out of fashion

As a passionate, committed, enthusiastic and proselytising smoker I have often felt that I smoke like it's going out of fashion. Which of course it is.

J's mum M, who smoked 40 a day for the last 30 years, was diagnosed 3 months ago with lung cancer. Her brand, until she gave up (sometime around the first cancer tests), was Mayfair. Funny how the cheapest, tarriest, dirtiest fags always have the fanciest names. Funny how I keep saying to myself, *secondary* lung cancer.

The other day I learnt a new expression, "Cheyne Stoking". Funny how this sounds like "chain smoking". Cheyne Stoking, or Cheyne Stokes breathing, refers to a particular breathing pattern exhibited by some dying people. People dying of lung cancer, for example. Lung cancer probably caused by chain smoking. I was there when J's mum was cheyne stoking, hours before she died of lung cancer. It was horrific.

And still I feel that by giving up cigarettes I am depriving myself (see under "Stockholm Syndrome").

final resting place

On the corner of Earlham Road, right by the Grapes Hill bridge, there used to be a building. It was demolished over several weeks but I can't remember what was there before the construction company hoarding went up, advertising the retirement flats that are going to be built there. If you stand on the bridge and look down, you can see behind the hoarding - the computer-generated mansion block and the smiling elderly couples - down to the site itself, which for now is only levelled earth marked off into regular sections.

Crossing the bridge today, I passed an old couple who were leaning over to have a look. They were pointing a lot and getting quite excited. Perhaps they had put down a deposit on one of the flats and were trying to guess where their home would be but for a second there, looking down at the rectangles of roped-off earth, it looked like they were picking out burial plots.

two syndromes

Mowgli:

where abandoned infants are raised by packs of wolves or wild dogs.

Stockholm:

where hostages come to love and respect their captors (as with domestic dogs and their owners).

backblog

I haven't updated this for a while, for reasons I'll explain later.

I haven't told people I'm keeping this blog and I'm not even sure anyone's reading it.

The whole exercise feels like a very public but secret transgression, like walking around with no underwear on.