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Broadband Outage

After I announced the latest upload last night things were going rather well.  Orders were coming in steadily and I was dealing with a number of enquiries.  That was the moment that my broadband decided to fail.  When that happens it isn’t immediately apparent what has gone wrong.  Is it them or is it me?  Once you start diagnosing the reports are gloomy but ambiguous.  Only a phone call to the service provider eventually clarified matters: they’d had a total outage in my area, engineers were working, service was expected to be reconnected blah, blah, blah.

My experience with broadband provision has been mixed.  My first provider was pretty good but was taken over by a company that was more about numbers than quality.  Slow browsing, random disconnects, outrageously appalling technical support.  After being far too patient for far too long, I dumped them, in favour of BT.  I’m not fond of BT, having had disagreements with them back in the dial-up days, but they seemed to be the pick of the very seedy bunch that offer broadband connections.  BT should be sound because they own the lines and, to that extent, hang onto a nasty monopolistic privilege even after deregulation.  All of that having been said, they’re much better than my last provider.  There have been few outages and when they did occur it was possible to find out that it was them at fault, not some failing of my equipment.  That’s a bigger deal than it seems.  If you’re left suspecting that the failure is down to your box, there’s the temptation to start messing with settings, and that way madness lies.

A moderately good broadband speed is essential for my business – and a moderately good speed is what I get.  It’s too slow to run movies reliably, but living where I live that’s hardly surprising.  Anyway, that’s what television and DVDs are for.  The politicians keep promising us that superfast broadband is just around the corner.  They’re a bit cagey about which corner, though.  I don’t mind; this is fast enough for what I do.  I might feel different if I lived a dozen or so miles inland where the broadband isn’t very broad at all and even email becomes an adventure.

So that’s the story.  Sorry if you were trying to contact me and were unable to but I’m back again at last!

The New Bond Easiflow

The New Bond Easiflow doesn’t have a following among collectors.  Mostly this is because it was sold by F. W. Woolworth and Co and is taken to be cheap and shoddy.  So far as the earlier ones, those made by Langs are concerned, it’s quite untrue.  Cheap, in the sense of being aimed at a sector of the market that didn’t have much to spend, they certainly were, but they were well-made gold nib pens.
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This later version might fit the description better, though “cheap and cheerful” would be even more accurate.  The pen is a standard lever filler.  The silver and black plastic is rather appealing.  The nib is of the plated folded-tip type.  It writes surprisingly well.  The plating on the trim is holding up, except on the lever which is nearly back to the base metal.  I expect that the manufacturer applied no more than a colour wash.  All the plating will go with use in a quite short period.   The three-coloured box is attractive, with a stylised drawing of a pen writing the word “Easiflow”.
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When Langs closed their doors for good, Woolworth would have had to go looking for another pen manufacturer to turn out their New Bonds for them.  Purely because I’ve seen them use this plastic for some of their own pens, I think Mentmore/Platignum got the job.IMGP3014

I think the day will come for pens like this, and it may not be very far away.  The prices for the “good” pens have gone through the roof in recent times, with the result that there is more interest in the lower orders of gold-nibbed pens like Nova, Unique and Kingswood.  How long before the previously-ignored school pens like the Osmiroid, the Platignum and the New Bond become rehabilitated in the eyes of collectors?
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For most school children, pens like these were their first, and for some years their only experience of writing with a fountain pen.  Some, of course, were unlucky enough to get the very worst of the Platignums, Queensways and Universals and may have been put off permanently, accepting the ubiquitous ballpoint with glad cries of joy.  Others, my husband among them, wrote with pens like this, liked them and moved on to better things as soon as the budget allowed.

On a different note, has anyone any clue as to who made the nineteen-teens/twenties BCHR lever fill pen called “The Starling”.  And no, it wasn’t a sub-brand of Mabie Todd.

Chargers, Cameras and One Thing After Another

Nothing lasts, except maybe old fountain pens.  This year I’ve had to replace a camera, a bread maker (nothing to do with fountain pens but woman cannot live by pens alone!) and now a universal charger.  I bought the last one from Tesco not very long ago and I hadn’t used it very often.  When I last went to use it one of the springs that hold the batteries in place had failed.  Damn you, Tesco, and your shoddy merchandise!  Between cameras, flashlights and various other doodads we use a lot of batteries so a dead charger is an emergency that needs prompt action.

The replacement is sold under the Duracell name so one would imagine it’s in their interest to ensure that it’s good.  I hope so anyway.  It came in the post today, and it was encased in that horrible, hard plastic that cuts you as you try to cut it.  After much hacking and wrenching I got the charger out of the  Packaging From Heck but not before it lifted a sizeable flap of skin on my knuckles.  This pernicious stuff is of no benefit to the buyer.  In fact it’s a menace.  The only benefit is for the retailer.  It’s like those annoying bubble-encased tablets that save the chemist having to count, but make the lives of the elderly and arthritic a total misery.  Even those tiny metal batteries to power your watch come in an utterly impenetrable film of plastic.

Still, at least I can charge up my batteries and get the main camera going again.  You’ll notice I said “main camera”.  This is because when my old camera finally died I ended up buying two replacements.  First I bought a Fujifilm X10 which is in most respects a wonderful camera – just not for what I need it to do.  It has focusing problems when taking macro photos.  I tried everything but couldn’t really successfully work around them.  In the end, I went looking for another camera and settled on the aging but excellent Pentax X5.  It’s perfect for pen photography. In fact it’s perfect for any photography but it’s quite big, so it’s the X10 that goes in my pocket when I go out.

I would really, really like the rest of my stuff to just go on working, please.  All this purchasing is getting a little tiring, not to mention bank-account-emptying.

No Number Swan

There are so many Swans that have no model number.  Most are no mystery and you can easily work out what they are; others are more difficult to fit into the Swan range.
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When I saw this pen in ebay in somewhat scruffy unrestored condition, I took it to be a Swan Minor No 2.  Both are long, quite slender pens with a handsome fixed clip, but there the resemblance ends.  The Swan Minors I have seen are engine chased, this one is smooth.  Minors have a black hard rubber lever, this pen has the long gold plated lever that you see on the SF2.  The Minor is 13.5cm capped, this pen is 14cm.
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So what is it?  It isn’t an SF2 barrel mated with a later cap because the shape of the barrel is wrong.  In any case, there’s no indication this pen is made from bits.  Both cap an barrel are without any fading and the level of wear is very slight and the same on both parts.  I would say that it’s entirely original.  I don’t have a clue what it is.  Taking all its parts, it seems to fall between the SF2s and the Swan Minor 2s, taking part of the style of each.  Any ideas?
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It’s a gorgeous pen, long but not unbalanced, and the nib is a medium with appreciable flexibility.

Stuff

Phew!  The last few days have been hectic!  Not pen stuff, more that irritating nonsense we call life.  It won’t be letting up for the next couple of days either, so updates here are unlikely before the weekend at the earliest.

 

It all gets a bit pesky sometimes.