" ... I feeeeel goooood, and I know that I should..." I do, Mister Brown, I certainly do. Not that I'm in any serious recovery programme here, but it's exactly two weeks since I waited for a sweetshop on the corner of Fleet Street and Blackfriars to empty itself of all customers before slipping in, furtively, a victim of lust and shame, to swap even more hard earned folding for a five minute love affair with yet another bar of chocolate.

Two whole weeks. Fourteen days, umpteen hours, however many minutes, and I'll pass over how many seconds, from when my Doctor placed a cease and desist order on me, and I stopped my industrial, possibly insane, consumption of chocolate.

I'm too tired to explore the pathology of how I got into this state. I did and that's that; it's reversing out with minimal damage, preferably none at all, that I'm more concerned about. This boy's not keen at all on encouraging some sugar driven health problem.

Have I got the willpower? Surprisingly, yes I have. Barely a crumb of cocoa has beaten the embargo. God, it sounds like an echo from the Prohibition days - there should be some schooner on a run from Canada freighted to the gunnels with the vin ordinaire of chocolate - Cadburys, Mars, the stuff that I used to thrive on, bouncing on the waves just outside the territorial limits.

Except it's not like that. I don't miss it at all. It's like I've been able to turn the light off, leave the room, and have no compulsion to go back in there. I've not had to seek out substitutes; none of this craving for something, anything, to fill the gap that seems to pursue ex-smokers in their early days of giving up.

James Brown was right; you can "...get up offa that thing and try to release that pressure".