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, but rather a Swedish jultomte. It’s a twenty-year-old photo I’ve posted on-line before.

Re-hashing what I wrote back then: Sweden has only partly embraced and assimilated the standardized North American version of a North-Pole-based Santa Claus. A near-equivalent figure there is jultomten, the christmas gnome. A Tomte was, traditionally, a little fellow who dwelt under the floorboards in a homestead’s barn; a guardian spirit who looked after the farm’s people and their livestock. All he asked in return was that a bowl of porridge be left out for him at Yuletide. In the latter part of the 19th century, tomte began to take on, in the popular imagination, some of the attributes of St. Nicholas, coming to be associated with the bringing of Christmas gifts…

The one seen here graced the festive window display of a shop on Borgmästaregatan in Karlskrona, which sold horse-riding tack and pet-related paraphernalia. He didn’t re-appear the December after I’d first written about him: I hope I wasn’t in any way responsible for his retirement.

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.

I Killed Your Dog

The inevitable ‘best of 2023’ listicles that proliferated on-line a couple of weeks ago served as a reminder of just how little new music I’d listened to this year. Feeling older is inescapable, but one can very easily forget just how out-of-touch one is. Of the dozen or so new albums I have heard in full during the year so far, my current favourite is one that made an appearance on several of those lists: I Killed Your Dog by L’Rain.

Much was made, in the press accompanying the album’s release, of how different it is in terms of mood and subject-matter from the same artist’s previous record (Fatigue: 2021; as mentioned on my old blog here). Indeed it is a brighter and cleaner affair, including some tracks – like ‘5 to 8 Hours a Day (WWwaG)’ and ‘Clumsy’ – which would have sounded quite out of place on the last album. My first impression, however, was of the similarities between the two releases, of their shared sound-world and the consistent compositional ‘voice’ in which they both speak.

I love I Killed Your Dog every bit as much as I loved Fatigue, which is just as well, as certain aspects of its release irked me. Again, it was not made available on CD, and I somewhat resented paying £27 for a piece of plastic in a paper sleeve in a cardboard one. The paper sleeve, moreover, wasn’t even usefully anti-static. My copy was on coloured vinyl, in a shade optimistically called ‘oxblood’. While it can look vaguely reddish on the turntable, held up to the light it seems to me a translucent shade resembling magenta, quite unlike anything an ox might bleed.

I should perhaps add, by way of disclaimer, that your dog is almost certainly fine, and, if not, it was nothing to do with me.

Single Malt

Is single malt scotch whisky worse than it was when I first started drinking it, or have my tastes just changed? As I more often favour rum these days over whisky, it must to some extent be the latter – but I meanwhile believe that some of my former favourites really aren’t what they once were. I was interested to read this article which corroborated my suspicions about certain former favourites (such as Talisker, Highland Park and Lagavulin) having gone downhill.

Scotch was still emerging from a trough of (relative) unpopularity in 1989/90 when I started sampling it in earnest. I was still a student, and, after having been virtuously frugal during my first two years at university, I succumbed to an inadvisable profligacy in the third. A certain proportion of the debt I racked up was attributable to the couple of dozen single malts I sampled through that year. My provisional conclusion at the end of it: nearly all of them were delicious.

Frugality was thrust back upon me for some time afterwards while I paid off those debts. After belatedly clambering back into the black in the later ’90s I was fortunate to be able to afford some wonderful bottles of defunct malts, such as my very favourite, Port Ellen; before stocks dwindled further, while demand rose, ultimately pushing prices beyond my improved means.

After another lengthy spell when I consumed very little of the stuff, I have in recent years resumed my single malt habit of old in a small way. A counter-example to the whiskies that are worse then they used to be is good old dependable Glenmorangie 10 y.o. This was the first single malt I ever tried (my father had been given some, and let me have a tiny taste) and it’s still his favourite, and one I also enjoy to this day: I’m slowly working my way through a bottle and will be having a glass at the weekend.

Payment On Demand

The image above is another film still scanned from a set of mounted slides I acquired about a decade ago. On the slide the film’s title is given in German as Die Ehrgeizige (which, according to Google Translate, means ‘The Ambitious One’) whereas the original English title was Payment on Demand. It was a 1951 release directed by Curtis Bernhardt which starred Bette Davis.

The project’s working title had been The Story of a Divorce, but both the title and the ending were subject to last minute changes imposed by Howard Hughes. A poster for the movie showed a stylized depiction of Davis in an off-the-shoulder black dress with the line “I made him now I’ll break him”, while the theatrical trailer enticed audiences with “The One Sin No Woman Ever Forgives!… – Unleashes An Emotional Conflict… The Fury Of Which The Screen Has Never Known!”

