SMELLS LIKE CLEAN OUT THERE

Sometimes one wakes up far too early, but fully refreshed. Which means that, failing to go back to sleep, one lies there with weird stuff going through the head, before seeing that it's already getting rather light out there and perhaps one should have some coffee because yeah, um, can't nap anyway and it's probably going to be time for a pipe soon.

One of my friends showed me his dad's old briars recently. Made by a Parisian company not normally known for briars. Nice pieces, well taken care of. I have one from the same company, later vintage.

A large part of growing up and becoming an adult is the expanding realization that much has been lost, and gradually starting to preserve the things that bring back moods and revive memories and emotions one has come to value.

For him, among those things are his father's pipes, which he now smokes.
Not the same tobacco. And he tried Royal Yacht.
Which made him slightly sick.


Pipe Stud in Texas loves the stuff. Inexplicably.
I suspect that it might be a memory issue.

Georges Simenon, the Duke of Edinburgh, and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands also smoked Royal Yacht. One can ascribe this in part to the times in which they lived. Back in the old days, if your local tobacconists did not carrysomething you wouldn't have heard of it, and many merchants were known to be rather odd gentlemen with peculiar senses of humour. "Here", they would say, "this is a splendid product made be a respectable company". And obediently you'd end up smoking 'Clapthong's Festering Mixture' through all your university years, and mail-order it from the same tobacconist when you were posted to Upper Burma for over a decade. Where of course there were no reputable stores and you depended on Clapthongs staying in business and not messing with a solid blend, your pipe merchant in Exeter maintaining a stable supply, and the Royal Mail being as predictable as the tides.


"Clapthong's Festering; none finer!"


Two tobaccos which bring back the entire mood of the past are Capstan (formerly by W.D. and H.O. Wills) and Peterson's Flake with the blue and white label (branded as Dunhill till 2018, but made in Denmark for the past two decades).

The smell of coffee brewing, whisps of Virginia, and the crisp morning air on the street out there. It smells like North Beach across the hill, and many years ago.
As well as North Brabant decades before.



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