Pan's Other Pipes.

Notwithstanding the oceans of vitriolic ire which the following statement might evince, I have to be true to myself and make it anyway:

I should like the pipe to make a comeback.

(This is partly the fault of Maddie who keeps digging up old ones in the name of her profession, and partly the fault of LOTR in which several characters are seen smoking them. And it isn’t only Mary and Pipsqueak who indulge in this reprehensible pursuit. Gandalf and Aragorn, both characters of much greater gravitas, are also seen puffing away at various points. It is true that Gandalf, in his white incarnation, nearly chokes on one in the run up to the battle of Minas Tirith, but I’m sure that was put in purely for the sake of political correctness since it serves no purpose whatsoever in the unfolding of the plot. Personally, I chose to regard Gandalf’s pulmonary discomfort as being indicative of the nasty black stuff which we are led to believe is emanating from Mordor. That way, Ian McKellen’s ineffectual effort at acting a coughing fit makes at least a little sense.)

So, to continue:

 

I have a pipe, you know. I do. It’s a black rustic briar model called the Donegal Rocky, made by Peterson of Dublin. I bought it – and smoked it – at a time when pipes were rather more in evidence than they are now, and when I was young enough to want to be middle aged (it was a respect thing.) I soon learned two things about the pipe:

Firstly, it’s an object of great character. It has only two components, the bowl and the stem, and yet it’s capable of infinite variation in shape and design. It has the twin qualities of being both aesthetically pleasing and functionally impeccable. It’s the sort of thing you want to collect, keeping various examples in a pipe rack to suit your changes of mood and taste. I never got around to building a collection, but it brings me to the second point.

When you hold a pipe, it makes you feel like a different person. If you cup your hand over the top of the bowl so that the stem is sticking out between your thumb and forefinger and then tap your nose or pursed lips with it, it helps you think more clearly. I’m not kidding, you know. It does. And it adds a whole new dimension to your physical mannerisms. You can point with it, tap people on the shoulder with it, conduct music with it… Everything you’d normally do with a finger is done so much better with a pipe. It makes you feel like you count.

And then there’s the little matter of something I grew up with: the smell of pipe tobacco is surely one of the finest the gods ever devised. A home is never more so than when the residue of pipe tobacco smoke mingles with the smells of baking, fresh flowers and beeswax furniture polish. And so, if it has the stamp of heaven and home upon it, I see no better reason than that to bring it back.