ICHESTER IS STAGGERINGLY POPULAR

One of the old men in the back is experiencing bowel issues, and because he knows we'll ban him if there is even one more occurence, he's been clenching like topsy, desparate not to become 'Pooh Man Two' and be banished to the outer darkness, where there is a weeping and a wailing and a gnashing of teeth. I haven't said anything, but I think he would be much happier there. He'll be able to eat all the cheese he wants. Which he really shouldn't.

[The means NO Wensleydale, Greek Feta, Gorgonzola, Parmesan, Mozzarella, Pippo Creme, Danish Fimboe, Czech sheep's milk, Venezuelan Beaver Cheese, Cheddar, or Brie whatsover. None. Neithe a jot nor a tittle! Not a scrap.]

The marginally saner members of the syphilitic old fossils club in the back are aghast. And possibly fearful that eventually they too will have no place to philosophize rightwingedly, as the old bastards are wont to do, while watching televised balls, and two men naked in the wilderness with a chainsaw and bears or whatever that show is called.

Yeah, my piles bleed for old white boomers with bowels.
Truly, sincerely, warm heartedly.
Sarcasm off.


On the other hand, the members of the local pipe club are full of spirit, bravado, and derring do. Despite the average age being closer to sixty that thirty. The one thing seriously amiss with them is, perhaps, that there is always an excess of cheese at their monthly meetings. Oh, and maybe that all of them are male. There is not a single woman who has evinced the same interest in handsome briar smoking equipment, OR the fine substances with which to load them. Sad, because today for show and tell I brought a tin of Old Hollywood, a Cornell & Diehl blend, which I had purchased over a decade ago, and which was bulgy with age.

John had asked that we bring our square pipes (if we had 'em) to the meeting for show and tell. I own two: one is a Butz Choquin Roc Brune, the other is a Dudleigh from a Hollywood store (Richardson) that opened in 1930 and may have ceased existing sometime in the fifties or sixties. Quite a number of famous people loved the store: Leslie Howard, Boris Karloff, Basil Rathbone, Clark Gable, and William Faulkner among them. Hence the tobacco, which has NO connection to either of the two famous Hollywood tobacconists (the other one being John's, where my father shopped) other than that term Hollywood.

Either Clark Gable in between shots, OR a typical American badger

Didn't bother popping the lid on the sealed tin. It didn't look like anyone was interested in square pipes or a mighty fine blend which some have speculated was reverse-engineered from tobacco barn floor sweepings and discarded cigarette butts.
I rather like it, but I'm a litte peculiar that way.
It is no longer produced.

[Two types of red Virginia, plus Burley, Latakia, and Turkish. Pleasantly complex.]

Percy Dudleigh Richardson, the tobacconist, produced a number of private blends rather like it. Virginia and Burley mixtures with a dash of condimentals were not unusual then.

My father smoked something like that.

Obviously, I have met many more male pipesmokers than female pipesmokers. Of which there have been three. Committed aficionadas with a respectable plurality of pipes. As well as two occasional pipe ladies, with only three or four briars maximum. Men are a dime a dozen, women who smoke pipes are rare birds. The chance of being insane is just as great whichever the gender, the likelihood of being a tattooed freak with piercings and a dense beard down to the navel are considerable less for the distaff side.

The regular pipe smoker will need about six or eight briars minumum to have a rotation going on, in case you were wondering. The pipe needs to air and dry out, the complex chemicals deposited by the process of combusting tobacco must have time to dissipate and break down into simpler substances. Some men, filthy swine, end up abusing their pipes so badly that they have sewers on a stick jutting out of their faces.

It is an unfirmly held belief of mine that a woman pipe smoker will probably not need as many pipes as a man, because the female of the species is more careful about keeping her equipment clean. Some men are absolute pigs.

Still, ten to twenty pipes is not uncommon. A woman whom I knew when I was much younger had well over sixty. And knew her tobaccos.


By the way: the idea that fruity aromatic cavendishes are more naturally fit for women is complete horsepucky. The woman pipesmoker will at some point happily discover Balkan blends or fine Virginia mixtures, and not indulge in unseemly experiments with sweet crap (which is more suited to the tattooed pierced bearded freak in any case).

There are no women member of the pipe club.
Sad! All of us are well behaved.



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