I decided the other day to buy myself a little present.

My current pipe is getting on a bit and being a metal, is prone to wear and tear. The screw that holds the bowl onto the body has lost its grip though it’s still working with a little wedge to tighten the grip.

Naturally I headed over to Elie’s site at Elie’s Freehand Pipes. Yes, there was a picture of my current pipe and it was still available. I wrote to him. He wrote back saying he couldn’t find it. Then he wrote again to say that the illustrated pipe was in fact the one he sold to me years ago and that he had forgotten to remove it from the site. Bugger!

So I mooched around the site and then decided that fuckit – I would push the boat out.

I bought his Trombone that I had been casting envious glances at for years.

It arrived yesterday. It’s a beauty. It is a masterpiece and a once-off piece of artistry and the pride of my collection.

Unfortunately it has one or two trivial problems.

The first is that I have to squint like mad to light it as the bowl is only a couple of inches from my eyes.

The second is that in a calm space the smoke gets in my eyes.

So it will be confined to the outdoors. I have discovered that it is perfect for the car as it just hangs out of my mouth leaving both hands free. It s also guaranteed to get a few weird looks down in the coffee shop. I am fairly sure that few will have seen anything like it.

It looks like I’ll need all my pipes anyway.

I read an interesting piece over at Frank’s site this morning.