Sunday 20/5/2018 - Still Here, Cat Wrangling, DVD Headaches, Gentleman's Knives & Recent Wristwatches.

It's been a busy few months, gang. Work's been hectic, but manageable, and I've found that once I get home and have dinner, cranking up the laptop to post on my blog seems to be the last thing that I feel like doing after spending all day staring at a computer screen.

Posting on a Friday night is tricky as, no matter how motivated I think I might be, my brain tells my body that it's the end of my working week and all bets are off as far as sitting down to post is concerned.

However, too much time has passed since my last post. So away I go.

We took our older cat to the vet recently to discuss methods and strategies in the hopes of getting her to get along with our newer cat, which we've had since last June. Basically, these two cats are never gonna be best buddies, but they may get to the point where the older one tolerates the presence of the younger cat.

It will involve separate eating spaces and separate entrance/exit points for them. The older cat, is called Dussy or Wispy, plus a hundred other names. Her full name is Lady Wispola Dusenberg. At least, that's what it says on her passport. She has had full run of the house since we got her in March of 2009. Here she is in 2013.

The new cat is named Bowie, since he was born one year and one day after David Bowie died in 2016. He looks almost as cool as David Bowie did, but his songwriting skills suck. 

We were feeding them near each other for the last few weeks, thinking that this was a breakthrough in their relationship and that maybe Dussy was getting used to Bowie being around. 

The vet told us that feeding them near each other was not a good idea. Reason being that cats, like any other animal, will place food at the top of their priorities. So, feeding her near Bowie means that she's fighting every impulse to run away, in the interests of getting fed. This makes for a very stressful meal for her. 

Cats are sticklers for routine. I once read that moving furniture around in a room can upset them. Wispy's routine has been thrown out of whack since the arrival of the new cat. He keeps his distance from her, even though he has this intense look in his eye at times that almost says 'let me come near you'. 

And cats are territorial, taking ownership of various corners of a house and the people in it. So, you can maybe see that the introduction of a new cat can upset the balance. 

Here here is, back in September last year.

We'll be putting in another pet-door somewhere in the house, so that Wispy has access to an exit, since she doesn't go near the cat-flap in the back door anymore, ever since the little guy came to town. 

I'm confident that we'll reach a point where Dussy will tolerate this smaller cat, if not get chummy with him. We have a couple of Feliway diffusers set up and the two of them get fed in different spots at slightly different times of the day. 

Frankly, I have no idea if all this will work, and that's a notion that I find sad and stressful. My son and little Bowie are as thick as thieves, so we're reluctant to re-home the new cat just yet. 

We'll give it all eight to twelve months and see how it goes.

I wore the Omega Railmaster Co-Axial at some point during the past month. 
I'm not sure if I'll ever read this book. The racism and British Imperialism of Hugh 'Bulldog' Drummond's world of 1920 has most surely not dated well at all. 
Although, as a precursor to Fleming's Bond novels of the '50s, I should probably take a jolly good stab at, eh, old boy?


The DVD player saga that I've been dealing with recently had been getting on my nerves. I had the Sony BluRay player chipped so that I could play movies from the US and UK that aren't available for Australian regions.

I wasn't planning on piracy. I just wanted to watch my Region 1 Gilda DVD and my Region A Chinatown BluRay - with the commentary from it's screenwriter Robert Towne and film director David Fincher- and I wanted to be able to pick up a few films that I haven't seen since the Eighties. Like that classic French film The Wages of Fear (Dir: Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1953) and maybe even William Friedkin's 1977 remake, called Sorcerer. And I just gotta get The Criterion Collection version of Howard Hawk's 1940 absolute classic, His Girl Friday. 

So, I got our player chipped about eight weeks ago. It worked just fine. Until about two weeks ago, when I loaded up an all-region copy of Captain America: Civil War. We got about 12 minutes into the film before we paused it to get a cup of tea. Five minutes later, when we hit the 'resume' button, nothing happened. Well, actually, something DID happen. My blood pressure began to rise.
We switched to some other DVD and watched it on the PlayStation 3.
A few days later, I called the guy who chipped the player and he explained how to re-set it. I got home from work, unplugged the player and left it alone for half an hour before plugging it back in and loading a DVD into it. Then I pressed play and heard the familiar sound of the disc spinning in the player.
About seven seconds later, the 'There is no disc" message came up on-screen. By now, I was more than a little ticked off and feeling pretty disappointed at having gotten the machine converted to play all zones and it only lasting about six weeks.
I decided on two options; call the guy and ask him to give me a step-by-step run-through of the re-setting procedure over the phone while I'm in front of the player, or scour eBay for a new pre-chipped Bluray player.

