I have a birthday coming up shortly and, despite the obvious fact that it beats the alternative, I am not at all happy about it.

It’s one of those milestone birthdays, you see, the round kind, ending in zero. Modern convention holds that this particular age is “the new forty” but, assuming that is so, it is, nonetheless, a dodgy knee, stiff back and \”can’t remember where I left the car keys\” sort of forty.

J R R Tolkien — he looks good with a pipe, so why not me?

As I mention here all too frequently, I smoke cigars. I find it a relaxing and enjoyable hobby. I am not someone with a nicotine addiction – in league with those unfortunates huddled under an awning in the pouring rain, sucking down the last half inch of their cigarettes – I am a tobacco aficionado. My postprandial cigar provides a comforting ritual, a time to pause and reflect. And this being so, I reflected one evening, while enjoying a Henry Clay, then how much more ritual and reflection would a pipe provide? Past observations of pipe-smokers led me to believe you could faff about endlessly with a pipe. (“Pipe smokers will rule the world,” a pipe-smoking friend told me many years ago, then added, “If we don’t run out of matches.”)

And so, as a man on the cusp of ssss…ssssiii…that age, I proposed to take to the pipe.

Is that Gandalf or Dumbledore?

Unlike other hobbies I have embarked upon, I did not leap into this one. Instead, I pondered, I studied, I calculated (and, yeah, it is muchcheaper than cigars) and finally decided I would buy my inaugural pipe at my favourite smoke shop, Edleeze, in Albany, New York. That this smoke shop lay on the other side of a fairly large ocean presented only a minor problem, as our yearly pilgrimage to the States was only six weeks away.

In short, I went, I bought, I loved it. I loved the ritual, I loved the aroma (my wife likes the smell better than cigars, too, so that’s a bonus) and I loved the fiddling about with the matches and the tamper and the pipe cleaners. (Oh, the pipe cleaners! What a wonder to use them for what they are actually meant for. And the satisfaction one gets from cleaning out a pipe! It’s magic.) It felt natural, it felt right, it felt like something a man entering his “new” forties should be doing.

Another famous pipe smoker.

Upon my return to Britain I began alternating between cigars and the pipe (you didn’t think I gave up cigars, did you?) and with every bowl discovered I liked the pipe more and more.

But then I began to run low on tobacco, and I was down to my last few pipe cleaners, so I set about looking for replacements. That’s when things got ugly.

Have you ever tried to find pipe tobacco in a town that doesn’t have a tobacconist? Have you ever tried to find a town that has a tobacconist? Horsham used to have one but, like most of the others, it closed down years ago. Tobacco now is sold mainly by super markets, but pipe tobacco is such a rarity that some of the people I tried to buy it from didn’t even know what I was talking about.

At one super market, the woman minding the Cabinet Of Death told me they did, indeed, sell pipe tobacco and sold me a pouch. I hurried home gleefully, only to discover it was actually cigarette rolling tobacco. So I gave it to the kid next door and went out to try again. This time, I did some research and found a super market that did sell pipe tobacco and found the name of a brand I could ask for. So I went and asked and the woman minding that particular Cabinet Of Death sold me a pouch and I hurried home gleefully only to discover it was actually cigarette rolling tobacco. So I gave it to the kid next door and ordered some on line.

That solved the supply problem, but the next day I scoured the town in vain for pipe cleaners and ended up ordering them on line, as well (those 300 pipe cleaners I spoke of in my previous post). I had to be very careful with my order because almost all of the pipe cleaners I viewed were for arts and crafts and, as delightful as red, blue and purple pipe cleaners are for constructing dubious furry animals, they are rubbish at cleaning a pipe.

Now I need more pipes!

Thankfully, I am now fully stocked, and today my son sent me a nifty pipe-rack for my birthday; the first, I suspect, of many pipe-accoutrements. When my birthday arrives, I will already be an inveterate pipe-smoker, and this pleases me because, if I have to be a “man of a certain age,” I at least want to look the part.

I\’m thinking of getting my hair done like this, too.