Pipes of Terror

I wouldn't want anyone to think that I was making light of terror attacks, but I found that whilst I was watching the news from New York over the weekend, whenever the term 'pipe bomb' was mentioned, I conjured up a mental picture of the smoking-type of pipe with its bowl packed full of explosive.  Could this be a new type of terror weapon, I mused.  Designed to wipe out infidel pipe smokers by blowing their heads off after a couple of puffs, perhaps.  Because, after all, pipe smoking is the sign of intellectualism, isn't it?  So a pipe bomb campaign could be part of a strategy by ISIS to, quite literally, decapitate the West's intellectual leadership.  Moreover, those Muslim fundamentalists don't approve of smoking, do they?  (Well, according to the likes of the Daily Mail, anyway).  Of course, the flaw in their nefarious scheme could lie in the fact that so few people smoke these days.  Especially pipes, it seems.  I don't know about you, but I can't remember the last time I saw a pipe smoker.  You certainly don't see them loitering outside office buildings with the cigarette smokers.

After going on about pipe bombs, the news coverage of the New York bombings then confused me by claiming that, far from involving pipes, one unexploded device discovered by the authorities was actually a pressure cooker.  A pressure cooker with a mobile phone attached to it, to be precise. This was pretty devastating news: the terrorists were now turning our own kitchen implements against us.  Not satisfied with trying to wipe out our remaining pipe smokers, they clearly wanted to make our kitchens a 'no go' area - possibly with the aim of making us starve to death.  (I have no doubt that a pressure cooker could be a lethal weapon.  Even without explosives.  When I was a kid, I was always convinced that my mother's wheezing old pressure cooker was on the verge of exploding, as it bubbled, fizzed and rattled away on the cooker.  It was bloody terrifying).  Any minute now, I thought, the Daily Mail is going to launch a campaign to have the sale of pressure cookers banned.  But only to Muslims.  I had a terrifying vision of anyone vaguely Arab-looking being surrounded by armed police officers and dragged off to Belmarsh whenever they tried to buy a new pressure cooker in Argos.  Trust me, it could happen.