Herald Opinion: Lighting a pipe has become a lost art in our hurried world

I don’t know about you, but I was more than happy to see January finally disappear in the rear-view mirror. It feels an awfully long time since Christmas and, while we all accept that January is traditionally a tough month , especially for those paid at the end of it — this year seemed to drag more than most.

Between the weather and everything else, January felt like it had at least six Mondays in it. The newly minted St Brigid’s Day Bank Holiday, falling on the first Monday of February, was a very welcome bonus. With all the running and racing that has been going on, it offered a rare chance this weekend to sit down, put the feet up and catch the breath.

Ah yes, running and racing. I do far too much of both and, like many others, I have too many coals in the fire. Finding time for everything is always a challenge, including this column, which must be written on Saturday evening or early Sunday morning and finished before nine o’clock — or I’m in trouble.

God be with the days when I could take my time and relax. I don’t know what changed, but like a lot of readers I now find myself racing here, there and everywhere, agreeing to things automatically and only later wondering when exactly I agreed to them. Of course, if there was money or reward involved, I wouldn’t be asked in the first place — but when it’s something mundane, somehow Lynn always seems to be available and, like a fool, agrees.

On the topic of taking your time, I had an enjoyable conversation with a man on Saturday as I told him about an old man I once knew — a grand-uncle of mine who, like all his contemporaries, smoked a pipe. Tony Lynn was his name, and he lived in Derrymartin on the side of Nephin in County Mayo. I often remember watching him light his pipe, and it struck me that the simple act of preparing, lighting and smoking it probably had a lot to do with his permanently unhurried manner.

He smoked a pipe with a silver cap over the bowl, and there was a great ceremony involved in lighting it. First came the penknife. As far as I remember, he would clean out the bowl, scraping it carefully before tapping the old residue into his hand. Then came the filling. From a small purse-like pouch in his pocket he produced a plug of tobacco — Condor plug, I think it was. He would cut a slice with the knife, rub it between his hands, place it gently into the pipe and press it down with a finger, then repeat — all at a pace that would make today’s world nervous.

Then came the match. He would draw on the pipe while holding the flame over the bowl, the fire disappearing briefly as the first wisps of smoke appeared. There would be a few pulls, the flame would fade and reappear, sometimes the bowl would be covered with a hand, and when the draw was just right he would sit back and enjoy it. Occasionally it took a second match — but there was never any panic. There was always time for a second match.

The pipe would soon fill the room with the rich smell of tobacco. His tobacco came in a green packet, though I remember others with loose, rubbed tobacco — darker than a cigarette, but prepared in much the same way. Some men smoked Mick McQuaid. The man I was speaking to, now in his eighties, told me he remembered, as a child, his father smoking Bendigo Twist, a powerful tobacco that came in a rope. He used to be sent to the shop for half a quarter of it — a request that would probably lead to a Garda intervention nowadays.

We agreed that lighting a pipe has become almost a lost art. The equipment alone — the pipe, the knife, the tobacco and the matches, whether safety matches or the old red strike-anywhere ones that could be lit on a wall or any rough surface — belonged to a different time altogether. I consider myself a modern person, but I couldn’t help thinking that maybe those men had something figured out.

They mightn’t have had bank holidays, smartphones or life moving at full tilt, but they had patience, a pipe, and no great urge to be anywhere else.