Modern life

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.

The bank was having Transgender Visibility Day when I popped in to deposit some cash.The stressed-looking customers, meanwhile, seemed mostly like they were having Affluence Invisibility Day. One woman was complaining bitterly that £4,000 had been transferred to the wrong place and the bank wouldn’t give it back. I put my hand on the cash in my purse and stroked it a little. I’m amazed we are still allowed to keep cash. I’m sure they would have liked to have got rid of it by now. Thankfully, I had some so I could put it in my account to stave off overdraft text alerts because nothing else had gone through electronically, because of some malfunction in the system delaying things a few days.