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.