It's a cool and quiet evening on my porch in Allen Park. I have a cup of coffee at my elbow and a bowlful of Balkan Supreme just barely smoldering and I suddenly wondered what the fictional head of MI6 smoked.
I've read the Fleming novels backwards and forwards. Whether it was in his office on Regents Park or in his study at Quarterdeck (his home), Admiral Sir Myles Messervy was seldom without a pipe in his teeth and his tobacco canister (made from a cut down naval shell) at his elbow.
Now Bond's cigarettes (which were in fact Ian Fleming's cigarettes) were a Balkan mixture custom made by Morlands of Grosvenor Street, with three gold bands, of which Bond (and again Fleming) smoked sixty a day. I leave it to you to figure out how the world's most famous spy managed to fight bad guys and bed half a dozen women and keep the COPD at bay.
But nary a mention of what M smoked. He was a Navy man, a navy flake? Balkan Sobranie? Or perhaps some stout Dunhill mixture made to his own specifications?
I sit and puff this Balkan and a few weeks into piping I'm slowing down and getting the general nuance. And it tastes to me of those old spy novels. Smoke filled casinos, gunpowder, the barking exhaust of a Bentley 4.5 litre and perhaps a curl of smoke from M's pipe as he sends Bond off on another harrowing mission...
I've read the Fleming novels backwards and forwards. Whether it was in his office on Regents Park or in his study at Quarterdeck (his home), Admiral Sir Myles Messervy was seldom without a pipe in his teeth and his tobacco canister (made from a cut down naval shell) at his elbow.
Now Bond's cigarettes (which were in fact Ian Fleming's cigarettes) were a Balkan mixture custom made by Morlands of Grosvenor Street, with three gold bands, of which Bond (and again Fleming) smoked sixty a day. I leave it to you to figure out how the world's most famous spy managed to fight bad guys and bed half a dozen women and keep the COPD at bay.
But nary a mention of what M smoked. He was a Navy man, a navy flake? Balkan Sobranie? Or perhaps some stout Dunhill mixture made to his own specifications?
I sit and puff this Balkan and a few weeks into piping I'm slowing down and getting the general nuance. And it tastes to me of those old spy novels. Smoke filled casinos, gunpowder, the barking exhaust of a Bentley 4.5 litre and perhaps a curl of smoke from M's pipe as he sends Bond off on another harrowing mission...
