: Postcard from Košice The city of Košice in eastern Slovakia is one of the locales mentioned in Laurent Binet’s …
: War Stories Above are two novels in translation I’ve read recently set in World War II: HHhH by Laurent …
: All the Fun of the Fair A few times each year a travelling ‘family funfair’ sets up in playing fields a few …
: Region 1 At one time I would have owned well over a hundred DVDs. Now, the ones in the picture above are …
: Neo-Soul In recent years I’ve been beginning to catch up with some of the ‘neo-soul’ music …
: Kalamata When I first unwittingly ate an olive I felt I’d made a grave mistake. I was maybe eighteen …
: Elco Revisited Since last writing about vintage Elco stationery I’ve obtained another set of it. Unlike the …
: Modern Times From the same set of film-still slides as mentioned here previously (1, 2, 3), comes the one above, …
: Maqroll In the picture are two volumes of prose and one of poetry by the Colombian writer Álvaro Mutis …
: Trees One murky September morning I drove up from the Taff Valley where I then lived into the nearby hills …
: Targa When he retired, ca. 1981, my maternal grandfather was presented with a pen as a gift from his …
: Stay Loose While in the vicinity last month I stopped in Blackwood, and, for the first time, took a look around …
: Illy Many (if not most) kitchens must contain at least one item whose origins are mysterious or …
: Hans White Wove Shown above is a vintage box of Harrods' Hans White Wove writing paper. On the side of the box the …
: Phaedra My trips to the theatre have been all too few and far between, and can quickly be enumerated in …
: Sylvia Townsend Warner The motley stack of ten books in the picture above contain most – but still not all – of …
: Ceiling The picture above shows part of the decorated ceiling in the drawing room at Castell Coch. I’d …
: Taika Not until I turned thirty was I faced with a need to acquire a set of my own tableware. In the …
: Ocean Songs It has happened disconcertingly often that my belated discovery of an artist’s music has, by a …
: A Glass of Amontillado It’s quite likely that my maternal grandmother was responsible for my first taste of sherry, …
: Clippings From one of the charity shops in Monmouth last week I bought a copy of C.P. Cavafy’s Collected …
: Hollingworth Papers Among the books of paper samples I’ve acquired, the volume of Hollingworth Papers has to be …
: Pegs Of the various kinds of photographic film I tried out, one I didn’t have much luck with was …
: Gotta, LouPer One gets the impression that German-made straight razors tended to be more ostentatious than those …
: Le Mystère Des Voix Bulgares A few weekends ago out of the boxes of LPs at one of my usual haunts, I picked up a copy of Le …
: Gorwydd Caerphilly Mass-produced Caerphilly cheese of the kind generally available in supermarkets tends to have a …
: Kursuus-sectâ Twenty years ago, I learned of an exhibition that had been staged in Rotterdam in 1983 called …
: Churston Deckle Shown above, the striking design on the cover of a folder containing an old set of writing paper and …
: Ligotti Here we see the books currently in my library from the pen of the idiosyncratic American horror …
: Big Hand Here’s a photo of a disembodied hand, a surviving fragment of an ancient statue, to be found …
: Torpedo 18a Pictured above is my 1954 Torpedo 18a typewriter. The difference between the 18a and the 18b being …
: Turbulence and Pulse, etc. Latterly added to my shelves, and shown above, is the album Turbulence and Pulse by the South …
: Pistachios In my provincial ’70s British working-class childhood, nuts usually meant peanuts: plain …
: Spare Stamps When I send letters I like to adorn them with special-issue stamps, especially now the standard …
: Imperial Parchment This box of Imperial Parchment paper, obtained recently via ebay, is something of an oddity. …
: Poems of Today The latest addition to my collection of obscure anthologies of translated poetry is Poems for Today: …
: Daffodils As it’s the time of year when the daffodils are proliferating hereabouts in gardens and along …
: Car-key Whereas most people are eager to learn to drive as soon as they’re of the age to do so, I was …
: It's Better to Travel The music I heard as a very young child came in the form of the pop hits of the day issuing tinnily …
: Earl Grey I’m partial to a cup of Earl Grey tea. To my taste, cheap Earl Greys (Earls Grey?) are often …
: Stamtavla A document that happened to come to hand the other day was my cat’s Stamtavla, that is to say …
