I LIVE AMONG US!

My apartment mate has started going to work again after three weeks of hacking, coughing, spitting, and sounding like hairballs. A respiratory infection which flummoxed her, seeing as by her own boast she is of hardy peasant stock and can withstand a damned sight more than you silly effete white men, White Man! Yeah, okay. But I didn't catch it. And now that she leaves the house in the morning again I can finally close her bedroom door, open the windows, and positively revel in a smoke-filled existence.
As is natural on my home planet.

And I can revert to my true form.

These past three weeks have been tough. I've had to brave the elements with my pipe clenched in my manly jaw, dodging joggers, people walking their dogs, and little children. While she was comfortably ensconced in our apartment coughing up a lung or two and grumpily watching documentaries about Rome, ancient Egypt, and such like.
I have suffered enough.

My home planet is filled with the fragrant fumes of flue-cured leaf. It wafts from room to room on gentle indoor zephyrs. Happy blue lizard beings ponce around enjoying fine products like Southern Capitol, Big Front Gate, Yellow Crane Tower, Noble Smoke, and Five Leaf God (南京 'naam king'，大前門 'daai chin mun'，黃鶴樓 'wong hok lau'，貴煙 'gwai yin'，五葉神 'ng yip san'). Which are all tubular, of varied dimension, and packed with combustible goodness.

We would rather not do that outside, because it's a bad example for the kiddie winkies. When they see a mature blue space lizard puffing away, they think it looks cool and stylish, and they want to ooze cerulean and indigo slime too when they grow up.


For the past three weeks I have tended to pop outside for a quick inhalation of compact tubes of shredded leaf, flickering in and out of this dimension, instead of contenmplatively reaching for my briars and the pouch while reading about war, pestilence, and famine.
It's thrown me off my game. There has been heartache and suffering.


Oh! Despair.

Great sadness.


Anyhow, I shall have a second pipe as soon as she leaves, which will be in about an hour and a half. Probably red Virginia flake in an old Peterson stamped 'Dublin and London', of which I have several. As well as another strong cup of coffee.
It's going to be a productive day, I can tell.

Hairball free.



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