The craves have been much milder today, in fact I have had several "Ooh, I just realised I haven't been thinking about smoking" moments (which of course immediately made me think about smoking). Am totally confident I won't smoke today...
..Which with the benefit of hindsight is just as well, since I have spent the majority of my day knee-deep in a pile of highly flammable sawdust.
I'll take a small liberty here and digress for a moment, and say that one downside of giving up the fags is it gives you more energy. And that, in turn, lends oneself a certain propensity to sit bolt-upright in bed at 5am and proclaim to the world "Today, I will do D.I.Y - and build a flat-pack wardrobe"!
Now, as some male readers will know, doing complicated D.I.Y of this nature involves performing certain rituals before one can start. Namely, breakfast, dressing, and the choosing of the tools.
The breakfast part was easy. I am a recovering smoker and had convinced myself (in 5 minutes flat) that I was an expert builder. Therefore breakfast consisted of a gallon of coffee, half a pig, a dozen eggs, a loaf of bread, a plantation of beans and 90 minutes sat on the bog.
Dressing for the task also comes naturally to DIY man. You need a huge bulky shirt that looks like a cross between a picnic blanket and a kilt, A belt to shame Batman, and a pair of 18-hole Doc Martens. Grubby fingernails are optional.
And lastly the tools. No matter what you are making you only need four.
• Large screwdriver from back of shed, the one that takes 2 hours to find.
• titchy little screwdrivers that came out of last years Christmas crackers.
• Sodding great big hammer.
• Widgety doodad that came with furniture, looks like a cross between a spanner and a Borg implant.
I won't bore you all with details of the build. Suffice to say I am now the proud owner of a wardrobe several feet smaller than the (upside-down and printed in Japanese) instructions indicated. I also have enough leftover nails and other assorted widgets to make any blunderbuss owner drool with envy.
However, I have to say I do feel decidedly manly after my day of making stuff, and I hardly thought about smoking at all (apart from when I whacked my finger with aforementioned sodding great big hammer).
On an unrelated note, I turned 41 today, and my wife presented me with a hamper full of posh Caviar and Vodka. It totally made me blub like a girl (not so much that I didn't crack open the booze though):cool:
Onwards and upwards