: Vélin de Moirans Here’s a box of Vélin de Moirans writing paper and envelopes. Moirans is a town in the Isère …
: Journey to the South There are no few novels where an author who has successfully established an intriguing atmosphere, …
: Fridge Poem With Valentine’s Day just over, here’s a photo of a ‘fridge-poem’ I made for …
: SL-1210Mk5 Pictured above is my Technics SL-1210Mk5 turntable. The blue LP spinning on it is a 2020 re-issue of …
: All Thoughts Fly In childhood I came to connect the sound of church organs with feelings of chilly discomfort, …
: Cesanese Cesanese is a grape variety native to the Lazio region of Italy. I came to know it during my time in …
: Final Phonebook A new copy of The Phone Book (for Newport and South East Wales) arrived here last month. At a mere …
: Foolscap Late last year I acquired a virtually-unused ream of foolscap paper. It’s ‘Plus …
: Fitzcarraldo Pictured above are the seven books published by Fitzcarraldo Editions that are currently at home on …
: The Long Room Something else from my time in Sweden, a picture of an extraordinary indoor space, the …
: Ostehøvel On moving to Sweden my first residence was a ground-floor flat in a white-painted wooden house that …
: Mingus x 5 Looking around the Music One record shop in Abergavenny late last year I’d seen a few things …
: Saint André How is it that I passed the halfway point of my sixth decade before sampling a triple-cream cheese …
: Without Let or Hindrance Imagining I might spend the summer after my final year of University inter-railing around Europe, I …
: G. Lalo Shown above is the information on the back of a box of vintage G. Lalo writing paper and envelopes. …
: Poor Things With the recent release of the movie adaptation of it, there has been much discussion of late about …
: Swans We’re nearing the end of a spell of chilly weather. With no new photos to illustrate it, I …
: Unicomp I’m old enough to remember the computer keyboards of the ’80s, when such things were …
: John Luther Adams I’d known of the composer John Luther Adams' name long before hearing any of his music. Having …
: Year of Coffee After a sixteen year period during which I must have consumed fewer than a dozen cups of coffee in …
: The Ace of Spades, the Ace of Spades Above are two Aces of Spades from old decks of playing cards I bought a couple of years ago. The …
: Hans Bank Shown above are a pair of mid-20th-Century Hans Bank writing pads, in ‘Duke’ size, as …
: Pollen When I first made an acquanitance with the work of Beresford Egan, some eighteen years or so ago, it …
: He Sees You When You're Sleeping The figure in the image above isn’t Santa Claus gone wrong and hell-bent on brutal revenge, …
: Flat Cap In my youth I never wore hats or caps – it wasn’t the done thing at the time, and, on …
: I Killed Your Dog The inevitable ‘best of 2023’ listicles that proliferated on-line a couple of weeks ago …
: Single Malt Is single malt scotch whisky worse than it was when I first started drinking it, or have my tastes …
: Payment On Demand The image above is another film still scanned from a set of mounted slides I acquired about a decade …
: Smooth Ivory Since last writing about mourning stationery, I have acquired a third set of the stuff, this time in …
: Atlas There can surely be little demand for paper atlases in this age of zoomable and seamlessly uncreased …
: TMAX 3200 Looking back at the heyday of my experimentation with film photography (ca. 2008-13), it’s …
: Moustache Maintenance About a month into the initial Covid lockdown I had shaved my head for the first time. On subsequent …
: IARC The late, lamented jaimie branch’s album FLY or DIE II was the first one of several issued by …
: Golden Cenarth At The Marches Delicatessen in Monmouth the other Saturday I continued my haphazard exploration of …
: Stamps I’m grateful to my Canadian correspondent for sending a letter in an envelope (part of which …
: Plus Fabric “How much simple inexpensive pleasure there is to be had in writing, or receiving, a letter on …
: Shelf Portrait #6 Pictured above is one of four shelves in the bookcases upstairs reserved for larger-format volumes, …
: Nikon D70s In late 2007 I acquired my first DSLR - a Nikon D80. Some five years and 8,000 shots later I sold it …
: Glass On the same occasion I bought the typewriter mentioned a few entries ago, something else at the same …
: Havana 3 a.m. Above is the elegant cover design of a UK pressing of the Cuban bandleader Perez Prado’s 1956 …
