IT SMELLS A BIT

He smile engagingly before he spoke. "you should really visit Kretinen. Our city is beautiful, we have garbage receptacles and public toilets everywhere, and standing ashtrays outside every building. The streets are very clean!" Unsaid: that San Francisco would benefit from doing the same. "The garbage receptacles are capacious, and there are lights on the public toilets, so you can see what you are getting into. And we encourage nasal health. Pick your nose. Strangers may pick your nose for you, we're that enthusiastic about it. You will love it. It's green." At that point I felt like something might be getting bent in translation, because Prink and English were so different, and I woke up.

Did I ever mention that bloodpressure pills makes dreams more vivid?

Also, while I could hear in my mind's eye the objection to putting standing ashtrays outside every building here in San Francisco because it would encourage people to smoke, the opposite would happen because of garbage cans and toilets. Clearly. We did away with garbage bins which used to be everywhere, and now there is refuse lying all over.
And as far as public toilets are concerned, the results speak for themselves.

While making my first cup of coffee I resolved to visit Kretinen.
And possibly learn Prink. Languages are fun.


"I vill not buy this 'tobacconist', it is scratched!"


Coffee, then a pipe. Short bowl.

Mister Yu had dropped by over the weekend, and we discussed tobaccos. Old blends. My Mandarin does not extend to in-depth product reviews, but is enough to say that 'it is good, a full Latakia blend', or 'that one is bad, added flavouring on a mediocre base'. 'Highly reputed'. 'No longer in production, famous company'. Fairly basic sentences. He is always on the lookout for something different. Rare stuff, several years old.

He stays a while, occasionally showing me pictures of recent scores on his phone (one of which was an eighty plus years old tin of Capstan Flake, World War Two Era), then his phone rings and he leaves. His manner has become more American these past two years. But he still speaks less English than I speak Mandarin.

There is still something very Monty Python Hungarian about these encounters. But context usually makes clear what the phrasing might not.

He has grown fonder of Latakia blends.
Usually smokes Virginias, though.

It smells like victory.



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================