There is a minor difference between all my futile tries to stop smoking in the last 20 years and this new one. Before every time I stopped I had the feeling that it was piss easy to live without nicotine. And therefore after a while be it a week, a month or two I started smoking again. It was as easy to stop as it was to start. But in the end I smoked most of the time and I never stopped for more than two months.

This time I find it extremely hard to stop. What surprises me most that even after four and a half months I am still totally hooked. After a meal, after an espresso, after a beer or wine I have still the same urge to smoke as I had when I was still smoking. The unsmoked cigarette is with me in those situations and to put it in between my lips, to light it and to inhale would be so natural, the fact that Catherine does smoke her Lucky Strikes next to me does not really help.