Smooth Ivory

Since last writing about mourning stationery, I have acquired a third set of the stuff, this time in a box commemorating the life of Queen Victoria. It seems reasonable to assume it might have been sold within a year or two of the monarch’s demise, and could very well be in the region of a hundred and twenty years old.

The watermark in this ‘Smooth Ivory’ paper matches the text on the bands wrapped around it. Looking in the usual reference, my best guess is that it was made by Edward Collins & Sons of Kelvindale, Glasgow. Stationery with a broad black border like this would have been seen as appropriate for use in the earliest or deepest stages of grief; although in this case the set may just have been kept as a slightly morbid item of memorabilia.

Many of the envelopes have sealed themselves shut, but most of the sheets of paper are still in great shape, and present an appropriately smooth surface to the pen.

Atlas

There can surely be little demand for paper atlases in this age of zoomable and seamlessly uncreased on-line maps. One of the kinds of fool I am is the kind who would buy a used copy of The Times Concise Atlas of the World (9th ed., 2004) at a charity shop. With a sharp depreciation from its original R.R.P. of £75, I paid £3 for mine, which turned out to be no special bargain, merely the going rate for a type of book that people are finding it difficult to give away. Having said that, a 14th edition of the same work was published as recently as 2020, so presumably there was some expectation that they still might find buyers.

(The same year that this edition was published, Google acquired Keyhole Inc., the original developers of what would become Google Earth.)

Relatively concise it may be, but it’s still a fairly hefty tome. For now I’m keeping it on this shelf, but that may need a re-think. The book falls into three sections: 70 pages of preliminary material (satellite imagery, geological & geographical information, etc.); 200 pages of maps; and a 142-page index. The index is a marvel in itself and a fine exemplar of a declining art: 7 columns per page of small type including a total of over 130,000 place-names. Both the small town where I live and the smaller one where I grew up can be found among them.

TMAX 3200

Looking back at the heyday of my experimentation with film photography (ca. 2008-13), it’s disconcerting to see how many of the types of film I tried have since gone out of production. One which bucked that trend, becoming unavailable, only later to be brought back on to the market, was Kodak T-MAX P3200. This is an ideal film to use in lower-light conditions, and hence a good option (in the Northern Hemisphere) at this time of year.

The present images are from a roll I shot in Karlskrona, Sweden (where I then lived), one drab December afternoon. I used my Nikon FM3a - quite likely with the 45mm f/2.8 P lens. I didn’t in this case attempt to develop the film myself at home, sending it off instead to a company called Crimson (evidently still in business). A couple more shots from the same roll: 1, 2.

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.

IARC

The late, lamented jaimie branch’s album FLY or DIE II was the first one of several issued by the Chicago-based International Anthem Recording Company (IARC for short) that I’ve acquired over the last few years. Four of them are shown above.

• Suite for Max Brown by Jeff Parker & the New Breed (IARC0029, 2020). This album by the fromer Tortoise guitarist & friends is a recent addition to my shelves but is the oldest of the four. I heard some of it soon after its release, only to make the mistake of putting off getting a copy. Having belatedly rectified the matter, I can recommend Gnarciss as an example track.
• Open the Gates by Irreversible Entanglements (IARC0048, 2021) was the third album by this remarkable band, the second one to come my way. Its eponymous opening track sets up the mood perfectly. Their most recent album Protect Your Light (issued under the Impulse! imprint) is also right up my street.
• In These Times by Makaya McCraven (IARC0059, 2022) was my favourite album of last year. It’s another one where the title-track is a beauty. Like other several other IARC issues it’s a joint venture with other record companies, in this case Nonesuch and XL Recordings.
• There is Only Love and Fear (IARC0064, 2023) by Bex Burch is the latest of the company’s offerings to reach me. The opening number Dawn Blessings gives an idea of its mellow, earth-toned delights.

Golden Cenarth

At The Marches Delicatessen in Monmouth the other Saturday I continued my haphazard exploration of the world of artisanal cheese with the acquisition of a wedge of Caws Dyfi and a pack of Golden Cenarth, both made here in Wales. The former, a hard sheepsmilk cheese resembling an Italian pecorino, was interesting, with a bold & lingering taste that was a little intense for my liking – but I think I could appreciate it as an addition to richly-flavoured dishes.

The latter is more my style. I’d previously tried the same company’s Perl Wen which I’d also enjoyed, but I like this one better still. It’s a softish cheese, rind-washed with cider, exhibiting what its makers describe as an ‘unique savouryness’ – certainly a full but not overpowering flavour, which, alas, I’m not quite getting in its entirety thanks to a slight head-cold I’ve picked up. Even so, it’s a cheese I’ll be trying again.

Stamps

I’m grateful to my Canadian correspondent for sending a letter in an envelope (part of which is pictured above) decorated with a veritable gallery in the form of an artful arrangment of nine postage stamps.

