No Escape

Woke twice this morning, as is my routine these days. The first waking was for the dawn prayer, and then I returned to the land of nod, to awake a second time at a slightly more civilised time of the morning. This time I returned to consciousness with a distinct sense of guilt, however. The troubled feeling was related to a dream my waking seemed to interrupt, the last clear event of which had involved smoking a cigarette.

Now it's been many years since I broke my addiction to the demon tobacco. The last cigarette I smoked was on the evening, a Monday actually, the BBC first broadcast Arthur Penn's excellent movie Bonnie and Clyde, some thirty-five years back. So it was disconcerting, to say the least, to still be dreaming of the things.

Not only that: I had the distinct sense this wasn't a terribly unusual sort of dream for me - it was just that normally I don't remember 'smoking' dreams. In fact, I know for sure I frequently dreamt of smoking in the years immediately following breaking the habit, but I thought such dreams were long, long in the past.

So there you have it: you can't escape your misspent youth, even after your youth has long escaped you.