I've never smoked, never even wanted to because both my parents were smokers when I was a small child. Yet I know exactly when I would have a cigarette throughout my daily life. Walking home in the pouring rain I realised I was thinking - if I smoked I would get home, have a coffee and a look at the paper (I don't get a paper) and have a cigarette. Exactly what my mum does every morning.

It amazed me that I could absorb my mum's routines so very very deeply - especially as I haven't lived with her for almost 20 years. Even more terrifying is the revelation that I know these routines because I've observed them from babyhood (along with the thrill of playing with empty B&H cigarette packets which I've know got an olfactory memory of and the joy of wafting my hands through the beautiful curls of grey smoke) - what the heck have my children absorbed for good or for bad? What will they be doing or not doing for the rest of their lives because I did X or Y?