REPROBATICAL STIMULI

Getting home from work I am usually bushed. But one cup of coffee or tea later, and the beast feels restored. I might even have a bite to eat -- there are some purely excellent potstickers in the freezer at present that I picked up in Chinatown, which this evening are out of the question because I ate lunch very late -- or go out dancing. If I danced. Or enjoyed dancing.
Or was inspired to zany jollification.
Hypothetically.

Last pipe of the day out on the front steps; dark flake. In a very English canted Dublin. I think I'll make a habit of this. The weather is pleasant. Warmish, though Autumnal. Hardly any people about, because it seems there is some game that folks who don't smoke a pipe must watch.
I shall not research that matter, as I am uninterested.

The last pipe while at work was McConnell's folded flake in a big apple made by Comoys of London for an establishment that is now long gone: John's Pipe Shop, 524-524 1/2 South Spring Street, in Los Angeles.
At work I normally swill tea by the bucket-load, but I was too busy talking with two other pipe smokers to make myself enough to drink, and consequently faded a bit during the bus ride home.
I am pleased to discover that both gentlemen are, in their own ways, as neurotically detail-oriented as myself. And quite as disapproving of bad smoking habits.


One of them missed the last meeting of the pipe club due to illness. To a large extent I missed it too, as it occurred during work hours, so despite being in the vicinity of the puffing gentlemen at all times I was otherwise engaged, and haven't a clue what was discussed. At least four bottles of wine were drunk, plus a quantity of Scotch, and several Boddingtons. Which is slightly shocking (alcoholic beverages during daylight hours!), but not at all surprising. Several men with their briars and tobacco, ranging in age from late thirties all the way through older than the pyramids?
Of course one of the reprobates will pull out a bottle!
It might not even be one of the fossils.


It is both right and good that pipe smokers with sound habits, and tastes in wood and tobacco, should gather to talk smack about the rest of society.


Next time I will offer them tea.

TOBACCO INDEX


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