Loyal readers of this blog will remember that, disturbed from my complacent slumber by the threatened tobacco tax measure last year, I started stockpiling pipe-tobacco.
Brands I have 'piled' are Dunhill, Samuel Gawith, Dan Tobacco (both Bill Bailey's and Gordon Pym), plus GL Pease and McClellands (and I still have about a dozen tins of Balkan Sobranie from 1982). And several miscellaneous oddments.
But mostly Dunhill.
At present I have what is probably the biggest Dunhill pipe-tobacco stockpile in the city.
Can you say 'neurotic'?
Then now would be the appropriate time to say it.
When my stockpile runs out (more than ten years hence), I am running away to some state where they have no civilization, no laws, low taxes, too many slope-browed rednecks in trailer parks, blasted hinterlands and a surfeit of guns. California lost it's mind long ago.
Eventually it will lose it's homicidal serfs too. By that time 'they' will probably arrest people who smoke in public.
I understand Europe is getting to be as nuts as California on a whole lot of issues like smoking..... Holland, which made its fortune on tobacco, coffee, tea, and slaves, now disallows smoking in many places. By doing so, they are encouraging pneumonia and arthritis.
THE STOCKPILE
Aperitif: 17 tins.
Elizabethan: 10 tins.
EMP: 70 tins.
Durbar: 75 tins.
London Mixture: 88 tins.
Mixture 965: 33 tins.
Nightcap: 6 tins.
Standard Mixture Medium: 75 tins.
Standard Mixture Mild: 13 tins.
Three Year Matured: 11 tins.
[Note: Aperitif, Elizabethan, Durbar, and Three Year Matured have all been discontinued.]
There is a great (and greatly neurotic) pleasure to be had from having so much of the tobacco which thirty years ago I could scarcely afford, and certainly could not afford a surplus of (teenagers in those days not having huge amounts of money).
I look at my tins, and it gives me a comfortable feeling.
Life is good.
Cough, cough. Hack.
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Further thereto, I should also mention that I had E. at the local tobacconists mix up an experimental blend of my own devising the other day. While he was measuring out the tobacco, I would remark "that seems like a HUGE amount of Latakia, are you sure that's right?" or "that seems like a LOT of Toasted Cavendish...". And every time he assured me that the quantities were correct. It wasn't until we got to the Turkish that we realized something was wrong. Horribly wrong.
They did not stock Turkish, so I planned to use McClelland's Blending Oriental Tobacco (Turkish by another name). I had calculated the precise amount I would need. I ended up having to buy a huge amount more. While measuring out the tobaccos, E. had used whole ounces instead of fractions.
I now have a THREE MONTH supply of an experimental blend. THREE MONTHS! Sweet cream cheeses with a crotch, THREE MONTHS! Shee.
THREE MONTHS.
Good thing I know what I'm doing. It's actually very nice. I don't think I'll need to make any modifications at all. It is precisely what I wanted.
[Now, please imagine a small toad with a pipe in its mouth, hopping up and down, happily boasting "I'm a genius! I'm a genius", while looking very pleased with itself. You didn't know toads were neurotic about tobacco, did you?]
TOBACCO INDEX
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