From: "A. W. Donovan-Shead" <?????????????????????????>
Subject: Smoke Signal [PIPE]

    Years ago, in my beardless days, when I had difficulty controlling the
pitch of my voice, I joined-up, as they say and likely still do. We
bailed out of the troop-train at Cosford Halt, me and several hundred
other spotty-faced youths, apprentices to the Royal Air Force. We
harangued the army wallahs on the train and someone shouted: "Where the
Army goes pongoes." We thought this the height of wit for the army boys
were known by that collective noun -- pongo. It wasn't until much later
that I discovered that early writers used "pongo" to refer to the
large, anthropoid African ape -- the Chimpanzee or Gorilla -- much to
my further amusement. We were formed-up into a semblance of order, a
rag-tag bunch, and marched to our quarters in Fulton Block where we
were told to pick a bed and stow our kit. We were visited by a
middle-aged Flight Sergeant who took his pipe from his mouth to
pronounce: "Cleanliness is next to Godliness." And that we were to
perform our ablutions each day, and that we were to write home to mummy
and daddy each week because he didn't want to be receiving telephone
calls from anxious parents wanting to know what had become of their
precious son. His pipe was full-bent, something from Capp and Peterson
as I recall.

    One of my comrades-in-arms was Peter Brown, an ex-choirboy from
Farnborough. It was through him that I became acquainted with the
Staines Falcon. Now there are several kinds of falcon. Falcons can be
any of various hawks belonging to the avian family Falconidae. The
Maltese Falcon was a bird too, albeit made of lead much to the chagrin
of the Fat Man who I can still see hacking at it with his penknife.

    Lead was the material in which the Maltese Falcon was cast by Dashiell
Hammett: Aluminium is the material in which the Staines Falcon is cast
by Merton & Falcon. Behind the Maltese Falcon was a trail of
destruction, murder, and mayhem: Behind the Staines Falcon, a bouquet.
Embodied in the Maltese Falcon are greed and folly: In the Staines
Falcon are scientific principles and precision engineering needed to
produce a high-tech pipe design.

    Peter Brown had a bent Falcon pipe in which he smoked St. Bruno flake.
Falcon pipes have aluminum stems to cool the smoke, a humidome under
the bowl to condense moisture, a Lucite bit, and a detachable briar
bowl. Each bowl has a four-start thread so that the bowl can be
attached and detached from the stem with a quarter-turn. Five styles of
bowl are available: Standard, De luxe, Hunter, Classic, and Standard
Meerschaum-lined. There are standard pipes, de luxe pipes, Alco pipes,
and a range of other pipe-smoking accessories. If Falcons are not
available at your local tobacconist they can be ordered from Falcon's
mail order department five doors down from 84 Charing Cross Road at:

		G. Smith & Sons,
		74 Charing Cross Road,
		London, WC2H 0BG,
		England, G.B.

    Falcon pipes will appeal to engineering types and people who smoke
aromatic tobaccos. The aromatic tobacco smoker can have several bowls
on hand, one for each type of tobacco. Falcon pipes are rugged,
economical in their use of tobacco because it is possible to smoke down
to the last shred, and they are easy to clean. They need to be kept
clean otherwise they can smell rank. Myself, I have a bent standard and
a curved standard pipe with two or three bowls in which I smoke English
and Scottish blends as the mood takes me. Standard bowls are small,
ideal for a short smoke. Hyperboles are twice as large as the standard
bowl for a longer smoke. Also, there are dry rings that can be
installed in the humidome to absorb moisture. Falcon pipes do not
replace the traditional briar rather they compliment a pipe smoker's
collection and are ideal for the outdoors-man or -women and other persons
on-the-go.

Andrew Donovan-Shead.

[ "Hyperboles", indeed! -S. ]


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