I was just having a moment to myself, looking through the online catalogue of an internet tobacconist here in the UK, weighing up whether to get Ennerdale Flake or RB plug and a thought came to me; have I got any spare jars to put the latest purchase in?
I promptly found that I don’t but a quick inventory of tobacco stocks shook me up a tad - there are now thirty two different blends on the go!
Now for some of you that is a trifling amount, you might have double, triple or quadruple that amount on your shelf, in your shed or in your footlocker but it really got me thinking.
I was looking on EBay at which estate pipe to buy next - I haven’t got a meerschaum, a straight Dublin or an apple and my bent pipes are but two so I might as well have a look for an old Peterson…no, not sand blasted, never could get on with the feel in the hand.
I checked the pipes to see where the gaps were in styles and ages and there are now twenty seven pipes on the rack - have they been breeding up there or something? Where have they all come from?
I, like I’m sure many of you out there, smoke a pipe because it reminds me of a different time, a different world, a world of stories about deserts and hot sun, tanks and dive bombers, hours spent with my Grandad listening to stories about a time I never lived through but that felt tangible in a way.
Grandad was an uncomplicated soul. As long as he had some tea, tobacco and the option of toast he was fine and dandy. He had three pipes: a bent sandblasted affair, a Zulu and an old corn cob pipe that he had got from somewhere with a stem that didn’t fit so he had to constantly hold the thing for fear the bowl would slide off and set fire to his cardigan.
He smoked one of three blends of tobacco - Condor (long cut preferably but ready rubbed if nothing else was doing), Erinmore (flake again was preferable) and St Bruno (flake again).
I once asked him why the flake, what was the difference? “It takes longer to burn, tastes nicer but, crucially, it stays moist longer than ready rubbed which can turn to dust in a flash!”
Noted and understood.
I once asked him why he smoked a pipe? There were many pictures of him, in his desert uniform, smiling broadly with either a pipe or a fag on the go; why had he knocked the cigs on the head? At that time only old men smoked a pipe - as a teenager you would have been laughed out of the smoking shed if you pulled a pipe out and set to work.
“Because cigarettes will kill you faster than the Germans, they are too easy to smoke one after the other, especially when ale is involved and they’re so bloody expensive!”
At the time I knew him (‘80’s and ‘90’s) two ounces of “bacca” would have been somewhere in the region of £3-5 I guess - fags were 99p for ten Red Band as I recall.
“Pipes smoke longer, are cheaper and they won’t knacker your lungs out; you wait till you can have a pint of Bass and smoke of Condor and tell me then that I’m wrong.” He wasn’t I have to confess but he was very particular about which beer went with which tobacco - something hoppy for Erinmore, something bitter for St Bruno, not that he drank very much but he had been a drayman before and after the war so he knew his local brews.
By the end of his career, Grandad was down to one pipe every two or three days but he never gave up; the pipe was as much a part of him as the cap he wore every time he stepped out of the front door or the walking stick that seemed surgically attached to his right hand (bad knee for which he blamed the Anzio beach landing).
I never once saw him clean a pipe - I don’t remember ever seeing a pipe cleaner in his possession - he used to spend Sundays rolling up “spills” as he called them (newspaper into thin tubes) and placing 30 or 40 into a pot beside the fire. He only used an ancient Ronson lighter if the fire wasn’t on; if the fire was on, he’d light his pipe with a spill - “Don’t waste your money on matches la”.
When it came to exotic tobacco, and please bare in mind I only knew him for 21 years, the most extravagant thing I can recall him doing was mixing the remnants of a pouch of Green Condor with a fresh pouch of Erinmore to “freshen it up”. At one time my Aunt and my cousins were holidaying in the Netherlands every summer and without fail they would bring back some Dutch cigars or some Duty Free Dutch tobacco and he wasn’t keen - “Cor, this tastes like something your n cleans the toilet wi’” he would say, looking sideways at his pipe but never once did he say “I can’t smoke this, I’ll give it to such and such.” He smoked the whole packet.
I’ve bought a load of different tobaccos over the pandemic and I have often said to myself “He’d have liked this one.” When I get one of those blends, I pop it into his old Zulu and hope that some way, some how, he is able to enjoy it in which ever part of the Universe he is.
I guess what I am trying to get at is do I need £400 worth of tobacco on the go at once? Do I need all those pipes? What would the old lad have thought about questions of “English blends”, a “Lakeland essence” or a “Burley forward” blend? He would have said “poppycock” as he quite often did when Oz Clark (wine reviewer) would wax lyrical about a New World Chardonnay that had a “whoosh of hollyhocks!” or some such hyperbole.
I never recall him chuffing on Squadron Leader or a Dunhill blend, I don’t recall any pig tail twist or plug though he talked about it in terms of the miners having to chew it at the coal face. As far as I remember he had one can on Hedges snuff that he took on cold mornings - I bought a 24 box multi pack recently.
We think we are worse off than our forebears but I’m pretty sure that the old boy is sat comfortably in his armchair cloud somewhere, puffing on some Condor, thinking “What is he doing spending all that money?”