I wore this gold-striped NATO strap on the Oris Movember Edition Diver SixtyFive. Didn't last long. The colour of the stripe didn't look good against the colours of the hands and markers of the dial. 

Besides, the watch was looking just fine on the minimal-stitch brown leather strap that I had it on. That strap has been broken in and is showing some nice wear.

I ended up calling the guy first and explained the situation to him, again outlining what happened when we tried to play the Captain America BluRay.
"Oh, you got the message that there was no disc in the player? It's the laser, then. It could be dirty and it's not reading that there's a disc inserted', he ventured.
Seemed plausible. I thanked him and then spent my lunch break looking for a Bluray cleaning disc. No luck, but the guy at an audio store that I went to suggested blowing out the dust from the laser lens if it was visible from the disc tray.
I figured I'd give it a shot. Grab a drinking straw and blow a few short bursts of air at the laser.
Got home from work, plugged in the player, switched it on and popped open the disc tray. I shone a torch (flashlight) into the player, but couldn't see the laser lens.
Dammit. I was gonna need some screwdrivers.

I closed the disc tray, unplugged it and took it to the kitchen table. Turning the player upside-down showed no screws underneath the machine. There were, however, three small screws at the back, next to the ports. I should point out that this is a neat little machine, about the same length and width as an iPad and about as thick as a hardback novel, so handling it posed no problems.

I undid the screws and the top of the player's case slid off. I love you, Sony! Getting the front section off required a little more patience or a third hand. I took my time with it.
Sure enough, like much of this kind of equipment, two-thirds of the cases are empty, with just some strip-wires and low-lying circuitry visible. To the left of the case was a smaller black plastic box, about the size of a DVD. This is where I had to be.

No screws on this thing, just four little stub and slot arrangements that you had to prise apart. Gently, I found out after applying too much force to one of them and it snapped. That's okay, I'm sure this thing'll still work on three engines, said the captain mid-flight.
Lifting the lid on this black box revealed the meat & potatoes. Toothed cogs and gears that slid the disc tray back and forth, more circuitry and a little glinting something that looked like the laser lens. There was some dust on some of the cogs and near the drop-down flap that covers the opening that the disc tray slides out of. I brushed it out gently with a blower brush and gave the laser lens a few squirts of air for good measure.
Satisfied that I'd done all I could, I took my time carefully putting it all back together and then I returned to the lounge room and plugged it in.
I'd either have a fully working BluRay player again or the lounge room would burst into flames while I got electrocuted.
Hindsight makes it funny, gang. Hindsight makes it funny.

First, a DVD. There was a library copy of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. II next to the player. I loaded it in and hit 'start'.
That familiar whirring sound hummed gently, promising nothing. Then I got the captions on screen; "ENGLISH", "ENGLISH WITH SUBTITLES", plus a few other languages.
Looking good, I thought. A few more moments passed and then the Menu screen came up. Bingo!

I removed this DVD and went through the same procedure with the Captain America BluRay. Same whirring sound, same little pauses here and there, and then the Marvel Studios logo came up on-screen and a smug smile formed across my face.
Part of me is still a little cautious though. I'll keep that pre-chipped player on my eBay watch-list for another week or two.

Pardon the lousy photo, folks. I wore the Omega Speedmaster at some point and this watch seems to wear larger than I recall. Now, I know you can't build up your wrists, but I'm fairly certain they were a tad larger a couple of years ago when I was regularly hitting the gym. I just might get back into some regular exercise. Build up the forearms a little. That oughta do it.

I also wore these three pieces in recent weeks. The Rolex Submariner has been getting a little more wear in my spare time. 
One watch that I haven't worn very often is the 44mm Hamilton Khaki Officer's Mechanical. It's a damn big watch on my wrist, but there are some times when that's exactly the look I'm going for. 
Although, if I decide to go for a smaller Khaki model - Hamilton have a great range of these - I may move this one along. Not sure. One main reason is that this one houses the Unitas 6487 hand-wound calibre. It was first produced in the 1950s for pocket watches and it winds as smooth as butter. And I still have a soft-spot for the review that I wrote on this watch five or six years ago.
Rounding out this trio is the Oris Diver SixtyFive with black and blue dial. It's become a favourite in a very short time. 

I wanted a knife. Nothing 'tactical', nothing huge, nothing crazy. Just a plain and simple folding knife that I could keep in the kitchen or liquor cabinet, for those times when I want to slice up an apple after dinner, cut a wedge of lemon for a Gin & tonic, or skive a sliver of cheese (lactose-free these days) off a block. 
Sure, the kitchen drawers have a few small sharp knives for any of the tasks I mentioned, but I wanted my own. Something that would only be used for culinary duties. 
Years ago, an elderly couple walked into the watch boutique I worked at and the man asked me if we sold knives. 
I told him 'no'. Then I asked what kind of knife was he after. Did he want something along the lines of a Swiss Army knife, for example? 
He explained that he wanted 'a Gentleman's knife'. 
Ahh, I knew what he wanted now. Something for cutting the end off a cigar, or cutting a loose thread off a shirt sleeve, or carving a wedge out of a watermelon, or whittling down a twig while sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch. Something with a plain, clip-point blade and with a handle made from some nice timber. Pocket-sized, slim, workman-like. 

