Escapism

Having written about my Nikon FM3a (see the previous post), here’s a frame taken with it. It’s a snap of a busking escapologist mid-performance at the 2010 ‘Big Cheese’ festival in the grounds of Caerphilly Castle. The FM3a in this case was loaded with Fomapan 100 black & white film, which I later home-developed in Rodinal R09. It was taken the same day as this shot.

The one aspect of the FM3a I’m less fond of is the abrupt clunk of its shutter mechanism. Some cameras have smoothly quiet shutters but with this one you distinctly feel it every time you take a picture. The effect is less pronounced, it seems to me, when a bulkier or heavier lens is mounted on the camera, which seems to absorb the shock of that mechanism a little better.

Wristwatch

Pictured above is my current wristwatch, a Seiko 5 Sports model, specifically an SRPD51K2. It cost me £186 two years ago. It’s my second automatic/self-winding clockwork watch. My previous one had been a Vostok Amphibia which was still more or less keeping time (as well as it ever had) after five years' use, but in light of events in Ukraine I didn’t want to go on wearing a Russian-made watch. One thing I appreciated about the Amphibia was its rotating bezel, a feature I found very useful, so when it came time to buy something new that’s something I looked for in its replacement.

I think my first ever childhood watch was some kind of basic Timex model. I was much more impressed with my second one: an LED digital watch of the kind where you had to press a button to see the time in glowing red digits. As a nine or ten year old in the late ’70s, this seemed to me the height of cool. I was never as enthused about LCD watches, and didn’t much care for the look of the Casio with the plastic strap that I wore while in secondary school, but there’s no disputing it was a reliable and hard-wearing unit. When I was eighteen I was given a gold-plated analogue watch with a metal bracelet (possibly a Seiko – I forget) which I wore for all of a couple of years before it was stolen.

In my twenties and thirties I had a succession of inexpensive watches, most of which I barely remember. I know I had a number of Swatch models, and particularly liked one from their ‘Irony’ line with a green face and a green leather strap to match. I’d formed a preference for leather straps, even though they only ever tended to last me for a year or so before they would wear out. After my father-in-law died in 2008 I inherited his ca. 1950s Swiss-made watch and wore that for a few years. When I bought the new Seiko it came with a nylon ‘NATO’ strap, which I was favourably impressed with. It lasted me a little longer than a leather one would have done. The one in the picture was its first replacement.

Aftershave

While the use of aftershave lotions has fallen rather out of favour, I’m still a fan of the invigorating sting of an alcohol-based splash hitting one’s freshly-scraped face. Above is my current bottle of the Sandalwood lotion made by D.R. Harris & Co. Ltd. I find it’s warmly lingering aroma reliably pleasant. In contrast, my other regular aftershave option, Proraso’s ‘Rinfrescante’ lotion, has a fleeting, neutrally cool sort of scent.

In the past I’ve used and enjoyed the likes of Eternity for Men and Terre d’Hermès. Certain classic lotions have proven less to my liking, at least not in their current formulations. Brut and Old Spice, for example, don’t do much for me, while Tabac has more appeal, but I find it too overpowering for all but the most occasional use.

Targa

When he retired, ca. 1981, my maternal grandfather was presented with a pen as a gift from his former employers. It was a Sheaffer Targa slimline ballpoint pen with a brushed chrome finish. Although at the entry level of the Targa line, I thought at the time it was the coolest thing. Certainly the coolest pen I had seen up close.

With that in mind, while teetering around the edge of the fountain pen rabbit hole toward the end of the last decade, it occurred to me to buy myself a Targa fountain pen. I settled on a very lightly-used 1001 model in stainless steel. How much I paid for it escapes me.

It has since seen a great deal of use, being my note-taking pen of choice when I work from home. Now and then I’ll also write a letter with it. The inlaid stainless steel nib always feels good when it hits the page. I keep it filled with Aurora Black ink.

Illy

Many (if not most) kitchens must contain at least one item whose origins are mysterious or forgotten. For example I cannot for the life of me recall when or how I obtained the Illy espresso cup shown above. It’s the only one of its kind I have: there is no matching saucer. My guess would be that someone helped themselves to it from a café or restaurant and passed it on to me: but who? And when?

Appropriately the coffee in it was also made from an Illy product, specifically from their Arabica Selection: Brasile Cerrado Minero beans. I had spent a few months very slowly working my way through a 1kg bag of lesser-quality beans and felt like trying something a little further upmarket for a change. I do enjoy its refined taste – meanwhile slightly missing the breadth of flavour that a good blend can provide.

Taika

Not until I turned thirty was I faced with a need to acquire a set of my own tableware. In the decade before that I’d relied on a combination of familial hand-me-downs and whatever I found in the kitchens of the furnished accommodation I rented. These would on occasion have to be supplemented by additional purchases, but only ever of individual items, or pairs of them: a new mug here; a couple of plates there. On first setting up home with my then-fiancée in early 1999, however, a full and matching complement of plates and bowls was called for. IKEA provided them: from something resembling their current Färgklar line in off-white with a matt finish.

A few years later, after we’d moved to Sweden, the IKEA crockery was pushed to the back of our cupboards when we acquired a further, slightly better-quality set, in plain deep blue-glazed stoneware, from Höganäs Keramik. This gave us seven or so years of daily use, until, one day in our last year in Scandinavia, some decorated plates caught my eye in one of Karlskrona’s homeware shops: the Taika series by the Finnish company Iitala. We bought a set in the blue colourway, and these, with some remainders of the Höganäs set, accompanied us back to the UK in 2009.

Fifteen years on, I’m still using and enjoying these plates, bowls and mugs every day. Three pieces from the set are shown above, showing the two stylized owl decorations and the other creature (is it supposed to be a fox?) that appear in various configurations on each item. A few of the pieces have broken over time, but the rate of attrition has been low & slow enough that it could easily be another decade before I need to think about getting any additional dinnerware.

Torpedo 18a

Pictured above is my 1954 Torpedo 18a typewriter. The difference between the 18a and the 18b being that the latter came equipped with a tabulator, while the former did not. I bought this one in December ‘17 from an ebay seller somewhere in Devon or Somerset. It was a pre-Christmas impulse-buy that cost me something like £35, postage included. As I recall it arrived packaged in an old Fortnum & Mason box.

