EGGS IN A BOX

While some women nearby chatted about boxes and eggs I sipped my tea and half-earedly listened. Not knowing anything about those subjects in any great detail, nor having strong opinions about either, and being quite unacquainted with the participants anyway, there was no reason for me to jump in and interject words of wisdom. Far be it from me to mansplain very pedestrian subjects. Now, had they been talking about GBD from before the war till the seventies, I might have been tempted. Some truly lovely pipes, manufactured during a veritable golden age.

That is, unfortunately, a subject that will bore ninety nine out of ten people to tears. And, like many such things, me too when someone else is going on about it.

Fortunately this was an early morning dream and there was an escape.
Wake up, make coffee, go outside for a smoke.
In a different pipe brand.

The weather seems to be warming up. This is something predictable, and I don't like it. When it starts heading significantly toward the eighties (°F) my upper back hurts more (because of circulation issues) and I become more unpleasant than normal. There are huge parts of the year when I am not a likeable person. Those peak in Marin County during work.

I commend my colleagues for putting up with me.

A friend in Central Java will have temperatures around ninety for most of the week during daytime. Where I spent my childhood and teenage years in the Netherlands will be mostly mid to high seventies. London seems to be cooling down, it will be very pleasant there.
It is always time for tea followed by a pipe in all three places. Though still too warm.


My friend in Java is a pipesmoker, though he indulges in cigars socially. One can get good cigars there, but pipe tobacco is I suspect a little harder to come by. Cigars are just much more available worldwide.


Besides, pipe smoking isn't a very social thing.
Despite the LOTR movies and Gandalf.
We are not fond of Hobbits.

Also, despite your grandfather of whom we remind you, we have almost nothing in common with him or other old geezers that crop up in your mind, besides a piece of polished wood sticking out of our faces. Trust me on this. And we'd probably hate his chosen tobacco.

Plus the pipes I'm smoking today aren't polished, they're sandblasted and have somewhat rough exteriors. A severe straight billiard by Peretti in Boston, which is something a college man might smoke striding off to Latin in his toga, a Peterson silver banded black blast billiard (think of a crusty Parish priest who really doesn't want to hear confessions by run-of-the-mill teenage degenerates, just leave him alone in his little booth in the church to puff by himself, it is cool and quiet there), and an awesome bent Dunhill shellbriar, nicely craggy, for after a late lunch in Chinatown. Might even have another bowl durng the darkness of the evening.
Possibly in a bent billard from the stone age. Thinking of Leiden University.
Where I would have gone if I had stayed in the Netherlands.



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