With a Yuletide flourish, Matathew brings out his longest pipe to mark the passage of the shortest day. The dry austerity of Three Nuns tobacco makes an apposite filling.
The setting is atop the South Downs, at the parish church beside a pond in the once beautiful village of Falmer. Sadly the surrounding area has been spectactularly ruined by inappropriate development, most recently by the massive, intrusive football stadium and its ugly access infrastructure.
The bleakness of the mid-winter scene, and the general awfulness of the latest turn of events in the progressive destruction of Falmer, have made this poor churchwarden quite bonkers. As if aspiring to be a character from the Decktet card deck, he cackles involuntarily as he draws the cool tobacco smoke through his churchwarden pipe, while keeping the world very much at arm’s length. Then, after a few manic mutterings, he succumbs to more solitary laughter.
the churchwarden is not of this world
Thanks to Jenny, not only for taking the photo, but for providing this particular churchwarden pipe, which is much lengthier than the specimen in my collection. Jenny informs me that the pipe you see here is something of a family heirloom — its previous owner was the beadle of a parish in Leicestershire in the 19th Century.
Matathewsiasms 