Return of the summer smoker

And I am not alone. Almost a quarter of the 877 smokers polled by Ipsos Mori this summer said they had put off giving up. I've been keeping tabs on my fellow ex-smokers and have watched many go back on the tobacco as temperatures and hemlines rise.

TS Eliot got it wrong. April isn't the cruellest month. For nicotine-resisters, it's a dead heat between June, July, August and September.

The upturn in the British climate makes one yearn to be outside, there to be confronted by happy, hungry puffers. Tendrils of smoke seem to write messages in the warm air. Give in. Rejoin us. Enjoy.

Those who might have fought off the demon weed in rainy May or bitter January succumb in the sun. Stuffy pubs are empty, but their gardens are full of languidly sprawling smokers.

Scattered packets and lighters give a continental air to the suddenly sittable outdoor tables of London restaurants. Fags and festivals go together like cider and regret.

There are chemical and psychological reasons for the surge in summer smoking. Cigarette smoke, acrid and foul in the bars and offices from which it's now rightly barred, smells sweet and aromatic when borne on a balmy breeze.

An indulgent, al fresco fag — like the first sneaky, outdoor, weekday-lunchtime booze-up — feels like a holiday from the drabness and denial of our largely vitamin D-free working lives.

The recession hasn't helped. At a time when we are cutting back on overseas vacations and any major expenditure, a packet of 10 looks like a cheap, if guilty, pleasure.

The smokers who told Ipsos Mori they couldn't give up cited anxiety over the recession as the cause. Nearly three-quarters of the 877 also said smoking helped relieve stress.

Where does this leave those of us who are trying to go straight, rather than straight to the newsagents, this summer? In a difficult position, that's where. I felt my first pang of 2009 leaving my office one June day to find two colleagues basking on a wall, sharing a roll-up.

Recently, a friend who is about to become a father for the second time darted away from the dinner table to suck down carcinogens in the day's last dying rays. On holiday in Majorca, me and my wife (who gave up smoking long before me and has never indulged since) both found ourselves reaching for phantom cartons by the pool.

I finally succumbed, alas and woe, after that Balearic holiday, over a rosé-fuelled lunch in a friend's garden in Acton. We'd just handed her 200 Dunhill (as a gift, in case any Customs officers are reading) and as I watched her spark greedily up, I gave in. Two cigarettes. Smoked in dappled shade. Blissfully enjoyable. But the comedown was awful. As we made our way home on a glorious evening, I realised I was grumpy, ash-mouthed, stale-smelling and racked with self-loathing. Which is never a good look for summer.