EveryDay Carry.com | 10 Classic Gentleman's Knives 

I suggested he try a nearby store that sold kitchen cutlery, but also carried a selection of Leatherman and Victorinox knives and smaller pocket knives that may just suit what he was looking for. 

Anyway, enough about him. Back to me. If you wanna know what knife he ended up getting, maybe he has his own blog.

So, I wanted a gentleman's knife. I had been thinking about the Opinel knives. These are the classic French folding knife that's available in a range of sizes and prices. 

My boss, who's got a collection of knives, said he had a R. David Laguiole folding knife that he'd be happy to swap for a Mont Blanc 147 fountain pen that he had given me in an earlier swap; I gave him a Parker Centennial, he gave me the Mont Blanc. 

Are you sure?, I asked. I'd be happy to give you something for it, I added. 

He reminded me that I'd already given him the Parker pen and was now giving him the Mont Blanc.

He brought it in last week. It has a classic shape. Last year, I bought a set of cheap steak knives whose design is based on the Laguiole knife. Needless to say, the difference in quality between these two is poles apart. Might have to get the Real McCoy steak knives one day. 

The Laguiole, seen on the right in the photo, has a very strong spring in it. This means that it feels quite tight when you hook a thumbnail into the mark to swing out the blade. And when you close the blade, you'd better have all fingers out of harm's way. It snaps shut with a resounding 'thwack'. The handle of this particular one is made from snakewood and it has an inlaid 'Shepherd's cross' in the middle. I have to say the build quality is very slick. 

As I say, this knife is for home use only. I have no plans to carry this, or any other, knife out in the streets. The laws here in Victoria are quite strict regarding knives. This is due to a spate of knife crimes that occurred in the CBD over the last ten years, to the point where it became illegal to carry any kind of blade. This included the venerable Swiss Army knife and Leatherman tool. Offenders could face very hefty fines or even jail time. This knife has a four-inch blade. That alone could get me into trouble with the law.
So, this knife stays in the kitchen. 

I love the attention to detail on this thing. The spring has a neat little pattern cut into it and the bee or fly (jury's still out on exactly which one it is) sits at the edge of the handle. The design of this knife dates back to around 1860, according to wikipedia and there were various modifications made over the years. These were called Laguiole due to the region in France where they were, and still are, made. Much like true champagne is only found in the Champagne region. The insect logo was added after the Second World War. About ten years ago, I thought about getting a Laguiole bottle opener/corkscrew, but I couldn't justify the $130 AUD that it would cost me, considering that I'm not a wine connoisseur or a big wine drinker.

I wore these three too since my last post seven weeks ago(!)
The Oris Movember Edition Diver SixtyFive has been getting a lot of wear. The Longines Heritage model (middle of pic) looks a lot nicer since I put a tan coloured leather strap on it and the Omega Seamaster 300 on mesh bracelet still brings a smile to my face. I realised long ago that I tend to have a penchant for dive watches. I like the clarity and easy readability of the dials, the water-resistance that means I don't have to worry about the watch around water, and the rotating bezels come in handy more often than you'd think. 

My boss came back from an interstate trip and handed me an Opinel No. 8 knife. I reached for my wallet, but he wouldn't hear of it. I'll have to snag him a bottle of something.

The Opinel is another French-made knife available in a myriad number of sizes. This one has a walnut handle and a very sharp 3-inch blade - I found out the hard way - and  it has a rotating steel collar or ferrule at the base of the handle which locks the blade into place, preventing it from swinging shut if you happen to apply too much force to it. When you fold the blade back into the groove in the handle, this lock can be twisted into place to keep the blade safely tucked away.
Looks like I'll be eating a little more fruit in future.

Picked up a few books. The Le Carre hardback was a good score. I can now get rid of the dog-eared paperback copy that I have. Avalanche Express is a 1970s 'airport thriller'. Probably a good travel novel, whereby you can read it without having to think too much about it, and not be too bothered if you don't finish it before your vacation is over.
The Sisters is a Cold War spy thriller that sounded intriguing. I have another Robert Littlell book, The Company, which is a fictional account of the history of the CIA. It's a thick book and I've been meaning to read it since I got it about ten years ago.

