The old pipe smoker has become a bit of a figure of fun, an idiosyncratic oddity whom the young find ridiculous, if they notice him at all. This makes me rather sad because to me he’s a little bit heroic. Picture him sitting on a bench in the shade of a tree, the sun shining beyond, carefully filling his bowl, tamping the tobacco down with his thumb, before striking a match and coaxing the first few curls of bluish smoke into the afternoon air. It’s a ritual free from any sense of hurry and one from which we could all learn.
Indeed, hurrying would defeat the point of pipe smoking. The ritual itself, slow and steady, is part of the pleasure. I would argue, too, that it’s part of the usefulness (though I wouldn’t suggest anyone think of pipe smoking in such terms – that, too, would defeat the point).
Compare this calm old pipe-smoking gent with today’s vaper, absent-mindedly sucking on a fluorescent tube while rushing down the high street in a berry-scented cloud, scrolling through his phone and noticing little.
I could probably rest my case here, but I won’t. The pipe smoker deserves more.
He inhabits time; the vaper merely fills it. And the contrast, I suspect, shows up much more than a simple change in smoking habits – it tells us quite a lot about the evolution of our culture.
In my modest and unfashionable defence of the pipe, I would like to put a few ideas forward. But first, I’m not asking people to start smoking. Obviously, it’s bad for you. The public health arguments against tobacco are well-known and substantial. But, also, people do smoke, and the form this smoking takes is important. The dominant forms of smoking reflect the civilisations that embrace them. Pipes belong to an age of patience and introspection; cigarettes to an age of speed and convenience. Vapes are an electronic extension to the cigarette, bubblegum for modernity’s brats – for those who can no longer tolerate a single empty moment.
The pipe isn’t simply a form of nicotine delivery. You need to choose your tobacco, then fill your bowl, packing it correctly (which takes a bit of practice). You need to light it carefully and probably relight it a few times before you’re done. It takes a good while to smoke. Most people can polish off a cigarette in around five minutes, whereas a pipe with a medium-sized bowl will take you more like half an hour to get through.
And it demands contemplation as you do so. On this point, I’ll get the obvious out the way immediately: both C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were devoted pipe smokers, which is an argument in the pipe’s favour if ever there was one. Reading, writing, long, winding conversations, gardening, fishing, sitting still, thinking… these are all the preserve of the pipe smoker, at least as I’m romanticising him. We associate the pipe with the idea of reflection because reflection is the reward you get from taking your time over something and sitting with your thoughts.
The pleasure isn’t merely chemical. It’s temporal – and, dare I say it, might even be spiritual.
Cigarettes, by contrast, belong to industrialised modernity. They became popular in the last century because they were perfectly adapted to the industrial age: quicker to smoke, easier to mass-produce, and in all ways better suited to increasingly urban, fast-paced lives than pipes or cigars. Workers didn’t have half an hour to spare for their smoke – they had five minutes at break-time. Cigarettes compressed smoking into something very efficient.
However, at least cigarettes retained one civilising feature. You still needed to stop, spark up, handle smoke and fire (a primitive and glorious thing), and set five uninterrupted minutes aside. Many conversations, friendships and romances have begun in smoking areas over the years. I used to smoke when I went clubbing just so I could be outside and chat to people instead of trying to dance inside.
The vape abolishes the pause and infantilises the whole affair. There is little preparation to it, other than filling it up from time to time, much like you fill up the washer fluid in your car before a long journey, and keeping it as well-charged as your smartphone. It takes no real intention, no time, no deliberation. People vape indoors. It’s mindless and it smells bad. Instead of punctuating life, your nicotine hit becomes more of a permanent background hum.
Hurrying would defeat the point of pipe smoking –the ritual itself, slow and steady, is part of the pleasure
Modern Britain increasingly distrusts the idea of doing nothing. We have carried out a very thorough job of eliminating idle moments, filling them with podcasts, phones, notifications, productivity, optimisation. Yet the greatest insights often arrive during unoccupied time, and even if you’re not struck by a genius idea, you at least need this unoccupied time for your sanity’s sake.
Pipe smoking, and all its ritual, and all the time it takes, gives it to you. Britain might be a happier, more reflective country if more of us took to spending more time in shady spots with a pipe on the go and nothing but our thoughts for company.
Find yourself a way to sit in stillness, perhaps with a ritual of sorts, perhaps not, and switch off for a bit. And please, please don’t vape. It looks silly and no grown-up should smell of cherries.
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