People who have never smoked (lucky things) don't quite grasp that it isn't as simple as not putting cigarettes in your mouth and lighting them. That simple truth masks the insidious manner in which nicotine works to convince you that you really should have another cigarette.

It's wicked stuff – a horrible addiction, a disease.

I used the late, great Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking. The title is actually a misnomner. There's no easy way to give up, but the angle at which Carr comes at the problem is fantastic. It demolishes many of the reasons people think they smoke – it relaxes them, helps them when they're nervous, helps them deal with stress...

By the end of the book you're in such a positive frame of mind and you hate nicotine so much that it is certainly easier to give up.

My other tip is to put away the money you save every day and spend it on something you would not have been able to afford when you were a smoker. I bought a pair of running shoes and ran everywhere to keep my mind off fags. I gave up a 30-a-day habit and went on to run two London marathons – but neither were anywhere near as hard as giving up smoking. So good luck to anyone out there struggling with the demon nicotine. The NHS offers some great help. For more details see - Fresh offer to Suffolk smokers


It's miserable, waiting to find out how big the next gas
or electricity bill's going to be. And what about the price of petrol?

I was caught out, rather naively assuming Tesco would be the cheapest place in Sudbury to fill up. I did so, at 104.9p a litre, only to drive past Esso where the price was... 104.9p per litre. Every little helps, as they say.


On the subject of the price of petrol, it certainly makes you think twice about wasteful journeys, which has to be good for the environment. For example, I decided not to avail myself of Babergh's offer to drive the 18-mile round trip to Hadleigh to collect three plastic bags in which to put my Christmas wrapping paper. (It would have been a 40-mile trip for Glemsford residents or Shotley-dwellers.)

Credit where it's due, I agree with the accompanying call to compost more and landfill less. But the "green" free bags policy strikes me as worse for the environment than what happened last Christmas and has been happening most weeks along my road. The binmen – possibly against policy, I don't know – have been doing the sensible, green, thing, by picking up any extra cardboard and paper left beside our blue bins.