My friends were striving for comedic rather than artistic effect when (many years and many addresses ago) they posted me a single leaf of paper with twenty 1p stamps affixed to it. I was suitably amused, but would understand if the postal worker who was obliged to frank them all might not have found it so funny.

Plus Fabric

“How much simple inexpensive pleasure there is to be had in writing, or receiving, a letter on paper so smooth to the pen, so crisp to handle…” so runs some of Spicers advertising copy from 1958. The box pictured above matches the packaging design they used at that time (but could easily be later). By then, Spicers must have been one of the main rivals in the writing paper business to market leaders John Dickinson & Co. ‘Plus Fabric’ survives to this day as a brand for envelopes; as does a wholesaling company who have inherited the Spicers name.

One of the former paper-making concern’s productions was the ca. 1950 sample-book whose cover is shown below, including within it “the majority of the usual writing, printing, wrapping and speciality papers”. Among them are some hand-made sheets with Hodgkinson & Co. watermarks, but, as far as I can tell, there is no ‘Plus Fabric’.

Shelf Portrait #6

Pictured above is one of four shelves in the bookcases upstairs reserved for larger-format volumes, most of them art-books. I’ve owned a couple of them for nearly thirty years: the Odilon Redon exhibition catalogue and, tenth from the left, The Three Golden Keys by Peter Sís, a children’s book I bought for my niece that I loved so much I went back to get a copy for myself. Next but one to its right is the most recently-acquired on the shelf – another exhibition catalogue, this one devoted to the work of the Belgian artist Léon Spilliaert.

Half of the remaining titles were accumulated during my years in Sweden. The first five from the left fall into that category (no. 5, with the blank orange spine is a book about the work of Hungarian artist István Orosz), as do the volumes about Paula Rego and Remedios Varo. Slightly later arrivals reflecting some current fixations include Silvie Turner’s The Book of Fine Paper and The Typewriter: a Graphic History of the Beloved Machine by Janine Vangool.

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?

Havana 3 a.m.

Above is the elegant cover design of a UK pressing of the Cuban bandleader Perez Prado’s 1956 album Havana 3 a.m.: a recent vinyl acquisition. The original cover featured a scantily-clad dancer and a percussionist, which may have been a bit much for the buttoned-up Brits of the day. Even so, it is (I think) a better representation of the frequently raucous & unsubtle music on the disc than the image shown here.

While it’s not without its elegant moments, the main musical ingredients are blaring horns and insistent percussion–combined in forceful, spacious arrangements, accompanied here and there by piano, and punctuated by the grunts and whoops of Prado himself. It’s music made for the intoxicated & sweaty half-dressed reveller, and to my mind has more in common with, say, James Brown than it does with Frank Sinatra.

Sea Salt & Chardonnay Wine Vinegar

I am in full agreement with the many enthusiasts who rate the ‘Irresistible’ Sea Salt & Chardonnay Wine Vinegar crisps sold at Co-Op as one of the pinnacles of British snack manufacture. Perhaps I wouldn’t go quite as far as the expert author behind the British Crisps blog, who reckons them “not for the lighthearted, but for the more hedonistic crisp aficionados,” adding that “It’s unlikely you would want these on a daily basis, thanks to their consciousness-altering ferocity, but as an occasional reminder of what life can be like, these are perfect.” Hyperbole, perhaps, but they are genuinely very good.

As the packaging rather redundantly states, they are made “With a sea salt and Chardonnay white wine vinegar seasoning”: a simple and savoury combination, which, crucially, is freely enough applied to threaten tongue damage, lending the crisps a highly satisfying salt-and-sour punch. As is commonplace, similar variations on the same theme are sold by competing supermarkets, quite possibly even originating in the same factory–yet none are quite the same. The next best, to my taste, are the Aldi equivalents, which are good enough to be an acceptable alternative at a pinch.

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.

Bowersburn Princess

A good deal of stationery, it seems, was marketed specifically with women in mind. There were sets of paper & envelopes with soft-focus photos of flowers on the box; with floral patterns on the paper itself; or in stereotypically feminine shades such as pinks, peaches and pale purples. Once upon a time, only white, off-white or pale blue paper would have been deemed ‘manly’. Judging by the remains of mid-20th-Century stationery to be found on eBay, the Scottish firm of MacNiven and Cameron appear to have been especially prone to these approaches, with their Waverley and Bowersburn brands very often dressed up in flowers & frills.

The Bowersburn Princess set shown above (“the answer to all correspondence”) is rather plain stuff, and not of the highest quality, which has been presented in a box with a floral design. It is also curiously fragrant. Some paper was sold as scented, but there is rather more of it, like this, which doesn’t boast of any particular aroma, but which nevertheless retains some vestige of perfume, whether from its manufacture or subsequent storage. D. Michael Stoddart, in his book The Scented Ape, wrote that in “…Victorian England, civet was kept in a small box in the writing desks of the gentry to perfume writing paper and envelopes”. Perhaps manufacturers or wholesalers used some similar trick to keep their stock smelling sweet.

