Give me a man who is smoking and I'll be on fire

"I'm just finishing reading," he replies absently. I curse him and scrunch my toes up in frustration.

It's too cold to lie still, so I quickly jump out of bed to pull on my thick dressing gown and make myself a cup of tea.

The turn in the weather is preventing me from getting the sleep I need for tomorrow. I have a meeting about dancing at a new burlesque pantomime in the morning and want to feel fresh.

I shuffle into the living room in my Marabou-feather slippers to sit on the radiator for a minute but stop short in the doorway when I see how beautiful Neanderthal looks.

He's in his chair smoking a cigarette with a very serious face, deeply engrossed in a book.

He normally smokes out on the balcony but he's obviously been frightened in by the cold.

I feel guilty at how much I love watching him smoke. He reminds me of a villain from a Humphrey Bogart movie but he's trying to quit so I can't mention it. Sadly, electronic cigarettes just aren't sexy.

When his attention is on something else I can't resist trying to distract him. I would disrobe if I weren't so chilly but instead I sit at the bottom of his chair and give him a coy smile.

Through a cloud of smoke he stops reading and looks at me. He shuts the book, opens his zipper and carries on smoking. "Oops," I think, when he lights up his fourth.

He gets so excited he carries me into the bedroom and finally we generate the kind of heat I wanted.

The next morning I join my friend and fellow burlesque performer Octavia for our meeting at The Bridge. I haven't seen Octavia for months because she has been absorbed in her new boyfriend Brian.

She's considering moving in with him, and we only stop gossiping about the pros and cons of living with a man when the theatre manager arrives and the meeting begins.

It goes very well, although the mid-air striptease he's proposing, dangling from ropes, does concern me. It is an adult panto, but I wonder just how much I want the audience to see up my skirt.

On my way home via Spitalfields market my eyes are instantly drawn to a very dangerous artefact. It's a men's red satin quilted smoking jacket with velvet lapels. I imagine the living room scene again but with Neanderthal wearing the smoking jacket and salivate. Is it very wrong for me to hope he doesn't quit before Christmas?