A little retail therapy...!

 I attended the London pen Show today. First one I've been to. It caters to pens, obviously, but mostly fountain pens, which I like. However, my last few haven't really done well with me; two Kawekos, a Platinum, and a Lamy Safari, and before that, in school (AHEM years ago!), a Parker 25.

The Lamy and the Platinum still work fine, I just can't get comfortable enough with them: They're too light, and there's no real feedback when I have them in the hand (I prefer a pen with a bit of heft in it). The two Kawekos jammed up all the time, which was a pity, as others have had good results with the brand. The Parker 25 was lost in the mists of time.

So, the London Pen Show.

The show was small, well attended, and for a fiver admission, well worth the visit to Hammersmith in west London on a damned chilly morning, at yougottabekiddingme o'clock in the morning?! I work LATES, for pities sake! What's the "morning" thing?! 😂

Anyway, I was up at 7 in the a.m., on a train by roughly 9 (again, in the "ayem"), and at the show by just after 10, whereupon I linked up with my brother-in-law, neice, and some of their friends.

My niece is an admin of a UK facebook group, the "Fountain Pens UK" group; she's also VERY knowledgeable about how these pens are made, and how to repair and maintain them. She also knows a number of people in the trade, and put me onto Gravitas Pens, and their very compact 'pocket' model, in this case, a brass body with a medium nib.

I tested one at the table Gravitas had at the show, and WOW, did it feel NICE in the hand. It also writes cleanly, with a decent flow of ink to the nib, giving clear, consistent lines. I was impressed - so I bought one (you KNEW that was coming, didn't you? 😉).

Also, have a look at that photo, at the cap at the bottom of the shot. Notice the logo Gravitas uses: It's VERY much like the old British Army "Crow's Foot" (a.k.a. the "British Broad Arrow Mark"), that used to be plastered/stamped/printed on pretty-much every bit of Army kit in inventory until well into the 1980s 😂

I also picked up some ink, and a few notebooks for the pen (well, you KNOW it's rude not to, and all that 😉😂

Anyhow, I now have a decent fountain pen, which didn't cost a mint, and got home happy, satisfied, and yawning like a very tired thing (late shift worker, remember?).

All in all, not a bad way to spend a lazy Sunday 😀

Veni, vidi, et murmurastis sit amet...

("I came, I caw, I grumbled a lot...")

As a first-time political protest attender, this was a mahoosive damp squib. Nothing happened.

Allow me to be a little more accurate. A lot of things happened, but none of them amounted to much more than the civil disorder version of a wet, dribbly, fart.

So what, pray tell, was this waste of time I attended? The 'Save Brexit' rally in Parliament Square today. I left about an hour or so later, utterly bored and tired (I'm not had a good sleep last night, which didn't help).

So what the hell did I attend this afternoon?

Having seen these kind of things on the television news in the past, I was expecting an energetic crowd, full of righteous anger as to the utter farce that Brexit has become, shouting from the rooftops so as to even be heard in the chamber of the House of Commons, so as to coerce them into doing The Right Thing and nailing a leaving date to the calendar.

Alas, that was not what I got a hefty whiff of.

It was crowded, smelt of diesel, sweat, and spilt beer in places, didn't scream as much as grumbled, and Police and media helicopters, two at a time, hovered overhead, so we got their rotor sounds in stereo (that certainly didn't help the sound system on the stage, and more on that later!). The overall impression we got from this was that no-one had a bloody clue what to do next.

A good couple or few thousand people in that Square were milling about, trying to find somewhere to stand where they weren't being barged into by others with the same idea, tourists meandered all over the place, apparently wondering, like the attendees, WTF as going on, and asking me - ME! - what was going on, as if I had a bloody clue (Hells bells, I wasn't even wearing a high visibility vest, the usual people-magnet-like clothing that normally attracts such inane questions as "how to I get to Sutton, please, guv?!").

We couldn't even understand what was being said on the makeshift stage, as the sound system was emphasising the bass range, and not the mid-range, thus rendering any speech to what can only be described as sounding very much like "Argle bargle gargle margle bargl buggle muggle parp". I have NO idea what bloody language that is, by the way, so don't ask. Others around me were looking just as confused and bored as I was, by this time.

It felt as if the effort was being sucked out of the place, there was such a feeling of muted mass depression and impotence. The BBC earlier reported that there was a feeling of mass anger. Maybe. From where I stood, it was a lot different to that, truth be told. Disquiet, yes. Anger, yes, to a certain point, but more than that: Impotence, due to our not being able to affect or influence those people we put in a place who were supposed to actually LEAD us out of the EU, not prevaricate us to a consignment of eternal bondage to the EU.

This was not, on balance, something that was going to erupt into a frenzy, an orgy if you will, of mass hysteria and violence. Mass muttering appeared to be the order of the day, instead.

It had the civilised nature of a middle-class "That's just not the done thing, old chap" tea party gone slightly awry.

