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I should have known. I'm a veteran quitter. As Mark Twain once famously observed, "Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times." But each and every time I always seem to forget what a horrible experience it is.

Oh sure, it starts off all pats on backs and vigorous nodding and smiles (or horror and disgust if most of your friends are seasoned and professional chain-smoking alcoholics like mine are); it's all happy sunbeams and rosy futures from as soon as you start to expunge the ick. The next morning you wake up feeling a million pounds (that never sounds as good as 'a million dollars' does it?). The sun is shining, the birds are singing, little old women and North London murderers stop and say good morning. Instantly, you can again breathe life's sweetest air, and the whole world is a musical.

But this is just an illusion. These are the lies designed to tempt you further in. This is the beginner's luck at the casino, or the first free training session at the gym. This is that blissful honeymoon, if not the first night you meet, before the metaphorical unwashed socks and BBC vs ITV 'discussions' can ruin an otherwise pleasant and happy marriage.

The morning after is always an entirely different story.

From the moment you peel back your granola-encrusted eyelids, you discover that someone has rubbed chip fat into your hair overnight. Your face looks like that of a disinterested understudy from The Exorcist. You have an unpleasant taste in your mouth. With horror you soon realise it is in fact your mouth you're tasting for the first time in months. As the day goes on you can feel the ick (health specialists call them toxins, but I'm convinced it is actual mud) that has built up in your body over the past few weeks/months/years/feels-like- forever leeching about inside of you, seeping up through your skin like a seven year old eating Wotsits with their mouth open (and believe me, I've seen this. It's disgusting).

In all probability, this is about 200 hangovers coming back to collect their coats. The advantage of course is that feeling like someone's replaced your blood with tar and your sweat with drainwater is that the last thing you feel like is a drink or a cigarette. You actually start to crave sweet tasting and fresh scented juices and such to sweetly draw out the rest of the filth from your ailing flesh.

Smoking in particular has always been a something of a constant companion - a doting wife even to my writing.

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