For obvious reasons, a German company using ‘Torpedo’ as their brand would have raised more eyebrows than profits in mid-20th Century Britain, hence for the UK market these machines went by the name ‘Blue Bird’. This one is a ‘Torpedo’ having been destined for France: it has a French AZERTY keyboard-layout, which is likely the main reason I was able to buy it relatively cheaply. Despite years of use, I still frequently mqke the sqme old mistqkes when typing on it. Also, its platen is rather hard, with the type-bars consequently liable to try to stamp holes in one’s paper.

On the plus side, out of all the portable typewriters I’ve used, this one has my favourite typing action: very responsive & sweetly snappy. The type itself is an appealing ‘Congress’-style one. I have a blue ribbon installed in the 18a, obtained from FJA Products in the U.S., which has served me well. I’d order more from them if the postage rates weren’t so prohibitive. When not in use, the machine resides in its smart metal carrying case. When I bought it, all that remained of the case’s handle was a steel strip. I later re-upholstered this with a section of a dog collar I’d found in a vaguely similar shade of grey.

Car-key

Whereas most people are eager to learn to drive as soon as they’re of the age to do so, I was keen to avoid having to get behind the wheel, and for the first decade of my adult life, arranged things around being able to walk where I needed to go, or else to take public transport. When my first proper employers subsidised a course of driving lessons for me, I dutifully took them, but wasn’t sorry when I failed the test that followed.

Things changed when I met my wife. She tolerated train-travel, but disdained buses. Meanwhile she liked to drive, and was happy enough for the most part to do the driving for us both. For another decade or so this worked out tolerably well, until a change of location and a change of circumstances obliged me to knuckle down and start taking lessons again. It did not come naturally to me, and I failed test after test. Only after months of struggle, and at the sixth or seventh attempt, did I belatedly pass.

This serves to explain why, although I’ve owned seven cars in my time, I’ve only driven five of them. Car no. 7 is a 2016 Citroën C1 in plain white, the latest in a line of small, low-powered and (relatively) cheap vehicles. Its key is shown above, with the prong folded away. I’ve had this one for less than a year. I like it quite well, though wish it had a CD-player rather than the bluetooth music-playing contraption it came with. At least it does have a radio.

SL-1210Mk5

Pictured above is my Technics SL-1210Mk5 turntable. The blue LP spinning on it is a 2020 re-issue of Ahmad Jamal At The Pershing. I bought the turntable some eighteen or nineteen years ago, since when it has provided me with nothing but trouble-free listening pleasure. It was expensive, but in value-for-money terms it has proven to be a bargain.

Coming of age in the heyday of the Walkman, I began buying music on cassette – out of practicality (and for reasons of economy) rather than due to any attraction inherent in the medium. A decade later I made the leap from cassettes to CDs. I didn’t obtain my first record-player until 2001. That was a second-hand late-70s/early-’80s Ferguson unit picked up at a junkshop. While it wasn’t exactly a high-quality item, at that point the attraction was all about the novelty of getting any old crackly sound out of the dirt-cheap vinyl I was buying.

When the Ferguson gave up the ghost, I sought out something that would be easier to connect up to my PC’s sound-card, my focus having shifted to the desire to digitise some of my newly-accumulated analogue music. I settled on an inexpensive Kenwood-brand player which, alas, proved to be a poor choice. The build quality left much to be desired, and nor was the sound quality anything to shout about. My frustration with it led me to consider shelling out rather more for a model with a reputation for solid reliability: the SL-1210.

It took a while to get a Mk. 5 on order as this was a time (2005 or ‘06) when demand was at something of a low ebb. Come the end of the decade the SL-1210 would fall out of production altogether – until the vinyl revival belatedly summoned it back from the dead. Having used it first in digitising music, or for listening through headphones, I eventually did the decent thing and hooked it up to an amp and some speakers, in which configuration it’s done a round decade’s sterling service. The worst thing I can think to say about the thing is that the dust-cover seems to have been something of an afterthought: I ended up badly damaging my original one and had to get an aftermarket replacement.

Ostehøvel

On moving to Sweden my first residence was a ground-floor flat in a white-painted wooden house that was on the shore of a small island (while still being part of the town). The house had its own jetty with a boat moored to it, and there were apple and cherry trees in the garden; but the bathroom was tiny and the upstairs neighbours not light on their feet. My wife and I were there for less than a year before the landlords decided they didn’t want to rent the place any more. When we moved out we helped ourselves to the old cheese-plane (shown above) that had been one of the utensils in the apartment’s kitchen. That was in 2001: I still regularly use it now.

The cheese-plane was patented in 1925 by Norwegian inventor Thor Bjørklund. Only very recently did it dawn on me that my purloined slicer was an ostehøvel manufactured by the company Bjørklund founded. The handle is stamped with the text RUSTFRITTSTÅL (‘Stainless Steel’), while on the blade is a stylized logotype (‘Spar’) and the text RUSTFRI PAT. 64416. ‘Spar’ seems to have been a model name, and Pat. 64416 a 1940 follow-up to the inventor’s original patent.

Cheese-planes are optimal for firmly-textured Nordic cheeses, but also do very well with many of the less crumbly British ones. They’re useful too for slicing cold butter. I later acquired a second one, seemingly of Italian design (‘Giannini’ is the brand-name), but it doesn’t work anything like as well as the old Bjørklund one.

Unicomp

I’m old enough to remember the computer keyboards of the ’80s, when such things were oftentimes still high-quality, heavy-duty input devices. As time went on I lamented the proliferation of shoddily-made, plasticky keyboards and yearned for something better. In 2003 I ordered, direct from the manufacturer, my first Unicomp buckling-spring mechanical keyboard, still made in much the same way as the legendary IBM Model M keyboards of yore. Over seventeen years' near-daily use it was never less than a robustly reliable pleasure to type on. It was still working well in 2020, but it had a PS/2 plug and my then-new PC was all-USB. After putting up with the awkwardness of an adaptor for a little while, I decided to buy a new keyboard.

From The Keyboard Company, I ordered a Unicomp ‘Ultra Classic’ keyboard in black with a USB plug and a UK layout. As a small extra, I also obtained a red Panic button to put in place of the Escape key. It has a slightly smaller footprint than the old Unicomp unit, and is a little lighter in weight, but otherwise it’s very similar. All being well, it’ll last me until 2037! I also have a second-hand Cherry MX 3000 keyboard with ‘blue’ key-switches which I use in conjuction with my work laptop when at home; and a vintage beige Compaq-branded rack-style keyboard with ‘brown’ switches (and a trackball) that gets used when I’m in the office – in preference to the awful excuse for a keyboard my cheapskate employers provided me with.

