IT'S JUST WHAT YOU DO

Today I explained the types of pipe tobacco to three different people. Four general types. Old school Burley blends which gramps smokes wearing his bib overalls driving the tractor doing the back forty. He's grumpy and mean and we're all hoping he has an accident soon. Virginia blends and flakes, like Tolkien and Sir Bertrand Russell enjoyed. Stealth tobaccos you can smoke in the teevee room late at night and your Cantonese apartment mate won't even notice. Smoked slowly they are very enjoyable. Then there's English or Balkan blends, which are rich and have a fragrance that will have her busting out of her bedroom to tell you to go huff that stinky garbage over at the abandoned church with the rabid animals and winos damn that smells, you rancid pervert. Clark Gable and William Faulkner liked those.
And aromatics, which are impure and suggest foul vices in addition to tutti-frutti.
Hotter, wetter, and they leave your bowl gunked up.

For a long time I was a rancid pervert, now I'm more like Bertrand Russell.
But I still like how perversion smells, and thoroughly encourage it.

Then there's the pipe itself. What does it say to you? Does it suggest an engineer working in a hot climate, lowering the blinds so that the reflected glare on the pumping station blueprints and geological service maps spread out on the long table don't blind people, with flies flitting about sucking up the perspiration buzz buzz buzz? Or maybe a posting where the jungle starts beyond Yaumuklam, where tigers lurk in the tall grasses and the previously stationed resident died of malaria, and you anxiously await the post delivered every six weeks?

Packets with jars of Oxford marmalade, the weekly journals, Old Farmer's Nerve Balm, black tea from Taylor's of Harrowgate, and tins of Rattray's Jocks Mixture pipetobacco.

The railway ended in Dung Fat City in the lower foot hills. If you went further up, the climate was healthier, and tropic fevers ceased to be a problem entirely. And your tastebuds gradually recovered.

After the rainy season ended you would often have Abdoul fry up some preserved goat for breakfast; it went so well with daliya porridge, and would remind you of English bacon. Sometimes butter of sorts would be available. Sometimes only sheep tail fat.

There were days when you couldn't stop thinking about Gwendolyn back in Devon.
But she had married Bertram, and it all seemed so long ago.

There were also days when someone you vaguely knew told you they were going hiking up on Tam, and you would never see them again.



Today on the bus back to civilization one of the savage women brought her bicycle on board. The driver tried to tell her he couldn't allow it, there were safety regulations and such, but he got distracted by the French speakers who just couldn't grasp the concept of either cash, OR la carte bleu. They weren't having any of it. They seen enough of the tattooed natives and their colourful habits to last a lifetime, mère sacrée et bon sang, and they were going to get out of there no matter what. The food was awful, and there was no coffee!

And none of them spoke the common tongue.
It was very frustrating.


Sometimes it's like the last helicopter out of a fallen city.



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