I wore the Rolex Submariner 5513 a few times in the past month or so. I still baby this watch a little. Not only that, but it seems that whenever I do wear it, it comes into risky contact with water. Sure, it's a dive watch, but it's no spring chicken as far as water-resistance is concerned. The watchmaker who restored it for me recommended that I don't get it wet. So, I err on the side of caution. 

The first of the Dynamite Comics James Bond stand-alone stories arrived in the mail last month. I haven't read it yet, as I'm currently still reading Storm of Steel, Ernst Junger's novel based on his experiences during World War I. It ranks alongside Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet On The Western Front as one of the finest novels about The War To End All Wars. 
We bought Storm of Steel for my son when we visited Paris a couple of years ago and he liked it and suggested I have a read of it. I've fallen out of the reading habit over the past six or eight months. I kept stopping and starting this book, to the point where I got to page 24 and then left it alone for a few months. Sloppy. 
So I'll just make more of an effort to get back into reading. 

And that's pretty much it as far as what I've been up to lately. I have a couple of day's off from work, so that I can take care of some nine-to-five related tasks. 

- Flu shot
- tyres to get rotated and balanced
- appointment with my son's teachers
- maybe head into the city on Tuesday. 

I'll see if I can be a little more regular with my posts, even if they're only short ones. 

CORRECTION- 

Oh, one more thing; in my last post, I mentioned that the new Tudor Black Bay Fifty-Eight, unveiled at the BaselWorld Watch and Jewellery Fair earlier this year, was a re-edition of the first Tudor dive watch from 1958. 
I was mistaken. I got an e-mail from a reader named Nicholas who pointed out that the Tudor brand had released its first dive watch back in 1954.
(pic courtesy of Monochrome Watches.com | Tudor Black Bay Fifty-Eight - Review

This here on the left is the Tudor Oyster Prince Submariner, Reference 7922, which came out in 1954. Certainly there are plenty of design cues from this vintage piece that have found their way into this new re-edition, but the Tudor brand, in an effort over the years to put some distance between themselves and Rolex, made a change to the hour hand on their dive watches sometime in the 1970s. This hand design became known as the 'snowflake' and it has since become synonymous with the Tudor brand. 

Info on vintage Tudor watches can be hard to come by, so thanks for the correction, Nicholas!


Hope you've all been well, and thanks for reading!

Getting On The Stapler Bandwagon - The Velos 'Slector'.

I wonder if we'll all look back on this period in The Typosphere, around Christmas 2013, and ask ourselves what we were all thinking?

Will Internet Historians (now there's a future career path!) look at this little corner of the web and be dumbfounded by this sudden burst of enthusiasm over this relic of the past, the humble stapler? No home should be without one. A stapler is one of those handy little contraptions that people don't give a second thought to but, if they are anything like me, will walk around the house cursing when they can't find one to attach a couple of sheets of paper together.

I think we have two modern staplers in the house. One is a cheap black plastic-handled thing that we got from an office supply chain-store about two years ago, and the other is a steel model that my brother 'liberated' from his workplace sometime in the Eighties. When he moved out of home around 1988, he forgot to take it with him. And since I was doing a little writing back then, I figured I could make better use of it than he. 

However, some of you may think the same as I do, in that, once you start regularly using typewriters, you begin to feel that you need other home-office items from the same era of the 20th Century. 

Given that it's a dream of mine to wind up with a study that resembles the Writer's Building at the Warner's Lot, circa 1947 (See "Sunset Boulevard", Dir: Billy Wilder, 1950 for some form of clarification), I figured I would require some office items to help replicate that look. 

So, I needed a vintage stapler.

A quick trawl through eBay a couple of years ago brought me to this nice Velos "Selector' stapler, which I'm guessing dates back to the mid-to-late 1950s.

It's all-steel, which would explain why it's still intact after decades of use, and it's got a nice, pleasant metallic green paint-job with some raised stripe detailing on the sides for those times when you need to staple paper fast!

It has the model name engraved on the front;

And it even came packaged in its original box;

Perhaps its one drawback would be that, being so narrow, you need to push down directly from above to avoid it slipping sideways, but I have to say this hasn't happened to me yet. Despite the stripes, I've never been in that much of a hurry to secure two sheets of paper together.

It works very nicely. I may have given it a dab of oil here and there when I first got it, but aside from that, it's still sturdy and works securely. With a coolness factor that's through the roof.

Well, gang, that's my addition to the Stapler Craze of 2013. Bound to drive the historians nuts!

Historian 1 - "Hey Bertrand, what are those long cylindrical things on the table next to the stapler?"

Historian 2 - "I believe they were called 'pens' back then, Myrtle. What you did was, you'd hold it in your hand and drag one end of it across something called paper. I'm told it was used as a communication tool. People used them at home, at work, even children used them in schools, which I think sounds extremely dangerous and irresponsible."