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 first is from a De La Rue pack which dates back to the late ’50s (if the information on this page is accurate). It bears the company’s name and the text “Duty Three Pence”. It had once (before 1862) been a legal requirement in the UK for Aces of Spades to be marked thus, but in a 20th-Century pack this was just an affectation on the part of the manufacturer. The other card is from a more recent deck made by Piatnik in Austria.

Playing cards were a constant presence through my childhood: there would be games of Switch (akin to Crazy Eights) with my parents and my sister; and hands of Whist with my grandparents and Aunt. I’d play Patience (i.e. Solitaire) on my own to pass the time. At school there were games of Phat and Black Maria (which we coarsely called ‘Bitch’). In adulthood I played less, though my wife and I sometimes played Cribbage. Card games seem at risk of becoming a thing of the past: I wonder if smartphones, and the multitude of games they can contain, may risk pushing many classic games to extinction.

The title of this post, by the way, comes from the refrain of a well-known song.

Flat Cap

In my youth I never wore hats or caps – it wasn’t the done thing at the time, and, on the rare occasions I tried donning headgear, nothing seemed a good fit on my outsized cranium. My first winter in Sweden brought weather colder than I’d hitherto experienced, highlighting a necessity for some kind of skull insulation, and prompted me to acquire the first of a few beanie-style hats. For a little while longer, though, I continued to go bare-headed in all but the frostiest conditions.

During the daily round of dog-walks and of bus-trips back and forth to the office over the years that followed, I would increasingly often resort to donning a beanie, and would ponder from time to time whether some other type of head covering might work better for me. At length, in 2007, I decided to order some felt hats, and a couple of flat caps, having sought out on-line vendors catering for the larger-headed. I briefly tried to pretend otherwise, but the felt hats were not a success. They did not look good on me. On the other hand, I was straightaway at home in a flat cap. I found them practical and comfortable, and felt, moreover, that they suited me very well. I could see why my paternal grandfather had seldom been without one.

I ordered my first caps from Hanna Hats of Donegal, among them a patchwork cap like the one above. Regrettably, that one, and a couple of its replacements, ended up mislaid and lost. The one in the picture is (I think) my fourth, though I’ve held on to this latest example for a good nine years. I currently have another three caps, two of them of good Harris tweed, the last an unbranded green wool cap bought from a market stall in Monmouth.

When I first started wearing flat caps, others sometimes joked of them (if they mentioned them at all) as being ‘farmer hats’. Since 2013, and the advent on TV of Peaky Blinders – which helped re-popularise such caps – some now suppose I wear them because of the show. I gather it’s an impressively well-made production, but I’ve yet to catch so much as a minute of it.

Moustache Maintenance

About a month into the initial Covid lockdown I had shaved my head for the first time. On subsequent inspection of my bald pate in the mirror, I wondered about trying something else new: growing a moustache. I had not hitherto seriously attempted sprouting facial hair, and had never gone more than a couple of weeks between shaves. I knew from experience I would not readily tolerate whiskers on my chin or neck for any length of time, but felt that something on my top lip mightn’t be a bad idea.

I have a big head, and recognising that a small moustache wasn’t likely to work well, I opted to try for a full ‘chevron’ style one, which would have the additional advantage of being low-maintenance. After only a few days' growth, the signs seemed promising that I could manage something passably full and thick, and at that point I decided to augment the moustache itself with a ‘soul patch’ on my lower lip. A nascent ‘stache, without the camouflage of surrounding stubble, is a ridiculous-looking thing, and mine was particularly laughable around the 2-3 week mark.

Having passed that pain barrier, by 5-6 weeks it looked OK, and by 3 months it was fully-established. The maintenance needed is indeed minimal. To help with that I obtained a vintage grooming kit ‘Made in West Germany’ from ebay, which included the plastic comb and the wood & bristle brush shown above. The kit also included scissors, but those weren’t very good, so the Tweezerman pair seen here has since taken their place. I seldom use it, but there have been a few occasions when I have applied some Capt. Fawcett’s Ylang Ylang Moustache Wax.

Nikon D70s

In late 2007 I acquired my first DSLR - a Nikon D80. Some five years and 8,000 shots later I sold it quite cheaply, having made the rash decision to confine myself solely to film photography. In subsequent years I came to regret this fit of purism - while phones are OK for taking pictures, I do prefer handling a proper camera, and there were several occasions when having a DSLR would have been very handy. Meanwhile, film and processing prices kept rising.

Taking pictures to illustrate this blog heightened my dissatisfaction with phone photography. I have a lower-end Nokia-branded Android device which, while it has provided mostly adequate results, isn’t any kind of pleasure to use. While starting to put aside some pennies for a new digital camera, I wondered if something second-hand might provide an interim solution. Fortune favoured me when I found a Nikon D70s with its original kit lens, in its original box, for £30 at the local charity shop.

What wasn’t included was a mains cable for the charger, so I needed to order one of those before I could even confirm the camera was working: luckily it was. Meanwhile there was the disagreeable issue of the camera being sticky. An adhesive-like residue had leached out of the vinyl/rubber coating on the body: attacking that with some alcohol-based hand-sanitizer improved the situation considerably. A 4GB memory card was in place, containing a couple of dozen shots by the camera’s previous owner. There were several motion-blurred snaps of birds in some unidentifiable tropical locale; and a handful of other pictures clearly taken in this part of the world.

So it is that, eleven years after parting with my D80, I now have its less capable predecessor as a belated replacement. It boasts a mere six megapixels, half what an iPhone 14 can provide. And its low-light performance will be nothing like as good as a modern camera’s. On the upside, I still have four compatible prime lenses that work with the D70s, such as the Nikkor 35mm f2 AF-D one shown above - not to mention the kit zoom lens that came with it. The quality of the (new) photography here ought, I hope, to show signs of improvement.

Glass

On the same occasion I bought the typewriter mentioned a few entries ago, something else at the same shop caught my eye when a piece of coloured ornamental glass was illuminated by a momentary ray of sunshine. It was the item shown above: a bud vase? a perfume bottle minus its stopper? It cost me all of £2. It’s evidently had a bit of a life already, with some minor damage here and there: nevertheless, something about it appeals to me.

It reminds me somewhat of Swedish-style glass like Kosta Boda (though perhaps of lesser quality). Where I lived in Sweden was within a couple of hours' drive of the Kosta Boda HQ in deepest Småland, and my wife & I went up there a couple of times. They did a factory tour that was genuinely fascinating; and the on-site shop was very good too. Eighteen or so years and three house-moves later, I still have a few of their ‘snowball’ candle-holders, some drinking-glasses, and the little ornamental item shown below: an impractical bowl? another candle holder?

