Sunday 18 December 2011

Priorities

Compromise. It sucks. 

Or does it?
It is always the same story - you travel, and if you're a guy, chances are you do the packing around a few moments before the taxi is due. Not particularly efficient, not especially wise but, it's right. A legacy if you will. This time was no different, and I had happened on a rather precarious situation. My bag and suitcase were full. And. I had some items that would not fit.

I had too many cigars. 

So, I took an executive decision. Instead of finishing the packing. I would have take the torturous decision of instead, smoking the surplus cigar. Someone hold me. 



I decided to go for the El Rey del Mundo Exclusivo Reino Unido Choix de L'Epoque, hopefully I would finish it in less than the time it took to write that. As I lit up the cigar, naturally, I thought, it would need a companion, and despite being at home, and alone, and thus drawing up the loner connotations that don't actually need saying, I drew myself a little tipple. What, the cigar demands it. So a couple of fingers of Lagavulin 16 year old joined up with the cigar upstairs. Lit, puff, and ignore the impending taxi arrival and exploded suitcases. 




As I puffed away, the cigar proved especially surprising - score - seeing as it was a freebie from the Cigar "Training" session from a month ago. It was mellow, but rather chocolaty, a bit of gritty coffee thrown in for kicks. Oddly, some wheat made itself known on the end of a puff. I was smoking a mochaccino toast.. 

It was also an easy dragging thing. So I made quick work to try and finish the first third before combining the Lagavulin, or so says a staff member at Sautter. What does she know, she's only apparently the third generation of Cigar industry members from Cuba..
Regardless, I restrained, momentarily, and tried out the whisky - as tenuous as the "need" of the cigar to require the whisky, if anything, the whisky would help later on if there were any odious whining children in my vicinity on the journey. Excuse established. Oh my, this has a pretty aroma. Beating me upside the head with some flowery orange, and even a bit of honey and malt as it diffused. No thought for even dillydallying, and I sipped away at a particularly sweet whisky, almost similar to a bourbon, with what I believed to be some notes of corn. Just a tiny bit of smokiness crept in at the end as well. Yes, even on my own, at home, waiting for a taxi, I was concentrating hard on cigar and whisky. 

Puffing away, losing more impetus to fight the lack of urgency, time ticking down, listening to some soothing/thrashing guitar ballades from Buckethead and the cigar not quite burning up as quickly as I thought, I quickly did not do much about it. The cigar was getting nuttier, the whisky was supplementing it well, rounding out the sweetness of the both and concentrating the mochaccino. At least I found a healthy caffeine substitute. Adding some water to the whisky did little to replenish its rapidly depleting levels, though it did smooth it, and somehow amplified the smokiness. The cigar smoke oddly had the same effect. 


The cigar at this point was taking double duty as leisure object and finger warmer, as it more and more resembled a cocktail sausage rather than a cigar, the whisky long gone, the suitcases still not finalised, and the taxi due to arrive in mere moments. Despite being at this point both a pain and pleasure, the cigar remained pleasant and mellow, taking on a more wholegrain nature, almost toasted. Maybe I was toasted? And with some toasty corn right towards the end, I finally put it down. And with minutes to go yet, I haphazardly threw everything together, packed the now sorted travel humidor in my bag, and hoped for the best at Check-in. To home, Jeeves!




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