Historian 1 - "That's absolute madness!"

Historian 2 - "Indeed, Myrtle, indeed."


********************************

Thanks for reading, all, and have a great time off!

A Close Shave, A Closer Connection- Using My Dad's Safety Razor.

 

 

 

 

 

By the time Dad stopped using a blade razor and switched to his electric PhilliShave, he had about 20 packets of twin-blades stashed aside. I still have seventeen of these packs left. Should last me quite some time. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was his basic Gillette razor that he must have bought sometime in the 1950s, I'm guessing. It's a simple razor which breaks down into three pieces.

 

 

 

That section next to the handle can be screwed back on upside down to protect the blade and prevent any nasty accidents when reaching for the razor at the bottom of a traveller's wet-pack. I found that out the hard way once. Never happened again.

 

 

 

 

N.R., sometime between 1952 and maybe 1956? I'd kill for that suit. Wouldn't fit me, though. He was of medium build, I'm slim.

 

My Dad must've gone out and splurged some cash on this one. An adjustable Gillette model 195, commonly known these days as the "Fat Boy" due to its thicker handle. This razor, based on its letter coding underneath (yes, these things have serial numbers) dates back to the third quarter of 1961. The 195 model was manufactured between 1958 and 1961, so it would appear that he got one of the last ones made. Cool.

 

A twist of the base of the handle and the razor opens up, like the electric roof of a Chevrolet Impala (were they electric?). There's a small adjustment ring on the handle which flexes the blade slightly, allowing for a greater gap between the blade and the razor itself. 

 

 

Somewhere along the way, I bought a basic Gillette Sensor Excel. It works well enough, and I use it when I'm in a hurry to shave, since modern razors tend to be a little more forgiving than the old safety razors.

 

 It works well enough. Two blades, plus that silly white strip of material that's meant to help the razor glide smoothly across the face and the rubber ridged section below that does what, I do not know. As far as modern blade razors go, this one is great. But it just doesn't have the solid weight and robustness of my Father's fifty-two year-old razor.

 

My Dad worked as a machinist in a knitting mill throughout the '60s and '70s. He did the night shift, from 11:30pm till eight am the following morning. As a child, I stayed up some nights way past my bedtime and I'd watch as he slowly wound his Wyler wristwatch while a cup of coffee sat on the kitchen table, a fine wisp of steam rising from the white china mug. He'd give my cheek a quick pinch before heading out the door to catch the 10:50pm bus to Sydney Road, Brunswick.

I can still remember the last time he pinched my cheek.

I was twenty-six.

 

Despite the fact that he worked nights, he was always waiting for me at the school gate each day at 3:10pm and we'd walk the ten minute distance home. It involved crossing some very busy main roads and I have vivid memories of seeing the aftermath of some awful car accidents along this short stretch of streets between my school and our house.

 

He would have a quick bite to eat once we got home and would then say 'goodnight' to us before going to bed at around 4:30pm. He'd wake up between 9:30 and 10:15 that night before the process of getting ready for work would begin again.

 

He never got a driver's licence. It was my Mother who had a car. And what a car! I say this with the benefit of hindsight. She drove a mid-late Sixties Valiant similar to this model.

 

picture taken from http://www.chryslerfanatic.com/featured/1965/1965-chrysler-valiant-1.shtml

 

 

If only she had kept this thing instead of replacing it with a Datsun 180B. Ahh well...

 

So, my Father never drove and yet, he was involved in a staggering nine car accidents during the years that he worked the night shift. I've never learned the details of them, but I do know that one or two of them involved the bus that he took each night, a couple of them occurred when he was a passenger in a co-worker's car, and there were at least two instances where he'd been hit by a car while crossing at a set of lights. Thankfully, none of them were serious, although one accident produced some nasty injuries to his legs, but he fully recovered.

 

And then, sometime in 1977, my parents decided to tear down their existing house and build a new one on the same block of land. It was then that my Dad took a second job. And so, his work day quickly evolved into working his night-shift job at the mill, coming home, briefly, and then going to work at a nearby electrical contracting firm as an electrical cleaner. He worked this job from 9:00am to 4:30 pm, five days a week. This obviously left him with even less time to get adequate sleep. He was now operating on about five to six hours sleep per day. 

The new house was finished in 1978, and he continued working these two jobs. In 1981, he suffered a mild stroke, but it was enough to weaken his entire left side. Then came the onset of Parkinson's Disease a couple of years later and he never returned to work after that. The next few years were difficult, but my Mother was working full-time by this stage and we always seemed to manage. I was aware of our situation, but was very much oblivious to what was going on behind the scenes. Being the younger child, I always got the impression that my parents and brother shielded me from a lot of what was going on.