: Sea Salt & Chardonnay Wine Vinegar I am in full agreement with the many enthusiasts who rate the ‘Irresistible’ Sea Salt …
: How to Use and Enjoy Your Brother On the shelf of a charity shop last weekend I spotted a small case with a recognizable shape that …
: Bowersburn Princess A good deal of stationery, it seems, was marketed specifically with women in mind. There were sets …
: Diary One Saturday morning this summer in a Chepstow charity shop I spotted a set of six small old books. …
: Superbitch! Yesterday brought another birthday, my fifty-fifth. From an earlier such occasion (no. 42), the …
: Ambassador Up at the pinnacle of manual typewriter design, or very near it, was the Hermes Ambassador: a very …
: Uncatalogued After a tedious yet oddly satisfying exercise of ‘stock-taking’ my music collection and …
: Sencha of the Earth Having gained a taste for plain, inexpensive green teas, it took me quite a while longer to learn to …
: Tapes Among my latest vintage vinyl purchases, a copy of Johnny Cash’s 1964 LP Bitter Tears: Ballads …
: Writing Case Pictured above, a leather zip-up writing case with some of its original contents: the little …
: El Zarco, the Bandit Back at Broadleaf Books last Friday, a bright orange spine caught my eye, and when I pulled the book …
: Tintern Abbey One Saturday ten years ago I drove up to the ruins of Tintern Abbey. It was a glorious sunny Autumn …
: Moss Agate For the duration of my marriage I wore a plain gold wedding ring on my left hand and a gold ring …
: Red At the Oxfam shop in Thornbury recently, I spotted a copy of the LP Red by Black Uhuru. It was …
: Costières de Nîmes Lately I’ve been enjoying some Rhône wines, most of them courtesy of the local budget …
: Question Shown above is Question 5 from the examination paper I was given in April 1990, for ‘Computing …
: Croxley Writing And Ledger Papers Another book of paper samples, this slim volume of Croxley Writing and Ledger Papers comprises, …
: Case de Lux There are images that look good when framed in the camera’s viewfinder, only to disappoint us …
: Baldfader When I went to the barber’s on Valentine’s Day 2020, it didn’t occur to me that it …
: Hadal Zone Newly-arrived this week, Hadal Zone, a recently-released album from Lithuanian-born composer …
: La Perfetta Sinfonia After nine months' leisurely sampling of the espresso coffee-bean blends readily-available at the …
: Broadleaf Books Really good second-hand bookshops are a rare & endangered species nowadays. My favourite such …
: Two Blue Dukes Shown above are two boxes of Duke-sized (5½"x7") writing paper in slightly different …
: Storybooks Here are four of the six books published in New Directions' Storybook ND series last year. These are …
: Movement When I still had my Nikon D80 camera, a favourite lens I often used with it was the 60mm f/2.8 …
: TI-3500 If £98,376,102 were to be divided equally between 120,000 people, I wondered: how much would each …
: Experimental Doom On asking for recommendations for music outside the styles I habitually favour, a correspondent …
: Garlic Nostalgia For years I was sporadically troubled by localised skin irritation near the tip of my left index …
: Tickets Please It was December 1997 and I really needed to go to the bank. The problem was that I had latterly …
: Orphan Envelopes When using up sets of writing paper and envelopes, I find there will almost always be at least one …
: Red as Blood In my late teens I borrowed Tanith Lee’s short-story collection Red As Blood from the library. …
: Eau de Parfum Of all the stupid ideas for pastimes and hobbies I’ve come up with, the notion that I might …
: Ellis in Wonderland A few of my recent record buys have featured the virtuoso pianist Oscar Peterson as a more-or-less …
: XO I was working as a waiter in a cocktail bar when I first sampled an XO cognac. It was late 1991 and …
: Sputnik When I bought a vintage Hungarian-made safety razor from an ebay seller, included with it was a …
: Midas Touch To be filed under “the past is a foreign country”, here we have some cigarette-themed …
: Big Dictionary Energy Dictionaries. I was twenty-five when I acquired my first big one: a Shorter Oxford English …
: Double Exposures Digitally-manipulated photography has meant that composite images have for some time been …
: Baton Barbe Last summer I bought a couple of ‘sticks’ of vintage French shaving soap from an ebay …
: Fly or Die A newly-released arrival in the post this week - the third and final Fly or Die album by jaimie …