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 had further been wrapped in a plastic bag. On the bag was a sticker with the handwritten text “Brother typewriter”. The case had a satisfying heft, suggesting the machine within had a metal body, and there were no worrying rattles when I moved it. On inquiring about the price I was told £10, a small enough number that I didn’t mind taking a chance on it.

Happily, the case contained a 1973 Brother Deluxe 1300 Tabulator typewriter in excellent condition. It’s a fairly small and basic machine, but I very much like its snappy typing action. It came complete with its original eight-page instruction leaflet: “How to Use and Enjoy Your Brother® Portable Typewriter”. At the back of the leaflet, some pointers on how to learn to touch-type, concluding with the following advice: “Do not let errors discourage you. Strive as you practice to lessen the errors. The real question is: are you improving day by day? PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT.”

I’ve been using typewriters routinely now for at least eight years, and my typing is still full of mistakes. The real answer is: I am not improving day by day. Even so, I do not let that discourage me either.

Ambassador

Up at the pinnacle of manual typewriter design, or very near it, was the Hermes Ambassador: a very large, very heavy, and very capable machine. Mine is a 1967 model, with a 15" carriage produced near the end of the period where Hermes used their distinctive ‘sea-foam green’ colour-scheme for the keys, platen knobs, etc. Never at any stage of its evolution a particularly attractive unit, the Ambassador reveals its many charms in use: it has as smooth and solid-feeling a typing action as one could wish for.

I bought it relatively cheaply (about £25) via ebay five years ago, driving to suburban Cardiff to collect it from the seller. The typewriter had belonged to his late father, apparently a successful restauranteur. It’s one of the Ambassadors with a dual ribbon system: that is, it has the usual pair of spools for a standard cloth ribbon but also an additional, larger pair for a film or carbon ribbon. The latter ribbons are now all-but unobtainable, but this machine still had one installed, so I’ve been able to see the wonderfully crisp & clean type it can produce. Moreover, an original dust-cover was also included.

Writing Case

Pictured above, a leather zip-up writing case with some of its original contents: the little matching address-book; and the calendar showing one panel of the six on a folding card, running from ‘82 (presumably when the case was sold) to ‘87. The pad is a recent addition - a Wedgwood brand one (in ‘Duke’ size) which is probably a little older than the case–I would guess mid-’70s based on the 22p Woolworth’s price sticker on the back. The envelopes are the right size, but are from a different Waverley-branded stationery set. And the fountain pen, only placed there for the photo, is a Super Rotax 89, probably of ’70s vintage.

I’d not be at all surprised if many more writing cases were bought than actually used. I get the impression they were the sort of item that might serve as a vaguely impersonal gift to a recipient one didn’t know very well. In any event, it’s not difficult to find barely-used examples in good condition on ebay. In my experience they’re less often in evidence at charity shops or junkshops, though the one above was purchased from just such an establishment. There were de-luxe writing cases, but mine seems fairly cheaply-made, and must have been mid-market at best.

Moss Agate

For the duration of my marriage I wore a plain gold wedding ring on my left hand and a gold ring with a single flush-mounted one-carat diamond on my right. After my wife’s death, circumstances obliged me to sell my jewels (such as they were), and for eight years or so I went ringless.

Early last year it occurred to me I’d like to start wearing rings again. Rather than shepherd scant funds toward the purchase of an unimpressive gold ring or two, I opted instead to buy several inexpensive silver ones. In lieu of diamonds or sapphires, I sought out semi-precious stones: the likes of topaz and tourmaline; quartz & chalcedony.

Two of my purchases are pictured above. The stone on the left is a so-called ‘moss agate’. Agate, I gather, more properly denotes chalcedony with a banded patternation. I’m uncertain as to the proper designation of the stone on the right - with its brown colours it doesn’t exactly look mossy. In any case I very much like its quasi-pictorial appearance - almost resembling a landscape.

Baldfader

When I went to the barber’s on Valentine’s Day 2020, it didn’t occur to me that it may have been my last such visit. At the time I was in the habit of getting buzz-cuts every other month, which means I was ready for another one in April. By then, of course, the first round of Covid-related restrictions were in full effect. No barbers were open, nor would they be for some time therafter.

I decided I’d try cutting my own hair. I had some cordless clippers, acquired for facial-hair trimming. Alas, they proved to be quite unequal to the task at hand. In the end I resorted to shaving my head with a safety razor, which I found awkward and time-consuming to do. Nor were the results immediately encouraging: staring at an entirely bald pate in the mirror for the first time, I did not like what I saw.

But then, within a few days, with just a first hint of new growth in evidence, I felt it didn’t look bad at all. Being in possession of a big & bulby skull, I’d hitherto been apprehensive about exposing it more nakedly (progressive hair-loss, meanwhile, was giving me less choice in the matter). While weighing up the merits of a shorter hairstyle, it also occurred to me that I might, under the cover of lockdown isolation, try cultivating a moustache (a topic for another post).

Going on-line, I sought to buy some proper clippers. With a great many other people facing similar predicaments, supply was short, and, in some quarters, prices were inflated. At the Wahl website, from the limited stock they had available, I opted to buy a Baldfader Plus, a model apparently devised with close trimming of afro hair in mind, which mine (straight, fine & thinning) very much isn’t. I reckoned that if it could handle thicker hair with ease, mine oughtn’t pose it any problems.

Indeed it worked admirably well, and ever since I’ve been self-inflicting very short buzz-cuts every five weeks or so. Earlier this year I dropped & damaged the original clippers, after which they weren’t quite right. By way of replacement I ordered a second Baldfader.

Movement

When I still had my Nikon D80 camera, a favourite lens I often used with it was the 60mm f/2.8 Micro-Nikkor AF-D: a relatively inexpensive but excellent macro lens. Among the close-up shots I took with it is the one above of a Peseux calibre 320 Swiss watch movement that powered the timepiece I inherited from my father-in-law in 2007. It’s a cropped image including about 60% of the original frame.

He’d bought the watch in London in the late ’50s when he was still in the merchant marine. It was his prize possession: the one thing of value he retained through long spells of adversity, much of which was of the self-inflicted kind. When he died, his effects amounted to little more than a wallet, a Zippo lighter and the watch. I kept it for seven years or so, wearing it for about half that time, before passing it along to his grand-daughter.