In 2001, at the recommendation of the respite hospital where he had been for almost a year, Dad was moved into a nursing home which was located five minute's walk from home. He required more specialised care than what could be provided at home. He was 74 and, although the nursing home considered him a little too young for admission, things happened pretty quickly after that.
I learned a long time ago that most life-changing events often do.

He came home a couple of days later and had his hair cut by John, a Greek barber who lived in the next street. We'd known him for years. He told us that he got into the trade in the late1950s and made a decent living out of it until "everybody wanted haircuts like The Beatles".
My Mother cooked Dad some lunch and, as he ate it, my wife remarked that this was a sad occasion. "Your Dad's here for the last time. In a few hours, he'll be sitting in a room in a nursing home. This is how he says goodbye to his house."
By this stage, we had a kid. Our boy was about 18 months old and he stood there watching John The Barber (as we called him) snipping away rhythmically with a thin pair of scissors. My Dad looked at his grand-son and said simply; "Beautiful little soldier."

We visited him often in the nursing home. My wife made the one-hour drive every Friday to take our son to see him. She didn't speak Italian and my Dad's English was fractured, at best, but she has often said that these weekly visits were the right thing to do, in order to maintain the connection between the generations, and to show my Father that his grand-son was both happy and healthy.

My Dad died four years later. He took a nap after lunch one day and never woke up. That's the million-dollar ending that we all hope for, I suppose. I was on the train heading home from work when my wife called me to break the news. It was 6:20pm and the train was barrelling along the tracks between Bentleigh and McKinnon stations. And I never felt so helpless in all my life. I think I stood up briefly before realising that there was nothing I could do.

 

My Father's wristwatch,  spectacles and razor. Whenever I do something decent, I know that he left me more than just these three things.

So, not to get too maudlin, and to bring this post full circle, I'm sure that every modern razor produces a smoother shave in half the time that it takes to use my Dad's razor. But then, I don't use it just to shave. I use it because it's still working perfectly after five decades.
I use it to remind me of all those little moments that we shared.
I use it because my Dad used it.


Thanks for reading.


Correction;
* Tocco Da Casauria is the correct name of the town where my Dad was from. I'll have to visit there sometime soon and meet some relatives.

 

 

Dial Nine To Continue, Then Press Hash - No Thanks. Not With This Beauty.

I've wanted a Bakelite rotary-dial telephone for quite some time and I finally got one off eBay back in December. It was a nice, heavy jet-black model dating back to the late 1950s. Perfect. Made me want to put a call through to Marilyn Monroe.
There's something about rotary-dial phones that give me a sense of comfort.
Perhaps it has to do with nostalgia for the 20th Century, before everybody carried a mobile phone with their entire lives loaded into them.
Perhaps it has to do with seeing too many old movies, where the shrill sound of the ringing bell would startle the character on-screen before they lifted the  receiver from its cradle to be told of the ransom demands, or where the double-agent would be at a certain time, or were asked why haven't they checked the children.*
I suppose like typewriters, a rotary-dial phone only does one thing, but it does it well. There wasn't much that I took from my Mother's house after she died last year, but I did take this;

This AWA ivory-coloured model was the main telephone in our house when I was a kid. I still recall the six-digit phone number, which is still just barely visible, handwritten in faded BIC ballpoint on the paper insert of the rotary dialler. I think this one goes back to 1968, based on the numbers on the underside and I'm amazed that it still works. This telephone saw a lot of use, thanks to my Mother.  There was no such thing as a 'quick phone call' , as far as she was concerned. And if I had to use the phone after her, the receiver would be quite warm from being pressed against her ear for an hour or so.
Around 1980, she got a job as an after-hours cleaner at a sub-station of Telecom, the Australian phone company along the lines of AT&T or Bell. After that, I think that almost every room in the house had a phone line installed. And she managed to snag a few more telephones along the way. Nothing wrong with having a spare...or three. Somewhere, I have a brand new, still-wrapped-in-plastic phone that she got in 1982, but never used. It's pretty much identical to this one above.

Here's something funny- she used to stay up until two or three am so that she could ring relatives back in Italy when it was convenient. For them. And in turn, whenever they called us, it would be around three or four am in the morning Australian Eastern Standard Time.

About eight or ten years ago, I was visiting an overpriced and snootily-owned antiques bazaar where they had a bunch of phones for sale. One of them was an Ericsson Ericofon, which is also sometimes referred to nowadays as a 'cobra'.

I suppose if you take enough LSD, this phone probably could resemble a cobra with its flared hood, but I think it's a bit of a stretch, personally. Still, the name has stuck whenever I see these advertised from time to time on eBay.
However, I have always called it 'The Skippy Phone'.
"Skippy the Bush Kangaroo" was an Aussie television series produced from 1966 to 1968. It is Australia's equivalent to "Flipper", but with much, much less water. And it is considered a sentimental favourite among many of my generation.


