When Brian quit smoking

I had never smoked, although I had been tempted to start a number of times. Something always seemed to stop me (God, I believe, bless Him) and I am really grateful because I have an addictive personality and quitting would have been hard. I don't drink alcohol any more because of being a Soldier in the Salvation Army, and signing a pledge to say that I wouldn't use harmful substances including alcohol and other drugs. I have a wide interpretation of "other drugs", so I gave up guarana drinks a couple of weeks ago, I haven't had any Coca-cola in years (don't have any cola drinks if it comes to that), I have never liked coffee or normal tea and only occasionally drink unsweetened Jasmine tea or peppermint tea with the mint straight from the garden. I still indulge in chocolate and salt, so I'll have to start working on those, too, not only for my conscience but also for my body's sake.

Brian, on the other hand, was a confirmed forty a day man, alcoholic and smoked marijuana when I met him, and loved it all. He had a very rigorous job that required a lot of physical effort and therefore really burned off a lot of the huge food intake he had. For those of you who are naive about such subjects as I was when I met him, smoking marijuana makes you very, very hungry.

He quit smoking marijuana soon after he met me because I was a white witch and he realised he should be a good Christian witness. Or at least one that stayed within the boundaries of the law.

I have a great loathing for cigarettes, and there are times when I catch the wrong whiff of smoke and I start coughing, cannot stop and end up throwing up. This, for some reason, upsets those around me who are smoking and they tend not to light up in my presence. Good ol' lungs!

When I met Brian, I had just been kicked out a couple of months before by my first husband, now deceased, Hans (no, I had nothing to do with his death, didn't even know about it until some months after the event, and yes, I wish I had been there to help).

Anyway, I had to move as the flats in which I was living were about to be renovated, so I moved to a suburb of Melbourne called Elwood, near the beach. As funds would not allow anything but the most basic removal service, and I had nothing but a bicycle, the removalist took my gear, my best friend, my dog, my cat and me from Glen Iris where I lived, to Elwood. It was a very humid day, and as I was holding on to poor Phydeaux, my cat, so that he would not escape, whilst leaning over my exercise bike (both we ladies in the back of the removalist's van), I was soon covered in unhappy cat fur.

The removalists took a couple of items up to my new flat in Elwood, said that I had run out of time with them, and proceeded to dump the rest of my gear on the ground floor and then leave. There was no way I could get all of that stuff, even with my best friend's help, up two flights of stairs.

All of a sudden, strutting towards me, was a gorgeous bloke who offered to take my stuff upstairs for me. With help from a male friend of his who was visiting at the time. Brian said that he fell in love with me just about straight away, and was determined to marry me before someone else did, or, as he put it, "I'm not letting this one get away!" Thanks, Brian.

I couldn't believe someone would go out of his way as much as Brian did. I was impressed.

Well, we started going out together, but I told him of my problem with cigarettes so he controlled himself around me, which was a huge blessing.

He gave up smoking anyway, because he said it was time.

Now here is something really annoying to many confirmed addicts of all substances. He quit without any desire to re-start. How frustrating is that?!

But, yes, he did get side-effects. The most noticeable one was the caffeine high. He would drink his coffee or Coca-cola, and have about five times the buzz that caffeine normally gives. Brian was so energetic, he wore out my dog! We walked for kilometres and kilometres! If ever you get hold of a map of Melbourne, we did one walk that went from the middle of Foam Street, Elwood, to Albert Park, all around the Lake and then back again, and then Brian said, "Hey, want to do that again?" I had to carry my dog for the last half of the walk back. This was Collette, my daschie of the time, and used to long walks. She was, as we say in our Family, "exhaustipated". I'll tell you, I wasn't much better.

Around five years later, I noticed that the disgusting cigarette taste had gone out of his mouth when I kissed him. He'd been smoking since he was twelve. He gave up when he was thirty-five.

Giving up the booze was another, much harder story, one that he battles on a daily basis, and he couldn't keep going without God. So I gave up with him, and a couple of years afterwards, we joined the Army, which helped.