TI-3500

If £98,376,102 were to be divided equally between 120,000 people, I wondered: how much would each person get? I went to my Texas Instruments TI-3500 calculator in search of an answer, which turned out to be £819.80. A lucky minority of 10,200 people could be given an extra penny.

The TI-3500 was introduced in late 1972 as part of Texas Instruments' Datamath line of devices. I bought one because I do like an orange ‘Panaplex’ display. Something with Nixie tubes might have been even nicer, but they’re highly collectable and consequently tend to be expensive.

As mentioned previously, I have an upstairs calculator and a downstairs one, with the TI-3500 currently fulfilling the latter role.

Eau de Parfum

Of all the stupid ideas for pastimes and hobbies I’ve come up with, the notion that I might dabble in perfumery must be up there with the most ridiculous of them. I had read a few fascinating books on the subject and didn’t see why I couldn’t try it for myself. Never mind letting a total lack of experience & ability stand in my way. Nor did I pause to reflect that, if anything, my olfactory acuity has tended to be below average.

I must have spent several hundred pounds stocking up on dozens of essential oils and essences, plus assorted bases & accessories; then going on to measure, mix, blend and sniff away for a month or two until an onslaught of migraines and the onset of new allergy symptoms pushed home the point that perhaps it wasn’t going to work out. Before giving up the ghost, I had managed to come up with a few concoctions I felt were worthwhile, the best of them an eau de perfum I made for my wife. Poured into a handmade bottle (ordered from a glassblower called Malcolm Sutcliffe, now seemingly retired), it formed part of a birthday present.

She was delighted with the gift, and, even if the fragrance might not have been something she’d otherwise have chosen for herself, she did enjoy wearing it from time to time. The bottle, with a small amount of the perfume left inside, ultimately became more of an ornament. Taking brightly backlit photographs of it brought out the beautiful detail within the glass that was less evident under normal illumination. The image above is a digital one taken with a Nikon D80, where the original frame was cropped and then subjected to a little more light photoshoppery.

Sputnik

When I bought a vintage Hungarian-made safety razor from an ebay seller, included with it was a single Спутник (Sputnik) Soviet-era blade. The front and back of the blade’s wrapper are shown above. The razor wasn’t a great success, providing so mild an attack it was laborious getting any kind of close shave with the thing. Perhaps it would have worked better with the Sputnik installed, but I wasn’t so brave as to try it. The razor did at least come in useful that once I shaved my head during the first Covid lockdown.

Baton Barbe

Last summer I bought a couple of ‘sticks’ of vintage French shaving soap from an ebay seller, intending in due course to use them. The soap boxes bore the Cadum brand, which is still very much current, though they don’t appear to make shaving products these days. As to how old the soaps might be I can only speculate. The packaging has, to my eye, more of a mid-20th-century than late-century look about it & at the very least it pre-dates the barcode era. A clue might be the blurb on one of the top flaps of each box: “Doublez la durée du baton barbe avec l’étui Bakélite” i.e. make the soap last twice as long by using a Bakelite case. Even by the ’60s Bakelite would surely have been considered somewhat old-fashioned.

Inside the boxes the soaps were foil-wrapped. One stick had a few small spots of surface discolouration which I cut off, but otherwise they looked and smelled just fine. The soap is medium-soft - not much firmer than cold butter - so was easily grated. I regretted not buying a third stick, as the total amount of soap wasn’t enough to fill the bowl I had in mind for it. I happened to have a puck of modern Erasmic soap handy, so grated that in together with the Cadum, pressing the resulting mixture into the bowl (hence its variegated appearance).

A couple of weeks on I’m very pleased with the combination. Its composite aroma is a straightforwardly old-school soap scent. It lathers readily and profusely, with smoothly comfortable shaves the result.

Mask

From my second visit to Venice I brought home a couple of carnival masks as souvenirs: a Pulcinella-type mask in green and gold for myself; and a full-face Columbina one, profusely decorated with feathers, as a gift for my wife. I’d set out on an aimless walk one morning while she lolled abed at the hotel and it caught my eye from the window of a workshop somewhere in the Dorsoduro district of the city.

For years the latter was part of our decor, displayed hanging on a wall in each of our various abodes. Of the several photos I took of it over that time, the one above is my favourite. Converting the original image to monochrome in Photoshop using a blue filter effect emphasised the faux-craquelure effect on the face and darkened the gold-painted visor and lips to satisfying effect. I still have the mask now, its feathers, alas, all full of dust, adorning a mannequin that stands in my study.

Nilgiri

When it comes to black tea from India, not for me the delicacy of a Darjeeling or the brisk astringency of an Assam - my preference is for nice cup of Nilgiri. A small, strong cup of the stuff on a Saturday morning does me the world of good. The tea shown above is an ‘Orchid’ Nilgiri from What Cha. The cup was made by Matthew Jones Ceramics.

My sensory apparatus for flavour & fragrace is by no means the most acute, and my descriptive vocabulary for it correspondingly weak. I’ve seen Nilgiri described as having “bold fruity and floral flavours — with hints of dusk orchid and woody plums” with a “nutty and spicy” aftertaste. I have to say that neither fruit nor flowers come to mind when I drink it. And I can’t recall ever having eaten an orchid. What does come to mind when I taste the stuff is a sense of mellow warmth & breadth, like a comforting embrace in beverage form. However inexact my apprehension of its niceties, it has become a firm favourite.

Cufflinks

A decade ago I happened upon the four pairs of cufflinks I owned at the time, and wondered if I ought to just throw them away. I hadn’t any double-cuffed shirts to use them in. Indeed, at no time in the preceding decade had I been in possession of more than two such shirts: why so many cufflinks? I’d bought one pair with the first of the shirts in Manchester the day before a wedding. The second pair I’d ‘won’ in an expensive Christmas cracker. The third were a gift from my sister; the fourth handed down from my father-in-law.

After a few years of being short of money I’d worn out most of my good clothes and had to resort to shopping for the cheaply cheerless at supermarkets and bargain outlets, which was dispiriting. Before then I’d looked askance at buying clothes second-hand from charity shops, but my circumstances encouraged me to take a closer look at what they had. At the Heart Foundation shop in Chepstow one day I found a few good-quality shirts in my size for a few pounds apiece: that two of them were double-cuffed presented no obstacle what with all the cufflinks at home.