: Single Gloucester I had never been to Stroud until last week. On my first visit there I was tempted by the wares on …
: Yost I found the ad for the Yost Typewriter Co. shown above in a 1902 issue of The Connoisseur (‘A …
: Elco Paris Linen Elco is a Swiss stationery brand that is one of the relative few still in business: long may they …
: Shelf-Portrait No. 5 The third shelf in my downstairs ‘display’ bookcase (previously) has the most headroom …
: Mask From my second visit to Venice I brought home a couple of carnival masks as souvenirs: a …
: Soulville, etc. One of the best of my recent vinyl purchases was Soulville by saxophonist Ben Webster, who seems to …
: Nilgiri When it comes to black tea from India, not for me the delicacy of a Darjeeling or the brisk …
: Parker 61 When I bought a vintage Parker 61 fountain pen (six or seven years ago), it came with an original …
: Croxley Cambric My first vintage stationery acquisition was some Croxley Script typing paper in the old foolscap …
: Mavis Gallant I’d become a great admirer of the short stories of Sylvia Townsend Warner (of Lolly Willowes …
: Couple While I’ve no particular talent for judging ‘the decisive moment’ in spontaneous …
: Cufflinks A decade ago I happened upon the four pairs of cufflinks I owned at the time, and wondered if I …
: Interval Signals There was a tune that haunted me for about thirty years before I finally found out what it was. I …
: Etna Rosso My favoured wine of the moment is the cumbersomely named Generazione Mille898 Etna Rosso 720 (2019) …
: Invitation to the Dance Here’s another from the set of movie stills I mentioned a few months ago, this one from …
: Writings My odd enthusiasm for old stationery has bled its way into my library, with the acquisition of a …
: Shadow The unassuming photograph above: the shadow of a tree cast on to a yellow-painted structure (along …
: Clock Like a great many others my working routine changed dramatically in the spring of 2020. Working from …
: Singles Of the hundred and fifty or so 7" singles I’ve accumulated over the past decade, a …
: Farls A ‘bakestone’ is a type of heavy flat griddle. The one I have is a disc with a cut-out …
: Index Cards I bought a ’50s index card ‘outfit’ a few years ago: that is, a Winel brand …
: Chivalry Antient Script Pictured above is an old box of Chivalry Antient Script envelopes in ‘Jade’ green, Duke …
: Selected 'Selected Poems' In my recent reading have been half a dozen books with the same title: Selected Poems. I especially …
: Photogram Photograms or lumen prints are photographs achieved without cameras; shadow-pictures made by placing …
: Straight Razors Pictured above are my smallest and one of my largest straight razors, both of which still happen to …
: Dark With Excessive Bright My latest (modern) classical CD purchases were an excellent new recording, warmly praised by the …
: Blonde Roast I don’t know that I’ve ever tried the coffee at Starbucks. I do remember visiting at …
: Return Thanks It’s 1932, and Mr. Johnson has died suddenly in Gloucester. His grieving widow and four …
: Rhys Davies The books in the photograph above contain most of the collected short stories of the Welsh writer …
: Robot/Alien I’ve a soft spot for this photo of a piece of grafitti seen on a wall somewhere in the Manor …
: Screwpull I admit to feeling a sentimental attachment to certain objects. This oftenest happens with useful …
: In-Car Entertainment The car I had before the car I had before the car I have now must have been one of the very last to …
: Absolute Black Having lost my indiscriminate childhood appetite for chocolate I ate relatively little of the stuff …
: 20th Century LOLcat Found pressed between the pages of an old book was the newspaper clipping above, depicting a kitten …
: Wookey Hole Note Wookey Hole, thankfully, has nothing to do with the Star Wars™ universe. For anyone unfamiliar, …
: In Other Languages I’m a monoglot Anglophone yet own several books printed in other languages. Most of these are …
: SM5 On the tabletop in the picture above is an Olympia SM5 typewriter resting on a thick felt pad …
: Astrud When I bought the instalment in the Compact Jazz series of compilations devoted to Astrud Gilberto, …
: Black Olive Paté Amidst the sporadic arrivals of nationally-themed groceries one can sometimes find at Lidl, an item …
: Crane's I haven’t succeeded thus far in obtaining any of the wares of the notable US stationery …
: Shelf Portrait (Number Four) Most of my books are kept in my upstairs study/office which, of my few visitors, fewer still will …