Anyway, lust a Monday morning musing. Happy pipes.
I promptly found that I don’t but a quick inventory of tobacco stocks shook me up a tad - there are now thirty two different blends on the go!
Now for some of you that is a trifling amount, you might have double, triple or quadruple that amount on your shelf, in your shed or in your footlocker but it really got me thinking.
I was looking on EBay at which estate pipe to buy next - I haven’t got a meerschaum, a straight Dublin or an apple and my bent pipes are but two so I might as well have a look for an old Peterson…no, not sand blasted, never could get on with the feel in the hand.
I checked the pipes to see where the gaps were in styles and ages and there are now twenty seven pipes on the rack - have they been breeding up there or something? Where have they all come from?
I, like I’m sure many of you out there, smoke a pipe because it reminds me of a different time, a different world, a world of stories about deserts and hot sun, tanks and dive bombers, hours spent with my Grandad listening to stories about a time I never lived through but that felt tangible in a way.
Grandad was an uncomplicated soul. As long as he had some tea, tobacco and the option of toast he was fine and dandy. He had three pipes: a bent sandblasted affair, a Zulu and an old corn cob pipe that he had got from somewhere with a stem that didn’t fit so he had to constantly hold the thing for fear the bowl would slide off and set fire to his cardigan.
He smoked one of three blends of tobacco - Condor (long cut preferably but ready rubbed if nothing else was doing), Erinmore (flake again was preferable) and St Bruno (flake again).
I once asked him why the flake, what was the difference? “It takes longer to burn, tastes nicer but, crucially, it stays moist longer than ready rubbed which can turn to dust in a flash!”
Noted and understood.
I once asked him why he smoked a pipe? There were many pictures of him, in his desert uniform, smiling broadly with either a pipe or a fag on the go; why had he knocked the cigs on the head? At that time only old men smoked a pipe - as a teenager you would have been laughed out of the smoking shed if you pulled a pipe out and set to work.
“Because cigarettes will kill you faster than the Germans, they are too easy to smoke one after the other, especially when ale is involved and they’re so bloody expensive!”
At the time I knew him (‘80’s and ‘90’s) two ounces of “bacca” would have been somewhere in the region of £3-5 I guess - fags were 99p for ten Red Band as I recall.
“Pipes smoke longer, are cheaper and they won’t knacker your lungs out; you wait till you can have a pint of Bass and smoke of Condor and tell me then that I’m wrong.” He wasn’t I have to confess but he was very particular about which beer went with which tobacco - something hoppy for Erinmore, something bitter for St Bruno, not that he drank very much but he had been a drayman before and after the war so he knew his local brews.
By the end of his career, Grandad was down to one pipe every two or three days but he never gave up; the pipe was as much a part of him as the cap he wore every time he stepped out of the front door or the walking stick that seemed surgically attached to his right hand (bad knee for which he blamed the Anzio beach landing).
I never once saw him clean a pipe - I don’t remember ever seeing a pipe cleaner in his possession - he used to spend Sundays rolling up “spills” as he called them (newspaper into thin tubes) and placing 30 or 40 into a pot beside the fire. He only used an ancient Ronson lighter if the fire wasn’t on; if the fire was on, he’d light his pipe with a spill - “Don’t waste your money on matches la”.
When it came to exotic tobacco, and please bare in mind I only knew him for 21 years, the most extravagant thing I can recall him doing was mixing the remnants of a pouch of Green Condor with a fresh pouch of Erinmore to “freshen it up”. At one time my Aunt and my cousins were holidaying in the Netherlands every summer and without fail they would bring back some Dutch cigars or some Duty Free Dutch tobacco and he wasn’t keen - “Cor, this tastes like something your n cleans the toilet wi’” he would say, looking sideways at his pipe but never once did he say “I can’t smoke this, I’ll give it to such and such.” He smoked the whole packet.
I’ve bought a load of different tobaccos over the pandemic and I have often said to myself “He’d have liked this one.” When I get one of those blends, I pop it into his old Zulu and hope that some way, some how, he is able to enjoy it in which ever part of the Universe he is.
I guess what I am trying to get at is do I need £400 worth of tobacco on the go at once? Do I need all those pipes? What would the old lad have thought about questions of “English blends”, a “Lakeland essence” or a “Burley forward” blend? He would have said “poppycock” as he quite often did when Oz Clark (wine reviewer) would wax lyrical about a New World Chardonnay that had a “whoosh of hollyhocks!” or some such hyperbole.
I never recall him chuffing on Squadron Leader or a Dunhill blend, I don’t recall any pig tail twist or plug though he talked about it in terms of the miners having to chew it at the coal face. As far as I remember he had one can on Hedges snuff that he took on cold mornings - I bought a 24 box multi pack recently.
We think we are worse off than our forebears but I’m pretty sure that the old boy is sat comfortably in his armchair cloud somewhere, puffing on some Condor, thinking “What is he doing spending all that money?”
Anyway, lust a Monday morning musing. Happy pipes.
