02/06/2016
Firehoses, eh? Not something you really sit down and consider that often, right? I’d never considered that expired firehoses might be an environmental problem, or even that they are a quite superb basis for upcycling. Apparently tonne upon metric tonne of hoses are discarded every year as they can no longer pass the safety demands. Given how well made these hoses are though, it…
31/05/2016
Readers with an attention span longer than that of a gnat will recall that last winter I succumbed to the charms of Gloverall not once, but twice, and will show little surprise at me falling head over heels again. And after a duffle, it’s another duffle! Not a big wool duffle though, but a summer duffle. Is that even something?…
22/05/2016
A lot of companies try for the underground thing, that thing where only those in the know know and the others may only wonder, or never even notice. Other companies are just not very well known, operating under the radar, so to speak, through a combination of operating on a different plane, and well, just doing their own thing. Grenfell…
15/05/2016
I like my white t-shirts. Breaking out a crisp and fresh white tee is one of life’s small pleasures. In this respect I could easily relate to The Wire, where Bubbles tours Hamsterdam hawking his white tees. I do see the possible problems in taking fashion and lifestyle advice from The Wire though, so I won’t make too much of…
08/05/2016
A while back I posted a review of the Minimum Squared wallet, an innovative design (and incidentally it has won a design award since I wrote about it). Today I’m taking a look at two more variants I have been using recently. One is a very traditional type of cardholder, the other one with some added different. Oh, and while the…
01/05/2016
There is something I need to get off my chest before we go on: I don’t really get the fascination many have for wearing clothes with various camouflage patterns. I don’t think they look nice, and they certainly don’t have any utility value (for starters most are wearing either woodlands or desert camo, not the appropriate urban patterns, so are…
03/04/2016
Honest, Guv, I wasn’t looking for trouble. Trouble in the way of another duffle-coat, that is. And certainly not another blue one. It was just that it started ticking all my boxes, saying all the right things. And it was just so very, very blue. And it can not be ignored. The royal blue wool is so vibrant it makes…
28/03/2016
Whilst giving my winter boots a little attention before retiring them after another season of use, it struck me that maybe it would be interesting to hear how a few of the things I use have worked out long-term. A review will almost always be based on first impressions and a limited amount of use, so just like other aspects…
27/03/2016
Drawing their usual inspiration from militaria found in the IWM collection, this season Realm & Empire are all about the LRDG, or the Long Range Desert Group to give it it’s full name. This was a small group of allied soldiers that operated behind enemy lines in the desert of North Africa during the WW2. I’ll give you a tip…
26/03/2016
There is something to be said for starting out with the intention of making the best it can possibly be. And not in a bragging or loud way, but just getting down to it, working through a design, finding the best components and then assembling it as well as can be done. Really, it’s not an impossibly difficult task to set about…