Thus began my collection of charity-shop shirts. With the broad social tendency towards more casual attire, cufflinks aren’t exactly de rigueur, and hence cufflink-compatible shirts are less in demand and often priced appealingly. I must have at least a dozen of the things now, not to mention the several others I’ve worn to destruction. In the picture above is the left cuff on a Pierre Cardin shirt (or a rip-off of the same) bought for a couple of pounds pre-pandemic in North Bristol. The cufflink shown is one from two similar pairs I bought last year from my local charity shop. They’re ‘silver tone’ metal set with some kind of resin or plastic insert.

I don’t need any kind of spcial occasion to wear them, and will happily work from home wearing them, or head out to the supermarket all cufflinked up.

Clock

Like a great many others my working routine changed dramatically in the spring of 2020. Working from home, which had hitherto been a once-in-a-while thing, became the inescapable norm. It took me quite some time to adjust. While the individual hours passed no more slowly than they ever had, the working week as a whole felt somehow distended, with each working day barely distinguishable from the next.

The thought occurred to me to get a clock for my office/study at home that might serve as an immediate reminder of my whereabouts in the week. Ebay naturally had what I sought: a wall-clock whose circumference was divided into seven rather then twelve, and with a single hand completing each rotation in a hundred and sixty eight hours. The specific clock I bought was one primarily intended as an aid for people with dementia, but did just as well to assuage my short-term disorientation.

After nearly two years at home I returned to working at the office in the spring of last year - albeit for only two days a week. The clock has stayed in its place, even though my need for it has lessened since then.

Farls

A ‘bakestone’ is a type of heavy flat griddle. The one I have is a disc with a cut-out handle 10" in diameter and ⅓" thick. It had been my maternal grandmother’s. After she died, it went to my aunt, who later passed it on to me after I’d started making bara planc, a traditional Welsh style of bread not baked in an oven but cooked on the stove-top. I had at first been making it in a cast-iron pan, but a bakestone, being thicker, provides a more uniform heat better suited to the task. Bara by the way simply means ‘bread’, and planc is one of the Welsh terms for a bakestone.

Back in the mists of time bakestones were actual stones, but in more recent centuries cast iron and mild steel have been the preferred materials. Mine has no kind of maker’s mark or other sign of its origin, and I was for a time curious as to how old it might be. The mystery was solved when, talking to my Dad one day about my bread-making activities, he told me he’d made it ca. 1970. He’d just begun his first post-apprenticeship job as a “maintenance fitter” at a factory. Juniors like him were sometimes given busy-work to keep them out of harm’s way, and one such task he’d been assigned was making bakestones by cutting them out of mild steel plate. Of the several he made, one became a gift to his mother-in-law.

Making bara planc is easy enough but takes a few hours and calls for a certain amount of premeditation. Soda bread on the other hand can be rustled up more spontaneously, and is easier still, with a dough very quickly fashioned by mixing buttermilk into flour with a little salt and a little more baking soda added. Once the dough is pressed on to the stone and cut into ‘farls’ (as depicted above), one’s warm, freshly-cooked bread is soon ready to enjoy.

Straight Razors

Pictured above are my smallest and one of my largest straight razors, both of which still happen to have their original boxes. The length of such blades (with few exceptions) tends to be a consistent three inches or so, with their size instead reckoned as the distance from spine to edge - traditionally expressed in eighths or sixteenths of an inch. The French-made Hamon razor at the top of the picture is a mere 7/16, while The 1000 razor below it, made by Taylor’s in Sheffield is 13/16. Even skinnier and stouter sizes can be found, but are relatively uncommon.

I spotted the Hamon in an antique shop in Abergavenny back in 2014, but didn’t get around to using it for years afterwards. Stamped on one side of the tang is Hamon Fabricant Paris France, while on the reverse are the numbers 42/13 (the significance of which eludes me). It has a so-called near-wedge grind, which is to say the blade has an only very slightly concave cross-section, not so far off flatly triangular: which makes it a little stiff and unyielding to shave with. The scales (i.e. the handle) are made of what I believe to be pressed horn. I suspect it may date back to the turn of the 20th Century.

The other razor was a 2021 eBay purchase. The 1000 is etched into its blade with 👁️ Witness 1000 stamped on the same side of the tang, and Taylor Sheffield England on the other. The blade is full-hollow ground, meaning its profile is markedly concave and very thin towards its edge, lending it a responsive flexibility in use (if also a certain fragility). Its scales appear to be hardened rubber, aka ‘Vulcanite’ or ‘Ebonite’. My guess is that it’s of inter-war manufacture.

Both razors were inexpensive (around £10-£15) but had to be sent off for honing to get their edges shave-ready, thereby practically doubling the cost. Both Hamon and Taylor’s are still current brands now, although neither have made razors for many years. The former shifted their focus to supplies for the fashion trade; while kitchen knives and the like are still sold under the latter name.

After beginning to use a safety razor, searching for information about them on-line led me to forum posts extolling the virtues of straight razors. I was intrigued, if apprehensive, at the prospect of using one: when I found a couple of cheap straights at a local antiques market I thought I’d have a go. Those first attempts were half-hearted, however, and proved unsatisfactory. Only in the second winter of the pandemic did I come back to the cut-throat experience, and throwing more time and money at it provided me with much better results. Now I prefer to shave with a straight whenever time permits.

Screwpull

I admit to feeling a sentimental attachment to certain objects. This oftenest happens with useful items I’ve owned for a long time. A case in point is the somewhat distressed-looking ‘Screwpull’ corkscrew shown above, of which I am very fond. I’ve had it for twenty-three years, and it has opened many hundreds of bottles of wine. Only on a handful of occasions has it failed me (and then only due to operator error, or a bad cork). Every other time it has been a joy to use.

Along with the joy, other feelings can sometimes be disturbed when I pick it up, like the lees in the sort of fine wines I can’t afford. It was a wedding gift from an old friend - but now I’ve been a widower for a decade, and the friend and I have long since fallen out of touch. Such things provoke reflection. I won’t be needing a corkscrew for the screw-cap bottle of New Zealand Pinot Noir that’s next to be opened. In line after that, though, is a nice-looking bottle of Barbera d’Asti, which will need uncorking. When I open it I’ll raise a glass for my late wife, and for Dr. M., whose excellent gift the corkscrew was.

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 be made with a built-in cassette-player. This was less than ideal as I had given away or sold all my cassettes in 1998. Its successor had a CD player, which suited me very well indeed. My current car, however, latterly-acquired, is of recent enough manufacture to have no on-board device for playing physical media. It has a bluetooth option if one wants to play music from one’s telephone (I do not). And it has a passive USB connection and a good old-fashioned line-in socket. Plus there’s a radio offering DAB and FM/AM reception.

