Weeknote 21st January 2024
Hello all,
I'm sitting here listening to Storm Isha battering our battened hatches, and remembering Storm Eunice. Eunice trapped me in London for an extra day, but I managed to find shelter from the storm in Hawksmoor Borough. Desperate times and all that...
I've decided to fully commit to Buttondown and closed my Substack account earlier this week. I'm pleased that none of you unsubscribed last week, although I have no idea how many of you read my last weeknote as I hadn't flicked the 'tracking' switches on Buttondown. Yes, I'm a bumbling amateur but I do like that they are off as default.
As a fountain pen user, I have a Sunday ritual of cleaning and filling the pens that are low on ink. I have a small (ahem) collection of Lamy Safari and Al-Star fountain pens, one of my very favourites is the Copper Orange special edition from 2015.
It's my favourite Lamy by far and the special edition ink Lamy released with it is both Lamy's best ink and the best orange ink I've used.
Annoyingly the Copper Orange ink was only released in cartridges and so I was more than a little sad when I found the empty cartridge in my pen was my last.
I've ordered cartridges that were advertised as Copper Orange but turned out to be just orange before, so I didn't hold out much hope of finding any stock online.
I found a listing on eBay and ordered with some trepidation. The parcel arrived quickly and was very well packaged which gave me some hope, surely a fraudster wouldn't go to this much effort. Would they?
I removed the Barbour Sean The Sheep tissue paper that had been wrapped around the cartridges and... they were genuine Copper Orange. All praise the holy ink well.
I know have a stock of just 15 cartridges, but I am tempted to look for more to build my own little Copper Orange ink lake.
The highlight of this week was formally launching All Flows 2024.
We already have an amazing lineup of speakers, with more to follow soon. We have a very cool new website courtesy of my talented friend Richard. More importantly, we have a massive 40% off for Mega Early Bird tickets. If you are thinking of coming - book now and save some serious money.
On Saturday I had a very pleasant morning with my son; after a trip to the barbers we had coffee and then popped up to the Super Sausage Cafe for 'brunch' which was epic as always.
This morning my lovely wife and I popped to Canal Street Coffee for breakfast. The coffee was excellent as always and supplied by a new (to me) local roaster Doe and Fawn.
I have a bag of their filter coffee on order which I'm really looking forward to trying. I hope their filter is as good as their espresso - review to follow.
Until next time,
David