Even that right wing nut "Tommy Robinson" (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, now there's a really matey lower class name for you. Not) couldn't rabble rouse more than a muted few jeers (or was that cheers? No-one could really tell) on his reporting that the House of Commons had, once again, failed to reach a verdict on how to proceed on Brexit.

The assembled pissed-off people didn't, it seems, even have the energy to spit on the tarmac, let alone riot. It would appear that the utter mind-sapping farce that is Brexit has robbed us of even that capacity.

Then the drunks appeared, from the direction of Trafalgar Square, coming down Whitehall, with a bevy of skinheads of equally soberless nature. Once on Tower Bridge Road, opposite Parliament, and between us and the tube station (dammit), and with a couple of carriers-worth of Public-Order-kit-equipped members of the Metropolitan Police's finest standing, poised in epic boredom behind them, did they then break into song, which, in the event, was an off key (painfully so, God help our ears) rendition of "Rule Britannia". Repeated a few times, it was even more off-key with every verse, if that was even possible.

Even THOSE worthies hadn't the energy to break into riot (of course, the previously-mentioned riot troops behind them might have had something to do with that).

It kind of summed up the event for me.

So, the hell with it. Nothing of any real worth was going to happen, and certainly nothing of any massive bad either, aside from maybe drunken scuffles. So I left, just under an hour after I got there.

I strongly suspect that has SOMEONE decided to take proper charge, a meaningful rally could have been had. But there as no apparent programme, no actual aim, no guiding hand to a higher political goal.

There was nothing.

It had been billed as a celebration of Brexit, back before Parliament buggered up the 29th of March as the leaving date.

And no-one had the foresight to retroactively make this a day of political action.

Political inaction was the order of the day, today. Even Parliament noticed that, as it again voted to fudge up the mess that is Brexit.

Sad, innit?

So much for them paying attention to us, the people.

I've been told that the rest of Europe views the UK as a laughing stock, due to the Brexit mess.

I can honestly say I cannot bloody blame them one sodding bit.

Anyway, here are a few photos that I took. Enjoy.

Panoramic shot of Parliament Square at around four in the afternoon of the rally.

One of the two helicopters (in this case, a Police one) that hovered overhead, drowning most of any remaining coherence out of anyone even trying to use the public address system on Parliament Green.

The marchers arrive to a bit of "Oh, alright, if I must" clapping and tired cheering, and one, lone, solitary apparent 'Remainer', who booed. He later left, completely unmolested (and probably very upset that he couldn't sport war wounds to the press).

More of the marchers.

And more of the crowd, trying to hear what was being said on the podium (the "stage").

I didn't bother photographing the off-key drunks. You can find those most Friday nights, in most high streets across the country.

Another set of wheels, so time for another radio...!

About a month before Christmas, and with the acquisition of another car (my Land Rover being off the road due to a problem that I cannot nail down just yet), I decided it was high time I sought a new radio for my Amateur Radio hobby, to replace the one that vanished, along with a previously stolen car of mine. So, I began to save for one, calling it “Roger's Radio Fund”. I reckoned to myself that I should have enough squirrelled away to get a decent radio, within about two to three months (probably four at the outside). So imagine my shock on Christmas day when a certain member of my family gave me a cheque for a decidedly impressive enough amount to complete my funding exercise well ahead of schedule!

So, it was time to decide on WHAT radio to get.

Band-wise, at the very least, it had to be dual band 2m/70cm (VHF and UHV, the two most commonly-used bands for mobile amateur radio communications), although 4m (70 MHz) and/or 6m (50 MHz), and even 10m (28 MHz), would be nice. I'd obviously need a multi-band mobile antenna for it too.

Mode-wise, it would have to have, at the minimum, FM; ideally, it would also have some form of DV (digital voice) mode as well, such as D-Star (Icom's somewhat proprietory implementation of digital communications), System Fusion (Yaesu's somewhat proprietory implementation of digital communications), DMR (Digital Mobile Radio, the actual Open Standard that's ironically beginning to be used in commercial equipment, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_mobile_radio), or similar.

My specification also called for the new radio to be able to be programmed using a computer using the Ubuntu Linux OS (I have CHIRP, and can also run some Windows applications under WINE on my laptop). For times when manual operation is required, it had also be able to be relatively intuitive to program, and have an easy to read display (no cluttering and/or small-print!). If it could be operated via bluetooth and/or an Android application as well, so much the better.

For security, it had to have a removable head unit, for when the radio wasn't being used.

Make-wise, I have predominantly used Yaesu in the past, and had an FT-7800 until that car got stolen from my garage one night, dammit (a few years back), so I'm used to their radios; I've also used Icom hand helds (I have an ID-51E, and find it irritatingly complex to use, although that's probably the compact menu system on it), and a very simple Baofeng UV-5R, which I find ridiculously easy to use. The FT-817 is a joy, and is used for QRP when I get the chance (not very often). The 817 can be operated from my Android phone as well, using Repeater Book and other applications via bluetooth, which is nice.

