MIDNIGHT WITH HORNED THINGS

It is with awe that I read that gentlemen used to go for a canter early in the morning to get their blood flowing, and that doing so was considered not only good exercise but also beneficial to the digestion, plus preparing them for the heat of the day and a full work schedule. Obviously that was a different time and place.

By cantering is meant riding their horse around the forest and the fore jungle. Which, to my semi-sedentary mind, sounds perfectly ghastly.


Those same gentlemen started on port wine and gin-pahits at around three in the afternoon, and were quite blotto by tea time.

That too was considered normal and natural.


Nowadays many of my habits, though firmly rooted in the past, are considered peculiar and rather eccentric.

I'm usually out of the house with a pipe before eight o'clock (7:30 today), taking a constitutional around the neighborhood. Breakfast consists of coffee, and a bleary scoping of the news. No solid food, and above all no buggery cereals. Then walk and smoke. At around ten or eleven maybe a cookie, or at work a pastry. Bacon and eggs, if they are eaten at all, go into the main meal sometime during the middle of the afternoon.
It will be followed by strong tea.

A late lunch is the most important meal of the day. There will be sambal (hot chili condiments), maybe chutneys, and, during my days off, rice or noodles.


Getting blotto is a Northern European habit, and also very common here in North America. Like breakfast, it is best avoided. The last few times when I visited Holland I did have breakfasts, because it was expected of guests.
But I wasn't quite vested in the process. Fortunately cocktails were not included at the hotel in Amsterdam.

Because lets face it, Northern Europeans commonly drink like fish.
From Galway to Minsk, alcoholism is common.
Which leads to bad food choices,


You'll be glad to know that even though I am an abstemious fellow, I am still quite capable of making bad food choices. I do not need liquor to be an idiot. Bean chips. Pickled chilies. Two servings of ice cream.

What the hell was in those bean chips anyway?

Vegs and sambal, also a bad idea.

I have regrets.


In retrospect, I should not have been casually snacking while reading news articles on the internet yesterday evening (weird Texan medicine), as what I ate so abstractedly had a negative influence on my sleep last night.
Dreams in which I was pursued by horned beetles.
And a giant scaly cockroach.



The pipe pictured above, which I smoked during my walk this morning, was acquired during a trip back to the Netherlands, when I saw my father for the last time. It means a lot to me.

I am somewhat recovered now.

TOBACCO INDEX


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