Optimal Prime Time....

.....as aesthetically pleasing objects go, the Primus stove may not be everyone's cup of tea......as it were.
 However, to my eyes it is a thing of rare and un-natural beauty. It's simplistic tarnished shiny brassness of purpose makes me quiver with an un-fettered pleasure.
To assemble it's componant parts from it's battered old rust-dusted storage tin...to pricket it's burner.....to prime with meths....to tighten it's knobs....to light the warming trough.....(ah, the aroma!)....to pause.....pause.....and then gently pump the pressure plunger.....and bliss.....the controlled steady roar of the burner as it announces it's awakening......the evocative sound and smell that instantly recalls childhood memories of tenting, all damp canvas, groundsheet and netty-hessian. Tea and stew/plastic mugs and plates.........oh my...

I appear to have acquired several of these wonderful stoves, some of which proudly polished and buffed, adorn my abode as ornaments and plant pot plynths....and fine and dandy they look too....but my favorite is the one I still use as he is meant to be. Carried in his time-dented tin box and put to work up mountain, riverside or quiet roadside ....a complete visceral experience of set up and operation...resulting in a bacon-bapped and steaming tea-d offering.
To place the billy on his crown of heat to watch and wait.....ethereal.
He and I have shared some times.
I have been known to exercise him at home ....on a Sunday  morning, on the patio (the back yard)....just for the hell of it. Hell, a man needs a hobby, doesn't he?.....