Pre-birthday babble.

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It’s not my birthday tonight but I have the day off tomorrow so it’s close enough – I’ll do the drinking tonight because I have to work the day after my actual birthday so can’t get plastered. The Co-Op has a litre of Whyte and MacKay for £20 (damn, only a  few short years ago I was buying Ardbeg for around that price!) – or rather they had, because I have it now. I’ll buy posh whisky for the actual birthday but drink it slowly, as it should be drunk. W&M is guzzlin’ whisky but it’s far better than Bells’ redeye.

Tonight is my ‘official’ birthday. If it’s good enough for Mrs. Queen, it’s good enough for me.

This post is therefore a collection of random babbles, often with no logical link between them. Allow me this one night of madness, it’s my birthday and yes, okay, it does happen at other times too but those are my unbirthdays so it’s allowed. The Mad Hatter said so, and who’s going to argue with him?

I read that the Daily Mail is making a fortune from online ads. I will make an effort to reference them far less often in the future. Those hacks don’t deserve support, especially from a smoky-drinker. If you go there from here, please, click no ads.

Recently I made an N gauge phone box. I was unhappy with the result so gave it away as a warning to someone my age who intends moving from OO to N gauge. I told him that if he can fix it, he’ll do okay. As for me, I’m still going from N to OO. Here is the crappy phone box –

nphoneIt’s an nPhone and and embarassment. The scale is in centimetres! Huge! You are reading the guy who, in the 1970s, painted the eyes fully in 1/32 scale soldiers, who was challenged to add in earwax and did it after drilling earholes. I am going to lay off the caffeine and try again. I have another kit.

Although I was happy with the red colour. It’s Tamiya acrylic flat red overlaid with clear red. It might not show properly on a monitor but in real life it gives just the right shade, and just the right degree of gloss.

Speaking of red, I left a couple of those red mini-chemical-lights on a tree stump in a dark walkway the other night. It was so effective even I was scared to go back that way! All you could see at the start of that walkway was two glowing red eyes staring at you. I wish I could have taken a photo but it would just have been darkness with two little angry red lines.

The coming light nights will spoil that game but I have 200 of these things now because they were cheap in Lidl. I can wait.

My first ever camera was a Zenit EM. I am chasing one on eBay that finishes in the early hours of today. I have always regretted selling that thing, it was a great camera. Weighed a ton but took amazingly good photos. Film has gone out of fashoin now but you can still buy it. The hard part is getting it processed and printed.

Long ago I had a Zenit enlarger and a load of Patterson developing gear. They were for black and white film which had already fallen out of fashion and was hard and expensive to get processed. I sold the lot when I was skint. Now I have to get it back. Can you even get black and white film any more? It showed so much more detail with the confusing colours taken out.

Some people sent me cheques for my birthday, At my age nobody knows what to buy for me and political correctness prevents them buying booze and baccy. So they send money, I use it to buy booze and baccy and their conscience is assuaged. Works for me.

But someone sent baccy and didn’t even know it was my birthday. Ta very much!

As for food, the fundamentalist veggies won’t last another generation so it’ll be bacon sarnies all round again soon. In my case, tomorrow.

Well, best sleep now I suppose.

I won the Zenit so can go to bed…

 

34 thoughts on “Pre-birthday babble.”

  2. Use Ilford XP2 400 http://www.ilfordphoto.com/products/product.asp?n=11
    It’s B&W film that you can get processed in any ‘normal’ colour photo processing outlet -if you can still find one. I send my medium format films to some guy in the former Socialist Soviet Peoples Paradise of Lithuania or was it Estonia…fuck knows…he not only develops them but digitizes them for cheap money.

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    • I used to use Ilford XP2 a lot. If I can find those old negatives I can put them oin with a negative scanner. Most are photos of trains..

      It was very cheap and easy to develop the film at home. Digistising costs next to nothing once the kit is paid for

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  3. TBD – do you still come across drones at processing stations? I loved XP2 but regularly got ” we can’t process that along with the colour films – it’ll spoil them “. Because some fuckwit in management picked up the urban legend it became company law.

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    • No I never had any problem although I haven’t used any for a couple of years now. Some places used to have to print the pics out in sepia because the older printers didn’t do b&w prints but the developed film was b&w. Back in the day I used to use the ‘send it off in a prepaid enevelope’ services -“ScrewUprint” etc- and they had no problem with XP2 either as far as I can recall.

      There is are film developers online in the UK who do all the old formats still-even my beloved 110 and the color slide film for my 1960’s carved-outta-a-solid-block-of-Krupps-steel SLR.

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  4. Have a good birthday Leggy. Every time I go for a haircut I stop at the model shop next door and marvel at the tiny wee trains and stuff. So small and so much detail. I go inside sometimes to look at the model cars. The guy behind the counter doesn’t speak.

    I have an old large format camera and you’ve reminded me to get some film and see if it still works. If I have any success with it I’ll post the results.

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  7. Happy birthday Leggy and may there be many more to come.
    Long ago the school I was had a camera club and I remember developing and printing black and white photos. I don’t think colour was around in those days, not at the cheap end anyway. The printing was done with a red light for illumination so you could see what you were doing but getting the film into a drum for developing had to be done in total darkness. That was a right bugger.

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  12. How’s that little fella on the 1/1200 sub going on? Don’t worry, I expect you’re busy, but if you ever do him one day, I’ll buy you a _”good”_ bottle of you-know-what: not the glugging kind, the other kind.

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  14. Happy Birthday Legiron, I’m sure that even in the cold and frozen North one can enjoy a birthday, are there stills hidden in the heather nowadays ? Round my way its empty houses given over to the use of hydroponics, if you know what I mean. Never liked the stuff personally. Always preferred a wee dram.

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