This then raised a very good point: Shold I include DV as a requirement, in the hope that my crystal ball would be right on the money a few years down the line (I already have the Icom ID-51E hand held), or should I save my money, and go analogue, which will still be there down the line?

As mentioned above, already there are three standards being used in DV boxes in the UK: Icom's D-Star, Yaesu's System Fusion, and DMR.

There were similar arguments, I recall, about the pros and cons of the 1750Hz toneburst versus CTCSS/DCS (this concerns an audible tone burst, versus subaudible coded tones, used to access repeaters – these are rebroadcasting stations on the amateur bands), which was eventually settled by the authorities over here making a preference for CTCSS, if I recall correctly. Only took maybe ten years to settle!

Anyhow, with all the choices and options, I came toa relatively easy decision:

Icom were going well, but were frankly too expensive, and as yet, as pointed out above, the DV aspect has not yet really settled down sufficiently well enough to decide on a full-size DV radio at this time. Also, my experience of DV has been less than impressive, with "underwater speech" a regular thing to hear (granted, it's been with my ID-51E hand held, but not any the less valid for that).

Kenwood don't have anything I'd call affordable within my budget with the capabilities I'd like (the dual band TM-G710GE came close, with the APRS/GPS, but was close to half a grand on its own), and most the other contenders don't measure up either.

So currently, and after much deliberation, the shortlist is down to the Yaesu brand. Specifically, the Yaesu FT-8900 Quad Bander (10m/6m/2m/70cm), with the YSK-8900 head separation kit, and a Diamond CR-8900 quad-band antenna. It also has the benefit of being a direct descendant of the FT-7800 that I owned a few years back, which should make operating it relatively straight-forward for me; in addition, being a Yaesu, it'll be very reliable, as are, of course, all the 'big three' makes.

The interesting thing here is that I can probably add APRS/GPS (a way of showing where you are, using GPS units relaying their data over the amateur bands) capability via the data socket in the back of the radio, with the use of a cable and either an Android phone or a Raspberry Pi-type computer later on. I'll have to look into that, but if it's a non-starter, it's not really a big deal, to be honest.

Now, it won't do Digital comms, nor can it be controlled by bluetooth with the Repeater Book package for Android by Repeaterbook.com, but it's a decent compromise between affordability within budget, coverage, and ease of use; I'm going to mull on this a little while longer, but I suspect this is going to be the way I go.

So, in the next couple of weeks tops, I'll be heading off to Martin Lynch & Sons in west London, who I've used many times before, with very satisfying results, to buy the new radio, and then it'll be down to me, to install the stuff in my car!

More updates on this, at that time!

Time to find a new team to follow :-(

With todays announcement that Wasps Rugby Football Club is set to move even furter away from London, from Adams park in Oxford to Coventry, it has finally nailed shut the notion that it's "London Wasps" for all time. As a result, and because I live within the M25 belt, and am a firm believer in supporting a team from London as I'm a Londoner, I am having to find another team to follow.

There have been ups and downs over the last couple of decades that I've followed Wasps. I've enjoyed them all, for the most part (even the losses), but the new ownership of the club, under Mr. Derek Richardson, appears to have completely ignored the wishes of the fans who have supported the club through thick and thin, and whose gate returns helped, in whatever small way, keep the club afloat. In any case, the management decided that they knew best for the club (and would appear to have decided, on the face of it, to capitalise on the name of the "brand"). Well, maybe they know best, and maybe they don't. But they certainly alienated this former fan, and I know for a fact that they've done the same or similar with many others. This has been commented on by others, too.

So, enough is enough, thus it's high time for me to return my attention and loyalty to a club based in London.

The London rugby scene has shown some of the best rugby I've seen - with the possible exception of Bath and a certain northern team who I shall not mention (even if crying into me beer when they regularly - almost annually - pounded the trys out of Wasps in the Heineken cup!) - so it's going to be a hard act to follow. Of the remaining London teams, London Irish play in Reading, so are disqualified (even though I travel over to the area regualrly); London Scottish, well, I'm English (and don't like Haggis, and no offence to any Scots reading this!); so, this leaves either Harlequins, or Saracens.

Both are good teams, and both have had problems over the years, Quins with the infamous "bloodgate" affair, and Saries with their nomadic grounds last year. Both have managed to put those issues behind them. And both have hammered Wasps one time or another over the years.

It's going to be a hard choice as to which one to follow....

Size Zero Coppers?

This news item caught my attention today... Students show Met uniform designs

Hmm... now this is probably just my completely warped and twisted funny bone speaking (and lets face it, my sense of humour of somewhat round the 'U' bend at best), but a college of fashion designing a coppers' uniform? heh. I can see it now... the next job adverts for the met will note: "Only applications from Size Zero persons who can mince down a catwalk will be entertained"!