: TLR Seeing Rolleiflex cameras used in movies made it look like TLR photography would be great fun - Fred …
: Soap and Brush For a proper traditional shaving experience one needs a razor, a brush and some soap. Having tried …
: Roberta Last August or so I saw or heard someone singing the praises of Roberta Flack’s debut album …
: Havana Club Last night, while listening to Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Jerome Kern Song Book, I reached the bottom …
: Menus One of my less successful typewriter purchases was a 1956 Voss S24 I ordered from a French ebay …
: Laroche-Joubert The stationery set shown above is one of a couple I’ve owned that were produced by the French …
: Orlam Although more a standoffish admirer of P.J. Harvey’s music than an outright fan, I was …
: Wedding I took numerous old-school analogue photographs at my older niece’s wedding last year. They …
: Snake-plant My history of houseplant husbandry has been characterised by failure and misfortune. I brought home …
: Rendezvous Buying records based purely on their cover designs is something I’ve frequently regretted and …
: Oolong Neither of my parents were tea-drinkers. My first taste of the stuff came when I was maybe nine or …
: Red Flags Continuing and concluding the East German theme, the above is one of two miscellaneous colour slides …
: Koenigstein It surprised me to learn, when perhaps it ought not have done, that communist East Germany was a …
: Solenoid The work of Romanian author Mircea Cărtărescu came to my attention in late 2019, by way of a review …
: Up Against the Wall My erstwhile enthusiasm for photgraphy came about, in part, because I’d seen the writing on …
: White Right Hand On my mantelpiece there stands a glossy white right hand with an inexpertly-repaired break in its …
: Shelf Portrait (iii) The Compact Disc has been largely unloved for at least the past fifteen years. There are scattered …
: Brie de Meaux Round one, 1995: taking some baby steps to ever-so-slightly enlarge my hitherto blinkered view of …
: Waldorf Club Waldorf Club writing paper has nothing to do with the Waldorf hotels (aside, perhaps, from a hope of …
: Love and Rockets I didn’t hold on to any of the books of my childhood & teenage years, not the odd …
: Life Work In a 2009 issue of the Boston Review, a piece by John Crowley about Nicholson Baker’s novel …
: Safety Razor For decades I unwittingly bought in to the fictional narrative of progress pushed by the marketing …
: Sweet Child My last record-buying outing netted me five LPs and a 7" single for a total outlay of £23. The …
: Blood Oranges Living at a latitude inhospitable to the cultivation of citrus fruit means I’ve only been …
: Special Bargain Offers An interesting ebay purchase was a folder containing “Specimens of Die Stamping, Notepaper and …
: Shelf Portrait #2 It took a few false starts before I developed an enthusiasm for photography, but once I did, things …
: The Good Companion I am in possession of no fewer than eleven mechanical typewriters in more or less working order, and …
: Shelf Portrait No. 1 The block of records above represents nearly a quarter of my collection of 12" vinyl. …
: Like a Sculpture in the Glass Midweek - either Tuesday or Wednesday - I will often have a glass of wine. Only one glass, but quite …
: Telephone Pen John Heath is my father’s name, so when I saw a box of John Heath brand ‘Telephone …
: Mourning Stationery While its roots are apparently older, black-edged mourning stationery had a long heyday in the …
: The Forgery “Charco Press” says the blurb on their website, “focuses on finding outstanding …
: Kodachrome I came to Kodachrome during its declining days, when there was only one lab in the world that could …
: Olympia CD-520 How many of a given item does it take to constitute a collection? If, for instance, having purchased …
: Rockferry, etc. At the local charity shop on Saturday I felt discouraged at just how many of their stock of LPs were …
: Moka Express For about twenty years - from my late teens - I was a coffee-drinker. To begin with, I considered it …
: The Unguarded Moment From an incomplete set of of black-&-white 35mm slides containing movie stills I bought from an …
: English Lawn As a small-time collector of vintage stationery, researching one’s ebay acquisitions can be …
: Only the Road With the long-standing ubiquity of hip-hop culture and its many offshoots, poetry must surely be as …
: St. Murphy's Day It’s my blue-eyed cat’s fifteenth birthday. His name is Murphy. Falling as it does the …