By Val Savage
Our government is proposing a very strict smoking ban, making the sale of tobacco products illegal for anyone turning 15 from this year.
As an ex-smoker, I love to hear people successfully giving up cigarettes because I know it’s torturously hard. For more than 50 years, I had a 20-a-day habit which ended the day an NHS surgeon, examining me for a hip replacement, told me he did not operate on smokers.
Focusing on the dream of easing physical pain and gaining mobility gave my willpower the boost it needed to stub out my last ever ciggie. I’ve been smoke-free for 18 months and love that my family are proud of me, my money isn’t turning to ash and I have a spanking new hip joint.
Even though every now and then I crave a fag with a cup of coffee, I’d never have one. You’d think I would welcome the Government’s tough-on-smokers proposal. But I don’t. Of course people need guidance on good health, but it should be up to each individual what they do to their own body.
That shouldn’t be a government decision or written in law. And why do they always pick on smokers? At £15 for a packet of 20, my old habit would cost me £105 a week so I’d be hit in the pocket.
But the same strict government focus never seems to be on people who are addicted to alcohol or drugs. It’s tough enough for smokers – they need support to give up the habit, not more punishment.
Music is relief in such scary times
News from the Middle East is making me fear for World War Three.
I’ve had decades of living through warnings that global war was imminent – we had it through the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Cold War when we had to watch films on the dangers of nuclear war and read instructions on building a bunker in our gardens.
But it’s never felt as scary as this. I’m so frightened I could mither myself into a terror by thinking about it all day. But there’s no point. There is nothing I can do to change it, so I will not let tomorrow’s worry steal today’s joy. I’d send myself soft.
When everything gets too much, I ask that Alexa lass to switch on my 1960s music. And within a few bars of Motown, I go from an achy, anxious old Nana to young Val, plastered with kohl eyeliner, panstick foundation and gallons of sticky hairspray, swinging my hips in a dancehall with not a pain or care in the world.
Try it – it’s our generation’s version of therapy.
That’s rich
David and Victoria Beckham’s daughter-in-law Nicole has made a film about a poor girl and cast herself as the lead. I totally get why it’s been panned by critics who reckon the billionaire’s daughter doesn’t convince as a down-and-out woman.
Why didn’t they cast a struggling actress who knows how hard it is to make ends meet and could do with the fee?
