NASTY HABITS

This blogger does not particularly like cold weather, and tends to distrust people who do. Such as ski-freaks, snowmen, and New Yorkers. In particular, I do not like going outside and shivering while enjoying my bowl full of tobacco it's orgasmic oh yes indeed. One of the people with whom I work does not feel the cold, and is comfortable when it's inhuman outside, which same foul tendency is also evident when the temperature goes over ninety.


"It's fine; what are you complaining about?"


Well, now that you mention it, you.

Ideally, it's somewhere between highish mid-fifties and lowish mid-seventies. I did not used to be such an awful wuss. Maya, years ago outside the office building where we worked, took umbrage when I happily commented that "it's a nice and crisp morning". Of course, she being originally a Punekar, her idea of "nice" and mine did not quite coincide.
And women tend to feel the extremes more than men.
I have a wonderful theory about that.
Which I won't share.

This morning's amble had me freezing my achterend off with a lovely bowl full of blondish Virginia tobacco while a few hardy souls pooed their dogs. I'm sure that like me they would have been more comfortable inside with their dog pooing, at least I would not have had to dodge them, but my partment mate would have objected. Not least to the poo.

My tobacco smells far better than their dogs' favorite activity. This is an objective fact. Back in the forties and fifties (before I was born), people smoked their pipes indoors and out, and probably wore smelly longjohns half the year.
Fondly I imagine that they changed their longjohns regularly.
If not, how did there end up such a lot of them?
Women smell better than men.
It's baffling.

Just like underwear, a clean pipe smells nicer. There are some men who happily walk around with a sewer on a stick clenched in their manly jaws -- a favourite briar that they never clean, which gets nastier by the day -- and their underwear is probably not much better. excessive baby powder might help the nether regions slightly, but does bugger all for the pipe.

If you don't know about laundry by now, you're probably hopeless.
But pipe cleaners work wonders on your pipes.
As does frequent change.


There are more than thirty pipes on the tea tray where I keep the briars in regular service and the smaller tray near my bed. I do not smoke in bed, by the way. Three to five pipes get used everyday, then rested for a few days while other pipes are smoked. This allows the chemicals deposited on the inside wall of the bowl and in the draft channel to break down and dissipate, yielding a cleaner, drier, and crisper smoke than overusing the same workhorse day in day out would, and consequently my briars do not stink like some of the dogs I end up reconditioning regularly for old filthy puffers in Marin. Who it seems are incapable of being as fastidious about their smoking tools as they are about their cars. I do not know what their laundry is like.

A clean pipe is a happy pipe.


The friend who gave me the pipe shown above has clean habits. He uses pipe cleaners while smoking and after, and does not favour aromatics or soppy cavendish blends. The pipe above smells almost sexually of Latakia, which my Virginia Perique blends will eventually lessen, yielding a softer, slightly tangy metalic perfume.

My father's pipes smell of an American burley and Virginia concoction with scant condimentals once available in Beverly Hills, the pipes I got from Pauline years ago whiffed of the Drucquer's Blend 805 that she smoked; 50 percent Latakia, 25% Djubec (Turkish), 25% Virginia (three different kinds). All clean tobaccos.

Virginia Perique blends (which I've preferred for a decade now) are also clean tobaccos, less noticeable in the room note, almost stealthy. And smoked slow, they are infinitely enjoyable.


Gandalf and the Hobbits, as we know from their imitators, prefer nasty aromatics and never bother cleaning their tools. They gurgle when they smoke. Stinky cretins.
Please do not inquire about their longjohns.
You don't want to know.

TOBACCO INDEX


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