Weigh A Pie

[Al Fish]

Somewhere Over The Rainbow

Weigh a Pie

 

“Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets…?”

 

I took up the tobacco pipe in or about 1980 – I think. Gazbo took it up just after me. We smoked Amphora Black Cavendish. Cloying memories of sweet tobacco smoke in the backroom of Nana’s house because she thought that it added the room-note of a man. Rich and luxuriant in the meandering traditions of patient men, contented to silently reflect while the nicotine intimately massaged the pleasure centres of our souls. You cannot get Amphora Black anymore.

 

Generally Gaz and I would light incense then take the sacrament in my cramped Study and thereafter smoke our pipes and drink. Sometimes we drank coffee, deliberately creamy with Carnation Milk; or plush headed Stout, the drink of honest men; or strongly brewed tea, mostly without sugar but occasionally with home baked biscuits, buttery and sweet amid the peaceful hush that is incomprehensible and the idea whose lingering remembrance is frequent.

 

I recall a time when it just rained and rained; after that, storms off and on; occasionally with a wet wind but always with a deeply resonant humidity aided and abetted by electric clothes dryers, room heaters and cooking. And Gazza and I discussing the implications that when stoned you prayed with all the subtle power of the universe whilst opulent clouds were mingling beneath the fibre-glass roofed verandah and drifting away down old suburban roads on a damp and darkening afternoon heading for soggy night and tawny port.

 

Both cannabis and tobacco are smoking herbs and both have their effects upon the soul. My brother used to get stoned and engage the occasional hand-rolled aromatic cigarette with all the coaxing gentleness of an old man. After smoking cones his rollies lost their usual and ubiquitous cigarette associations with the appetites of food, sex and instantly intimate gratifications whereas our pipes just permanently endured amidst the desire, ambition and changing seasons.

 

Marijuana is feminine in Her reception of anything She discloses, just as smoking should be for the fragrant pursuit of the three weird-fated Sisters: a cone with naturally perfumed, oily, manicured bush – first of Maiden, then of Mother and finally Whore – the Sinsemella midwife who does not bear. Or the final sup of mother’s milk as silent witness to the smoker’s prominence - virility taking many forms.

 

We discussed life and poetry as only men can – from ‘spitting out all the butt-ends of my days and ways’ to ‘laying where Mr Bleaney lay and stubbing his fags on the same saucer-souvenir…’ And whatever happened to J.S. Kirkpatrick’s little mouse coloured donkey?

 

Pipe smoking is a gentle art that comfortably seduces the smoker to reconnect with their natural rhythms: Old Belt Virginia, Tennessee Burley and fine Orientals – light and nosey to begin with then richer and to the palate.

 

And we’d all sit there - lost in the moment whilst savouring it.

 

The fruity bouquet that escapes when the pouch is opened; the delicate vagaries of packing and the ritual of lighting.

 

And all the smoke of incense, bong, cigarette and pipe at one with themselves and with the world.

 

Al Fish