Recently used my Zenith (Japan) 10x50 binocs ('Triple-tested'!) which I've had for about 45 years - bought new for a fiver, iirc, which seemed extravagance unlimited at the time.

Seems to have been a very short-lived manufacture but they sold loads of them, with many surviving, if eBay etc are anything to go by.

Hurrah!

I mostly drink Guiness. I have explored other stouts over the years but I come back to that.

I have a Russian field telescope, dating from the mid-1970s.

It's rather good optically, except the last time I used it, a small* spider had taken up home inside it.

Maybe it was a large spider, just a long way away.

I have my grandfather's whistle from his time in the trenches in the very latter part of the great war.

My father gave it to me about a year before he died. His father, the whistles original owner, died in the mid 1930s, when dad was just a little lad.

A year and a half since his passing, and I still miss him so much.

If whistles (and telescopes) could talk.

I had a little microscope set as a kid and was entranced at one point to unexpectedly be watching little microscopic creatures on a slide. They were, of course, mites or something that were inhabiting the mechanism.

Fellow owner of a microscope kit here.

Did yours come with a little tube of Daphnia eggs, which smelled of rancid fishpaste?

(Ah, the evocative litany of strange substances packaged in the microscope kit - Xylene - Eosin - Canada Balsam ...)

It was a Thomas Salter Microscope Lab 3 that set me on a science path. I focussed on chemistry pretty quickly, but mum & dad had it in their heads that "science = microscope" so, in my early teens, I was presented with a proper lab microscope in a wooden case and accompanied by a load of slides from London school of tropical medicine. It probably cost them way more than they could afford, but such was Thatcher's Scotland.

#6 it never really fades, mate - we just learn to live with it. (((Eli))) in the stoutest possible way.

#8 Probably did when new but we got ours at a Church jumble sale. It did still have a few sample slides.

Ah. I was pencilled in as being the potential 'Scientist' of our family, largely due to my tendency to mess about with stuff.

That lasted until about the age of 10, when I swapped a book of football stickers my Uncle had given me with a classmate for the mortal remains of a Honda C70.

The exact moment I thought "Fuck science - I want to be an ENGINEER!"

I had one of those small plastic panels you stuck wires and other bits all over and, with the addition of a battery, you completed 'electrical projects' with a view to launching oneself as an electrical engineer. One of them created a primitive radio with terrible sound quality.

I learned nothing from it and that I actually gained a Higher physics (albeit just a C) ranks as one the greatest surprises, and perhaps injustices, in educational history.

I had a chemistry set, microscope and Philips Electronic Engineer set but that didn't lead to a career in science (except for a spell in the quality control lab of a cheese factory) or as an explorer. I am getting a bit stout in my old age, thoughbut.

Recently used my Zenith (Japan) 10x50 binocs

I whipped my Nikon Prostaff 7s out the other day, in order to scour next door's garden from the spare bedroom window -- I was hoping to get some good focus on a male redstart, but instead my gaze settled on two teenage girls out sunbathing. Awkward.

Get a Lab. The dog, that is. A nice medium to large dog, 56 to 80lb, will soon reverse any stoutness, and give you lots of love and dribble.

Get a Lab.

Rather splendidly, the Royal Scottish Geographical Society have 'Explorers in Residence'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zndM04LCpE

I have met Hazel and she is charming.

Surely the title Explorer in Residence is an oxymoron.

It is a bit.