For me, this new-fangled state of affairs feels like a backward step. Given my reluctance to use a phone for music, an iPod-esque device seems like it might be the best option. I don’t currently own one, but as I ponder what might work best for my needs, I’ve been using as a stopgap a contraption intended for a slightly different purpose: a Tascam DR-05X Linear PCM Recorder. As well as recording, it can play back mp3 and wav files perfectly well (though without any fancy playlist or shuffle options), and it’s equipped with a headphone/line-out socket. I bought it last year intending to use it for recording music from vinyl (which I still have yet to do).

Between ten and twenty years ago I maintained a music library comprising mostly mp3s and flacs, some of which were ripped from my own CDs, and some obtained via other means. More recently I have left that collection gather digital dust, so the tracks available for loading on to the Tascam reflect an outdated picture of my musical tastes. While it has been a pleasure to re-acquaint myself with songs I’ve not heard for years (for example) I’ll need to fire up EAC and get ripping the CDs I’ve acquired over the past decade to get my motoring playlist up to date.

SM5

On the tabletop in the picture above is an Olympia SM5 typewriter resting on a thick felt pad intended to slightly deaden the noise and vibration it produces. Also identifiable (moving clockwise around the typewriter), are a roll of tape; a fountain pen; a couple of letters in need of reply; a sheet of Air Mail / Par Avion stickers; the base of a lamp; a notebook lying on top of something else (loose paper, perhaps); two bottles of Rohrer & Klingner fountain pen ink with a roll of kraft paper behind them; a box of envelopes and some special-issue postage stamps; a dip-pen; a single folded napkin; another fountain pen and a pair of scissors.

The table is ostensibly a dining table but is seldom used for eating and most often employed instead for writing, hence the profusion of stationery.

It was an SM5 that got me properly started with typewriters. I’d first owned an ugly early ’60s Underwood that I’d fought a losing struggle to keep working, but the Olympia, acquired at a junkshop in 2015 - for all of £17 - was a real a joy to use. Within a few more years I’d accumulated a small typewriter collection. Not long after I’d given that SM5 away to a relative, I bought another (the one in the picture), this time from ebay. It doesn’t look as good in colour as in monochrome, which disguises its blotchy nicotine patina and the spots of paint-loss: for all that, the machine still works like a charm.

TLR

Seeing Rolleiflex cameras used in movies made it look like TLR photography would be great fun - Fred Astaire photographing Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face, for example. When I properly took to using film in 2008, I wondered if might try it for myself. Not quite willing to invest in a Rollei, I nevertheless very much wanted a camera with a crank to advance the film, so looked instead at the various Japanese-made TLRs, and settled for a late-’50s Yashica Mat. This I obtained via ebay from a lady whose partner had apparently used it when illustrating the motorcycle repair manuals he wrote in the ’60s.

My Mat is shown above, dressed up somewhat with a lens hood, and with a corrective optic of some sort (intended to help with taking close-up shots, as I recall) placed in front of the upper lens (which otherwise would be less protuberant). I used the camera a good deal for about a year, and it was exactly as much fun as it thought it would be: I always loved using the crank. Then, however, the shutter started to stick sometimes at slower speeds. Learning that there was a repairman still active who had worked in the Yashica factory, I sent it off to him for a CLA: quite a costly exercise with the transatlantic shipping factored in. It worked very well again after that, but only for another three or four years, whereupon the shutter began sticking anew. Subsequently the camera was relegated to a drawer, one from which it has yet to re-emerge.

Sadly, I think my TLR days are now behind me. I shoot film so seldom these days that using a single SLR seems quite sufficient. Plus the costs of film and processing seem higher than ever. Still, I’ll miss the thrill of looking down on to the focussing screen and seeing a bright image on it (such as the slightly out-of-focus one below), and of clicking the shutter and turning that crank.

Soap and Brush

For a proper traditional shaving experience one needs a razor, a brush and some soap. Having tried out seven or eight different brushes over the last dozen years, for the last while I’ve settled on two that I alternate between. The one shown above is a Portuguese-made Semogue 1250 bristle brush with a wooden handle. It cost me less than a tenner and I’ve been using it for two and a half years. The other is an Omega 108 Professional brush (bristle again, but made in Italy) with a slightly larger knot and a plain dark blue plastic handle. It cost the same as the Semogue and I’ve been using it for twice as long.

Also made in Italy is my current choice of soap: Cella, specifically their regular ‘Extra Extra Purissima’ variety in the red plastic container, with its simple but eminently agreeable sweet almond aroma. I stockpiled three tubs of it when Connaught Shaving (also my source for the brushes) had it on offer the October before last (for less than £4 per unit, delivery included). Each tub lasts me several months and I’m still working my way through the second of the three. One of the good things about Cella is its easy-going nature, with even a somewhat underworked lather providing plenty of slickness for a first-rate shave with a straight razor.

Snake-plant

My history of houseplant husbandry has been characterised by failure and misfortune. I brought home my first two plants Sid (a yucca, named after Sid Vicious) and Syd (a weeping fig named after Syd Barrett) to the student flat I shared in Wimbledon, ca. 1989. While Sid lasted a couple of years (thanks more to my flatmate’s attentions than my own); Syd’s time with us was all too brief. Next was Susan the dragon tree, who may have had great potential had I not been obliged to abandon her in Bristol when I moved overseas in ‘95. And so the sad stories have sporadically continued.

My only current indoor vegetation is a snake-plant (or Sansevieria) I call Ray - a 50th birthday gift from my niece. Ray has done remarkably well to withstand four and a half years of my inept care, meanwhile steadfastly photosynthesizing and sprouting the occasional new leaf. A few weeks ago, however, Ray brought forth a new stalk bearing buds that promised to open out into flowers. And that’s exactly what happened: the first blooms appeared while I was away at a wedding last weekend; the marriage, moreover, of the same niece whose birthday gift Ray had been.

Snakeplants seldom flower (I have read), and their doing so tends to be a sign of their being “mildly and continually stressed” (i.e. it has to live with me). The spindly little white blossoms are nothing much to look at, but their perfume is exquisite, somewhat lily-like but subtler, less strident: a very beautiful surprise.

White Right Hand

On my mantelpiece there stands a glossy white right hand with an inexpertly-repaired break in its little finger. I’m not sure what it’s made of. Fibreglass, perhaps: it’s quite lightweight. Within its hollow wrist is a metal piece where it’s meant to be attached to a matching arm. It belonged to a mannequin, the remainder of which stands in my study/office.