I don't really know why I ever called it The Skippy Phone. As far as I'm aware, this style of telephone did not appear in any episodes (some "Skippy" experts, feel free to chime in now), but if there's anything that screams of a certain aspect of 1960s Australia to me, it is this television show and this telephone. Although, having said that, I sometimes get a quick vision of "The Thunderbirds" flashing through my head when I look at this telephone. Something to do with its mid-century futuristic design. Just the kind of phone that Lady Penelope would use to call Virgil Tracy on. Again, as a kid, I would sometimes wake up at the unGodly hour of 6:00am on a Saturday morning to watch this fantastic show.
"Thunderbirds are GO!!!"



Look at her. Less plastic than some of today's Hollywood stars.

About a year ago, my wife called me at work one Friday evening to tell me that the power had gone out at home. She was calling me from her cellphone and she said the battery was extremely low and the phone might cut out any second. She couldn't call me from the land-line because the hands-free phone was plugged in to the (currently non-existent) electricity supply. I told her I would call around for an after-hours (and pretty damned expensive) electrician.

When I got home to a dark and cold house (t'was mid-Winter), I realised that the Skippy Phone was in a box in my daughter's bedroom. Had I been thinking a little more clearly, I would have told my wife to plug this phone in and call around for an electrician, since I was still at work and didn't want to risk getting blasted by management for making personal calls, despite the fact that it was an emergency. The beauty of a standard land-line telephone, with a rotary dialler or push-button one, is that it has one RJ plug for both the phone connection AND the source of electricity for the phone, which runs along a separate line directly to the telegraph pole in the street. I think.
Anyway, what it means is that you can still use these phones in the event of a blackout because they have no internal battery.

Now, my darling wife and I have watched the "Terminator" series of films on numerous occasions and we fully understand that they are about technology letting people down, but we were caught off-guard that night and not thinking straight. It was cold, we were in the dark, and we hadn't prepared anything for dinner. Luckily, I went out to get us some pizza and we ate it by candle-light in the lounge room while the electrician worked on the fuse box outside.

The Ericofon is pretty cool. First designed in the late 1940s, this particular design first emerged around 1952 and was marketed towards hospitals. It was designed so that patients could make phone calls from their beds without having to lift a receiver and then stretch across with their other hand to dial a number. It was a precursor to today's handset telephones.
One catch with this phone. If you are talking to somebody and you place the phone down in its upright position to grab a pen and paper or something, you will disconnect the call. The rotary dialler has a spring-loaded section which pushes down when the phone is placed down, thus disconnecting a call. That's how you hang up these phones.

See? A big, fat red button in the middle of the dialler.  Obvious, really.

So anyway, back to this new phone that I got. Here it is. Beauty, ain't it? All black and chrome like a Fifties Buick.

When it arrived just before Christmas, I unplugged the plastic, push-button, hands-free monstrosity that sits on the buffet near the front door and plugged this phone in. I lifted the heavy receiver and held it up to my ear. The dial tone purred.

I started dialling my mobile phone number and after turning the dialler to imput the first two digits, I could still hear a dial tone. 

"Oh, no, no, no, no", I thought to myself. 

I continued dialling my number. When I got to the end of it, I heard the phone company's dreaded recorded message; "The number you have dialled is incomplete or incorrect. Please check the number before dialling again."

I tried again. Got the same response. Aww, hell!

I called my home number from my mobile phone. The bakelite phone rang loud and clear. I picked up the receiver and spent about twenty seconds talking to myself;

"Hey, teeritz, how are ya?"

"Yeah, I'm good, teeritz. And you?"

"Yeah, pretty good."

And then I hung up on myself. Well, at least it took calls without any problems. But it still meant that this phone could only do half of what it was supposed to do.

I tried the phone a few more times. I called the Time (1194), but couldn't get through without hearing that faux Australian accented recorded message. To you folks reading this in Australia, do you know ANYBODY who speaks like that? To the rest of you, it's an accent that sounds somewhere in between Australian and British. A lot of newsreel voice-overs from the 1950s and '60s used to sound like that, and some of the older ladies who work in David Jones department stores still sound like it.

Anyway, I wound up calling the seller. He told me to drop it off to his house and he would sort it out. Which was cool. Except, he lives 90 minutes away from my house. And so, a few days later, I took the phone back to him. He hung onto it for a week or so and then called me to say that it was fixed. 

I drove back to his house to pick it up. He said he'd tested it and it was all working as it should. Great. I took it home, plugged it in and tried to make a call and...nothing. Same problem as before.

