https://www.flickr.com/photos/131048984@N06/

I enjoyed my first pipe at age seven. It was a bamboo pipe, handmade by yours truly. The pipe was smoked during secret gang meetings held around a campfire in the back yard while discussing our future lives as spies. We smoked mostly dried, cut grass. And occasionally crushed dried leaves from the grape vine. The pipe was forgotten a few years later when I discovered girls. They spoil everything, don't they? I rediscovered the pipe when I was a university student in the eighties. I didn't learn to smoke it properly at the time -- what was important was to look cool. (Those girls ruled everything!) The pipe was a full bent Dr Plumb. I still own it. After recently having refurbished it, it is once again in excellent condition. Anyway, I was a pipe smoker for just a year or so before it fizzled out. It wasn't until my forties that I discovered the true pleasures of pipe smoking – the unhurried ritual, the relaxation, the taste and the heavenly aromas. Oh man! I smoke just one mindful bowl a day but I can honestly say that the pipe is one of the high points of my day. Every day.