Diary

One Saturday morning this summer in a Chepstow charity shop I spotted a set of six small old books. On a closer look I saw they collectively made up a Victorian edition of Samuel Pepys' famous Diary. The asking price was £5 per volume, which didn’t strike me as excessive, so I brought them home.

Although this edition was published in 1889, it seems my newly-acquired set wasn’t purchased until six years later–if the inscription in each volume is anything to go by: Robert H. Hobart Cust / October 1895. Mr. Cust also glued his bookplate inside the cover of each book. His name was distinctive enough that I felt there was a chance the internet might be able to tell me more about him. Indeed so - born in 1860, he later made a name for himself as an art historian, publishing his first book in 1906.

Despite his historical vocation, his interest in 17th-Century English history can’t have been too acute, as it was obvious that no-one had ever read this copy of Pepys' Diary all the way through, with many of its pages still un-cut. Hoping to rectify that, I made a start on it a few months ago, and, after some time away from the book, have just begun Vol. III, which opens toward the end of 1664, not long before the turmoil of the ‘65 outbreak of plague in London.

Superbitch!

Yesterday brought another birthday, my fifty-fifth. From an earlier such occasion (no. 42), the self-portrait above. My Nikon F80 was loaded with one last roll of Kodachrome that I needed to finish off and get processed while the service was still available. I elected to use the remaining twenty-odd exposures for some selfies, taking them the old fashioned way using a self-timer.

The results were regrettably poor–an ignominious end to my Kodachrome journey. Sensing, even as I was taking the shots, that I was failing to put my subject at his ease, I took a last couple with my face obscured with a child’s football that had found its way into our garden: those weren’t quite so bad. The Superbitch! shirt, by the way, was one that my wife had bought for herself from a market stall in Sweden, but that I ended up wearing more than her.

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.

Uncatalogued

After a tedious yet oddly satisfying exercise of ‘stock-taking’ my music collection and updating its on-line representation at discogs.com, I was left with some seventeen CDs and LPs which I was unable to find in that database, voluminously extensive though it is. Discogs' coverage is less complete with respect to classical than the other styles of music on my shelves; and, I suspect, the site’s usage must be less widespread outside the Anglophone world than within it: in any event, most of the uncatalogued seventeen are classical releases from non-English speaking countries.

Six of the CDs in question are shown in the poor-quality photo above. Left to right, from the top:

• An album of piano trios by Russian composers issued on the Cologne-based C-AVI label in 2014.
• On a label affiliated with the Museum & Estates of the Palace of Versailles, a recital disc of 18th-century French harpsichord music. This one’s a 2023 release so maybe it’ll appear at the site in due course.
• Also French, on the now-defunct Timpani label, a delightful album of chamber works by the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů. Dating back to 2007, this disc’s chances of turning up at Discogs seem slimmer.
• An album bringing together two of the chamber works composed by the Bohemian-born Antonín Rejcha, performed by Czech musicians on the Praga Digitals label. Despite all those mitteleuropean associations, the label is another French one. Rejcha himself ultimately settled in Paris, where he became known as Antoine Reicha.
• From Warsaw, on the CD Accord label, the seventh and last in a series of releases devoted to the string quartets of Mieczysław Weinberg (Wajnberg in Polish orthography). A few of the others in the series can be found at Discogs, so perhaps this one will follow suit in time.
• A 2-CD set of compositions by Alfred Schnittke, in classic recordings issued by the Russian Melodiya label. This one only seems to have been available for rather a short time, so perhaps there are relatively few in circulation.

I would add them to Discogs myself, but I already have a full-time job. Plus I’m somewhat fearful of inadvertently transgressing the site’s norms in some unforgivable way and incurring the wrath of one or more of the gatekeepers there.

Sencha of the Earth

Having gained a taste for plain, inexpensive green teas, it took me quite a while longer to learn to love some of the subtler or more complex brews, such as from better-quality Japanese sencha. Their flavours, sometimes characterised as ‘grassy’ or ‘sappy’ once struck me as somehow cloying on the palate; whereas now I thoroughly enjoy them.

The one shown above is an Obubu ‘Sencha of the Earth’, bought from What-Cha. I don’t know what makes it qualify as ‘of the Earth’ moreso than any other tea. The producer’s website describes it as “medium-bodied with a smooth quality. It creates a delicate bronze-hued liquor with a hay-like aroma mixed with light notes of chamomile. The taste is decidedly floral with a strong aftertaste evocative of honeysuckles.”

The cup in the picture is also Japanese, one of two survivors of a set of four I bought from John Lewis ten years ago.