I love the rotary dialler. Yes, yes, I know it doesn't have a hash (#) or star (*) key, but who cares? This phone is what I would use when I want to ring actual people, not corporations that have you on hold for twenty-five minutes or have recorded voices saying "Press star to continue". 

I contacted the seller again and arranged to drop the phone back to him. When I got there, I explained that if he couldn't fix this once-and-for-all, I would prefer a different phone altogether. He said "Sure, sure", and I left it with him again to be repaired. 

Life got busy and I wasn't able to collect the phone for a month or two. I went back to get it and he assured me that the problem was solved, explaining that he called me using this phone and it worked properly. He also explained that my issues with it might have something to do with my internet modem. 

Okay, this was all over my head and made no sense to me since, as far as I understand, this phone is analogue and the internet is digital and one should not affect the other. Still, I figured he must know what he's talking about, so I left it at that and said thanks. I took the phone back and went on my way. 

Well, you know the rest. I got home, plugged it in and tried making a call. And again, the same problem. After the steam stopped spewing from my ears, I waited a day before calling him back. He said he would replace the entire guts of this phone and put a new rotary dialler on it too. 

When I dropped it back to him for the third time, he said "Just pick it up when you're next in the area."

I wanted to grab him by the ears and say; "I DON'T GET DOWN TO THIS AREA VERY OFTEN, IF AT ALL, PAL!!! JUST FIX IT PROPERLY OR GIVE ME ANOTHER ONE OR A REFUND OR A PUPPY OR SOMETHING!"

I drove home in a foul mood. And of course, my wife started getting a little annoyed at all the fuel I was wasting in pursuit of this folly. So, I called the seller and told him to mail the phone back to me when it was fixed and I would pay the cost of postage. I preferred to do that rather than get stuck in traffic on the way to his house on the other side of town. The trip would involve going through some heavily built-up main roads that were quite narrow and have trams (cable cars to you folks in The States) sharing the road with cars and I didn't want none of it anymore. 

Dial M for MuthaF******! All of these hassles were beginning to take the shine off of this experience.

The phone arrived last week and I set it up and dialled my cell-phone. 

AND IT WORKED!

Finally!

I left the phone plugged in for a few days. And it worked just fine. Later in the week, I unplugged it and left it on the buffet and reconnected the hands-free phone. That night, I got a call from an Auntie in Italy and spoke to her for about half an hour before the battery in the hands-free phone went dead and the call cut out. Shite! I plugged the bakelite phone back in and tried to call her back. The line was engaged. She was trying to call me back. I hung up the phone and waited. A minute later, the shrill and glorious sound of the bell echoed through the room and I picked up the receiver and continued the conversation for a few minutes. 

Aside from looking cool, these phones are dependable. They work. As long as they are properly restored.

I've packed this black phone away in its box for now. I have a dream, one that involves the next house that we move to (whenever that is) where there will be a study. All of my books will be out of their storage boxes and up on bookshelves which line one wall of the room. My wife and I will have our desks positioned in this room and there will be a phone line in the skirting board where this phone will be plugged in. There will be a filing cabinet someplace, holding all of the paperwork necessary for the admin of running a household. There will be a stationery cupboard in there, so that when I need a stapler or a paper-clip, I'll know where to find one. The room will have a decent-sized window, allowing natural light in. And maybe there'll be an armchair in a corner with a coffee table next to it where we can sit down with a book. My typewriters will be stored in there somewhere, and I may need to cull the collection down to machines that are used rather than just kept for display or sentimental reasons. And maybe I'll have one permanently on display, with a cloth cover over it to keep the dust out. And it'll be on stand-by for times when I feel like typing.

That's the plan, anyway. It may not work out exactly like that, but I'll try and get it as close to that as possible.

At any rate, I've got the telephone situation worked out, so I can cross that off the list. 

Atticus Finch (retired Judge, Maycomb County, Alabama) about to make a phone call, circa 1958.

I've seen a few reproduction rotary phones for sale on eBay. These modern ones have two extra holes in the dialler with a hash and star symbol next to them so that you can spend time calling your Water company to query a bill and "press star to continue".

But this vintage bakelite phone will suit my purposes just fine. I was thinking of getting an American dial-up telephone to scratch my "Mad Men" itch, but I don't know if they will work on the Australian phone exchange. 

After the saga involved with getting this phone working properly, I'm inclined not to tempt fate any further with regard to old telephones. I was tempted to go for a reproduction candlestick telephone off eBay, but these phones require two hands to use and something tells me that would get old real quick. 

Nope, this 'Buick' will do me just fine.

Okay, I'm hanging up now. Thanks for reading!

*"When A Stranger Calls" (Dir: Fred Walton, 1979)