Its working life had been spent in the Herbert Lewis department store in Chepstow. Having traded for some 140 years, the shop closed for good in 2018. I’d only seldom shopped there - now & then I’d pick up something from their kitchenware department - but I was sorry to see it go. As if to stress the finality of their closing down sale, not only was the stock all marked down, but certain of their fixtures & fittings bore price-tags too, the mannequins included. Of those that remained, the one that seemed in the best shape set me back about £30.

It’s a female mannequin with a featureless face. A metal bar jutting up from its oval glass base into its right leg holds it upright. Not only was the right hand damaged, but the corresponding wrist-joint was missing, with the hand merely taped to the end of its arm. Removing the tape, I merely detached the hand. I’d imagined the mannequin might serve as a quirky piece of decor; a conversation-piece. On taking it home, however, and re-assembling it, I felt a rush of buyer’s remorse. It just looked creepy and out of place.

Up into a corner of my study it went, where it still stands now, dressed in a long white shirt and adorned with a Venetian mask. It’s somewhere to put all the neckties I no longer wear: a cautionary example of a misjudged impulse-buy.

Safety Razor

For decades I unwittingly bought in to the fictional narrative of progress pushed by the marketing departments of Gillette and their competitors that two blades were better than one; that three were better than two - and so forth. “The first blade shaves you close, the second closer still” according to one of their slogans. The ridiculousness (and needless expense) of the multi-blade arms race slowly became more apparent to me over time, yet it wasn’t until about twelve years ago that I tried stepping back to using just the one double-edged blade in a safety razor.

My first such razor was a cheap, plastic-handled Wilkinson Sword model. After a little experimentation I found it gave me better and more enjoyable shaves than the cartridge razors I’d been using before. The only downside was that it took a little more time. In the years that followed I acquired a few other inexpensive razors, with the one shown above being the latest of them. It’s a Fatip Piccolo I bought four years ago. Also in the picture is a pack of ten Japanese-made Feather New Hi-Stainless blades.

I’ve more recently moved on to using straight razors, but even now there are occasions when I need to shave fairly early in the morning while sub-optimally caffeinated - which is when I reach for the Piccolo. As the name implies it’s a compact implement, but nickel-plated brass handle lends it a pleasing heft in the hand. I’ve used it hundreds of times and hope to use it hundreds of times more.

The Good Companion

I am in possession of no fewer than eleven mechanical typewriters in more or less working order, and another two that don’t currently work at all. One could all too easily argue it’s a few more than I really need. The machine shown above is my last-but-one acquisition, a 1937 Imperial ‘The Good Companion’ portable I bought about a year ago for the bargain price of £25. Despite its age it’s in handsome cosmetic condition and it still works well.

Among the symbols on its keyboard are acute and grave accents; a diaresis, tilde, cedilla and circumflex; and upside-down exclamation and question marks (¡/¿), such as could be used to type French, Portuguese or Spanish text. I wonder, given its date of manufacture, if it may have been intended for use in connection with the then-current Spanish Civil War.

‘The Good Companion’ as a product name was inspired by J.B. Priestley’s bestselling 1929 novel The Good Companions. After buying the typewriter, I bought a copy of the book. It proved to be a mostly upbeat comedy-drama following the vicissitudes of life on the road with an itinerant concert party (i.e. a vaudeville/variety troupe). It’s a story which hasn’t perhaps aged quite as gracefully as the typewriter, but I did enjoy it nevertheless.

Telephone Pen

John Heath is my father’s name, so when I saw a box of John Heath brand ‘Telephone Pen’ dip pen nibs on ebay I felt inclined to buy them.

‘JOHN HEATH’S FIRST CLASS EXTRA STRONG PENS.’ says the back of the box ‘Combine great thickness of metal with perfect flexibility and smoothness of action, and are far more durable than any others.’ A bold claim: I have my doubts.

‘All the latest improvements in steel pen machinery’ it continues ‘have been applied to the Manufacture of these pens; every process is conducted with extra care by the best “hands” and the PENS UNDERGO A MOST RIGID EXAMINATION before they are sent out. Purchasers will please observe that NONE ARE GENUINE without a fac-simile of the signature of JOHN HEATH on the label of each box … to imitate which is FORGERY.’

Olympia CD-520

How many of a given item does it take to constitute a collection? If, for instance, having purchased a 1970s desk calculator from ebay, one then bought another; and then a third: does that count? My flimsy rationalization is that I have one downstairs, one upstairs, and a spare…

The device pictured is an Olympia CD-520, made in the USA (according to the Calcuseum) from 1974. At present it’s my upstairs calculator. It offers the standard basic arithmetic functions and practically nothing else. The user may choose between calculating to 0, 2, 3 or 4 decimal places: there is no full floating point option. It’s an early and an underpowered enough machine that harder calculations can take a significant fraction of a second to execute. Its orange ‘Panaplex’ display was my main reason for acquring this particular model.

Sometimes it’s reluctant to switch on at all, as if waking only with great difficulty from the deepest of slumbers, thanks to some elderly capacitor within approaching the end of its useful life. That third, spare calculator may yet have its chance to shine. Of course I could just use the calculator app on my phone like someone who has acknowledged the arrival of the 21st century, but where’s the fun in that?

Moka Express

For about twenty years - from my late teens - I was a coffee-drinker. To begin with, I considered it in utilitarian terms as the least disagreeable of the caffeine delivery methods I knew. At length, though, I came to discover the delights of espresso, and thereafter grew to be more of a devotee, if never a true connoisseur. A gruelling case of the flu in the opening months of 2007 brought that to a halt. Something about the illness made me feel hypersensitive to the effects of caffeine, which I forswore entirely for a while, afterwards switching entirely to tea-drinking once my capacity to tolerate the stimulant had returned.

This year, however, I’ve begun to enjoy a daily coffee again, courtesy of a diminutive one-cup Bialetti Moka Express contraption and a cheap bean grinder. The latter was a new departure as back in the old days I simply bought my coffee ready-ground. I’d also bought a pair of fancy cups from Hot Pottery. Beginning with my old standby Lavazza Qualità Rossa, I’ve branched out to try a number of the more readily-available espresso beans, of which my favourite so far has to be The Bold blend by Roastworks. By an irritating coincidence, mere weeks in to my new coffee regime, I came down with a case of flu (my first since 2007), which temporarily derailed my explorations - but I’m back on track again now.