Boozember 1

Oops. Last night I drank for the first time since quitting. I'd been trying to put off this moment for, well, a bit longer than four days, because to me booze and cigarettes go together like Elizabeth Taylor and poor choice in husbands.

Oh come on, it wasn't my fault. As well as working this week, I've been wading through the fucking retarded idiots who use the Central and Bakerloo lines at 5.45 in order to get up to Slough to spend a further 4 hours rehearsing a play for the Edinburgh Fringe with my friend Charlotte.

After three hours of high blood pressure we sank into a sofa and absorbed a bottle of very good red to steel ourselves for another 11 hours today. I had the worst night's sleep I've had in years.

Seriously, I dreamed about cigarettes. About rolling cigarettes. I dreamed I was back where we'd been drinking, holding my wine in one hand and leaning out of the window and smoking. I could smell it, but more than that I felt the leathery smell of guilt everywhere. I'd failed. The cigarette was gone, and all that was left was failure and a sore throat.

I was fairly glad to wake up with no voice and an inexplicably bruised foot. Charlotte got off worse, waving the kettle in at me wildly and telling of having woken at 3am by her vast antique door being banged open by the wind and being convinced she was being burgled. When even Radio 4 can't get you back to sleep, you're fucked. We turned up at rehearsal like zombies. Eurgh.

Tomorrow I head back to my parents for a wedding party. There will be Champagne. There will be Tories, smoking fags. There will be my brother, smoking fags. Be still my beating willpower: I'm not having dreams like that again thanksverymuch.