PIPES, TEAPOTS, BOOKS

A visitor whom I strongly suspect of dealing in second-hand reading material left the following comment: "Count your belssings". Yes, "Belssings". Oof. Abraham van Belssing is a minor character of horror fiction, first seeing the dark of night in Bram Stoker's rather worse than mediocre novel Dracula, as limp and turgid a piece of drivel as was ever penned. That paper cow-patty between two covers is an over-rated accretion of balderdash and blather. Sexist, two dimensional characters, very weak plot.
It would never get published nowadays.
Very badly written.

Van Helsing. Sorry.
A Dutchman.


I've got a bit of indigestion. It's affecting my perception. Dinner last night was seven ginger snaps and some coconut cookies.
And I'm on my third cup of coffee.
I apologize.


"BELSSINGS" TO COUNT:

I've got an ex-girlfriend who is still my co-conspirator as regards cookies, a supply of pipe-tobacco which will last me through the next earthquake and beyond, and a huge number of books crammed into the small apartment which I share with a cookie-co-conspirator, who has her own room and books, and hates pipe-tobacco.

She also has a poor sense of smell (and direction, different issue), and her schedule gives me full opportunity to light up around the apartment three days a week. If I open the windows, firmly shut her door, and let the place air out for several hours before she comes home from work at around eight in the evening, all will be well. Sometimes I'll fry or boil something to "mask" the lingering perfume of Latakia.


I've also got a recurring throbbing ache in my right leg, which one of these days I'm going to tell people is my old war injury acting up. If they are substantially younger than me -- which is increasingly likely as I get older and they get younger -- they'll trust me, because everybody with a tinge of grey took part in our country's great experiment with organized violence back in the Twentieth century.

World War Two, Korea, Vietnam, Nutmeg and Mace, plus Iraq One.
It's all one big blur of old geezers fighting.

I am not an old geezer, as I am only in my Forty-Mid-Teens, but they don't know that. It's the tinge of grey. It's magic.


In addition to the "blessings" listed above, there are over two dozen small stuffed animals in the apartment. I'm not sure whether they are a blessing or not, as they keep trying to steal my wallet, and demand foodstuffs which I've never heard of and wouldn't know where to get anyway. They tend to disrespect me, and hardly listen to a word I say.
Little furry anarchists and socialists.
My wallet, bitches.


I also own over thirty teapots. Most of them are small purple clay items (宜興紫砂), many bulbous with a bambooish motif.

Tea is one of my "things".

The modern world would not be possible without caffeinated beverages. Which are tea, coffee, and cola.

Johnson was whacked on tea twenty hours a day and wrote his great dictionary under its influence, the end of the dark ages and the industrial revolution happened because of caffeine, and the Europeans stopped drinking wine and ale for breakfast and went out to conquer the world and destroy civilizations while all perky. Further, the greatest art, literature, music, and technological progress can be directly ascribed to the wondrous liquid stimulation of coffee and tea. Cola, far less so.
Maybe 'Flower Power'.


This blog would not get written without caffeine.

Count your blessings.

Or not.



EEN THEE EN TABAK'S BEḮNVLOEDE NAWOORD

I'll be in Chinatown later today for a bite to eat and a warm beverage.
Did I perhaps already mention tea? If not, I really should have.
It's made my life thrilling, it can do the same for you.
You need something good in your life.
It's a blessing.




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