From: "Jacco van Muiswinkel" <??????????????????????>
Subject:       BAD HABITS

Hi Steve and all the others too,

As I read in previous editions of Pipes Digest the situation for 
smokers in the US are getting worse by the day. I sympathize strongly 
and consider myself lucky living in a country that is more 
permissive. At my last skiing holiday in Italy I had the opportunity 
to taste some of the sour fruits of the anti smoking movement. I 
booked into a hotel not being told that it was a NON SMOKING hotel. 
On my room was an ash-tray with a card laying in it saying "Non 
Smoking Room Thank You" (It's a bit of a contradiction is it: "Use 
this ash-tray while not smoking") It was a good ash-tray, it accepted 
all the ashes we put in it but every day the card was reinstalled and 
it just didn't feel right. Now if you don't allow smoking in the 
restaurant maybe I'd agree but you can't forbid people to smoke on 
their room without stating this in your brochure! (I'll never go 
to that hotel again!)

But now something different:

I'd like to bring on the matter of bad habits. We all have them and 
I'm interested in them. What (strange tings) do you use for tamping 
down the ashes in your bowl and what do you use to clean it with 
afterwards (socks, parts of your body, other peoples cloths?) What do 
you do with used matches when you can't throw them away immediately 
(do you end up with a matchbox with 50% used and 50% unused matches?) 
Do you sometimes _knock_ your briar pipe? Do you have any strange 
places you keep your tobacco (like I read in PD 184 Sherlock Holmes 
did). Do you smoke in elevators? Do you leave around used not yet 
cleaned pipes (spilling ashes) resulting in many an important 
document stained? Do you keep an impressing collection of half empty 
pouches of tobacco (you didn't like that much but would like to try 
later or kept for sentimental reasons) spilling in time most of their 
contents in drawers or boxes? Is your entire house littered with 
matchboxes just to have them handy. 
If you have any of such "bad" habits and would like to tell me about 
them: mail them to me and I'll post an anonymized selection of them 
back in PD.

Bye!
 
Jacco van Muiswinkel         | 
??????????????????????????   | 

[ And do you smoke while you're in church? :-) -S. ]


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