THE PERFUMED PRESENT: YESTERDAY

After finishing my breakfast (which was actually a late lunch or early dinner), I loaded up a pipe and headed out to irritate the neighborhood nonsmokers. Which is not exactly a crusade, but something I do because I cannot smoke inside on a day when my apartment mate is home, as the dear lady is a non-smoker, and hugely hates the smell of tobacco.

If you are not wearing a mask and on the public street, near enough to smell my pipe, you are fair game as well as too damned close during pandemic times. I also have a stick, in case you approach. I am friendly toward little children, dogs, and women who don't object to my smells.

The acacia trees at the end of the block are in bloom. Shouldn't you be sneezing?

The pipe above is one I bought at a tobacconist which no longer exists, years ago. That was when I still did credit and collections at a company downtown, which is also long gone.


The Zulu, or Bent Albert, as it also called (named Mycroft in the Sherlock Holmes series of commemorative pipes by Petersons of Dublin), was, back in the age of empire, also called a 'kaffir', which is an objectionable term the British picked up from the South Africans. It is one of the most erotic of pipe shapes, sensuous, sinuous, oozing a non-gender based and mostly aesthetic sexuality. A smoker that radiates "come hither, big briar, ooh!"

This is somewhat at odds with my character.
I am not effete or self-indulgent.
Almost spartan of taste.


What I had had for my late lunch was a curry containing mustard cabbage, potato, sausage, lardoons, fish paste, plenty of ginger, fresh green chilies, red chili paste, yellow curry paste, shrimp paste pre-fried with spices, and a small amount of lemon grass. Next to a mound of rice, and a cup of strong coffee. I pride myself on my ability to blend spices and flavourings.
It was a dish of haunting richness, yet surprising delicacy.


Hot coffee, with a hint of cardamom.


Followed by a medium dark flake, nicely aged tobacco.
Altogether a lovely two hours, more or less.
Richly evocative of golden memory.

TOBACCO INDEX


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