It wasn't always easy to get fags or baccy in our day. Cinnamon sticks were not a bad smoke but even they were not so easy to come by. So we followed Tom Sawyers lead and made a corn cob pipe. Well sort of! We had no corn cobs so we used a cork. Wine bottle or Sparkling wine the bigger the better. If it was too small it was difficult to hollow out without the sides breaking through. As a stem we used a bic pen. Out with the insides and inserted into the side of the hollowed out cork. So now bobs yer uncle. Anything that gave of a good smoke could be tamped into the pipe bowl. Dry leaves were a pretty good puff and each tree had a different taste. Tea taken out of teabags was not too bad either. But best of all was baccy collected from fag butts, kept in an old baccy tin which was hidden in a hole in a wall. What a great feeling firing up the pipe, tongue burning, eyes nippin and a feeling like you are just about to boke! Those were the days.
Tuesday 9 September 2008
Simple vices
It wasn't always easy to get fags or baccy in our day. Cinnamon sticks were not a bad smoke but even they were not so easy to come by. So we followed Tom Sawyers lead and made a corn cob pipe. Well sort of! We had no corn cobs so we used a cork. Wine bottle or Sparkling wine the bigger the better. If it was too small it was difficult to hollow out without the sides breaking through. As a stem we used a bic pen. Out with the insides and inserted into the side of the hollowed out cork. So now bobs yer uncle. Anything that gave of a good smoke could be tamped into the pipe bowl. Dry leaves were a pretty good puff and each tree had a different taste. Tea taken out of teabags was not too bad either. But best of all was baccy collected from fag butts, kept in an old baccy tin which was hidden in a hole in a wall. What a great feeling firing up the pipe, tongue burning, eyes nippin and a feeling like you are just about to boke! Those were the days.
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2 comments:
Ah the old pen and cork pipe. The taste of second hand "capstan full strength" butts with their 90% tar content, blended with melting plastic and charred cork.
Those "Noel Coward" moments in the gangie, reclining on your tea chest, discussing the nuances of the latest well thumbed copy of "Knave" whilst drawing wistfully on your pipe.
Happy days indeed.
Aye halcyon days indeed! Sitting back there, sooking on yer pipe, filled with old, damp, tobacco, taken from cigarette butts stamped into the pavement outside the chippy, the pub or the bookies.Breathing in the reek & trying hard not to cough incase one of the other lads called you a poof.
I mind I made a pipe one day when my folks took us out to the countryside somewhere for the day. While they sat on a tartan rug and poured teas from a tartan flask, I was off in a nearby wood making a pipe out of pieces of giant hogweed! I tamped a wee bit of earth into the bottom of a large barrel-shaped piece of hogweed and tamped in a wee bit mud to fill in the hole at the bottom.Then I made a wee hole in the side of this and inserted a thinner, longer bit of hollow hogweed (a bit like the Bic pen idea). Then I loaded it with a wee bit of dry leaves and using my trusty magnifying glass got the thing smouldering!
So I then inhaled clouds of burning leaves & whatever dangerous gasses the acidic hogweed gave off! Nae wonder my lips & throat were burning after it! God I might have even gone into some kinda anaphalactic shock or something!
Yeah pipe dreams indeed!
Arkos
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