smoke pointlessly. I don't even like it that much. It's just a thing to do.

Sometimes, I really love it. Mainly I like it when I'm pissed. I used to like smoking at work because it was a reason to do something else and talk to Suzi, even if it did involve entering a room that smelt like the pit of Hell and listening to chirruping halfwits discussing horoscopes in The Daily Star.

I made a decision some time ago that I would not eat food that I couldn't identify. Pork pies, Scotch eggs, strange sausages. Processed meat products. Packets of weird things with loads of chemicals in. If you want to be fat, eat too much really nice food. (Unlike regular consumers of KFC you will not, strangely, get a really fat face like a suet pudding with 2 sultanas for eyes.) If you don't want to be fat, don't eat too much, and certainly don't eat food with weird stuff in it. It works. I know. And I love food, and I cook it every day, and did even when I worked, religiously, every morning and every night. I stopped fancying someone once because he ate disgusting food. I started fancying someone once because he made the same kind of food as me. I worry if friends who are trying to lose weight eat low calorie food that's full of chemicals from Venus. I panic if I see my lovely Dad near a Scotch egg, because it might kill him.

Why, if I'm spending all this time trying to burn off the effects of too much delicious cheese, do I smoke fags? I have no right to worry about my Dad eating a miniature Scotch egg twice a year if I routinely stuff fags in my mouth. I am considering striking a deal with him: if he promises to stop eating miniature Scotch eggs twice a year, I will give up smoking.

The unfortunate outcome of all of this is that I may well become a pious twat. On the other hand, I'm not giving up booze, so maybe there's hope. Thinner, able to run very fast without wheezing, and drunk. I like it.