Hello everyone!
Sorry that I haven't written a blog in such a long time - I've been really busy over the summer and the first half of September, getting things sorted out and relaxing at the same time (doing neither very effectively). In this blog I'm basically just letting you know what's going on in the world of KentCoarseGerman and what you can expect to see in the next few months.
First off, Merlin and I have started a new campaign, but we're trying to keep it under wraps a bit as the lake we're on doesn't respond well to having lots of anglers on it at once. The videos of it will probably start going up within a month, and from what we've seen in five sessions, they will be well worth watching!
Secondly, to tide you over until the new campaign hits YouTube, I'll be making a series of smaller videos, some reviews, and some rig making videos just to keep you entertained.
I'll also be putting a few sneak pictures on here and on the KCGD Facebook page, so make sure you give it a like by clicking here - I'd really appreciate it!
So until the next post, tight lines and wet nets!
Sunday 13 October 2013
Monday 1 July 2013
Quick review of some Greys accessories, and new purchases!
Hello, today I thought I would share my opinions of some Greys terminal tackle with you, as I went to the tackle shop today to get some bits and pieces before a session tomorrow for carp during the day and eels at night!
In the above picture you can see the Greys Bait Anchors and Extenda Bait Bands. I bought the Bait Anchors a while back on the premise that they held luncheon meat in a similar way to a hair rig, but made it a lot easier to rebait. They really didn't do this, with the meat falling off on the cast or even before!
The Extenda Bands are similarly useless, with the pellet just pinging out most of the time. Admittedly, soon after buying these I discovered Meaty Meals (see picture), which can be hooked easily and with a lot less hassle!
The things I bought from the tackle shop today included many little bits and pieces for building running rigs - silicone sleeves, running rig rubbers, hooklink clips etc, but I also bought some new scales to replace the Fox Digital Scales that I didn't particularly like as it took ages to get them zeroed to the weigh sling, not ideal when you've got a fish on the mat! I therefore decided to do some research, and ended up buying a set of Reuben Heaton Specimen Hunter Scales. These are some of the best scales on the market today, highly accurate and reliable dial scales with a maximum capacity of 60lbs, with 1oz divisions making them good for both large and small fish! They also have a betalight on the needle so you can easily see what the readin is at night.
They also look really nice, and this set is part of a limited production run of 365!
I'm now going to make some rigs for those slippery eels, and hopefully I'll see you again in a few days with some nice pictures of wild carp and eels!
In the above picture you can see the Greys Bait Anchors and Extenda Bait Bands. I bought the Bait Anchors a while back on the premise that they held luncheon meat in a similar way to a hair rig, but made it a lot easier to rebait. They really didn't do this, with the meat falling off on the cast or even before!
The Extenda Bands are similarly useless, with the pellet just pinging out most of the time. Admittedly, soon after buying these I discovered Meaty Meals (see picture), which can be hooked easily and with a lot less hassle!
The things I bought from the tackle shop today included many little bits and pieces for building running rigs - silicone sleeves, running rig rubbers, hooklink clips etc, but I also bought some new scales to replace the Fox Digital Scales that I didn't particularly like as it took ages to get them zeroed to the weigh sling, not ideal when you've got a fish on the mat! I therefore decided to do some research, and ended up buying a set of Reuben Heaton Specimen Hunter Scales. These are some of the best scales on the market today, highly accurate and reliable dial scales with a maximum capacity of 60lbs, with 1oz divisions making them good for both large and small fish! They also have a betalight on the needle so you can easily see what the readin is at night.
They also look really nice, and this set is part of a limited production run of 365!
I'm now going to make some rigs for those slippery eels, and hopefully I'll see you again in a few days with some nice pictures of wild carp and eels!
Friday 28 June 2013
Exams are over, time for a summer of fishing and relaxing!
Finally after a long few months of revising, doing practice papers and stressful exams, it's all over.
No more school, ever!
I'm glad to announce that over this summer you'll be seeing a lot more blogs and videos coming your way from both KCK and KCG, simply as we now have a lot more spare time on our hands, which will be used beneficially to go fishing and do other fishing related things!
Things I've got planned for this summer include: a night after eels and wild carp, a 3 day session on Old Speci, a 3 day session on House, and finally the YouTube bloggers match! I have to say I'm really excited for all this, and I would do more but I've got lots of other commitments over the summer - come September you'll be seeing regular videos again.
The following section is a report of a session fished recently at Wylands, the video for which can be found here.
On Friday the 21st of June, Merlin and I packed our gear and set off for Wylands early in the morning. Our lake of choice was Old Speci - a bit of a change from New Speci as we just wanted to have a day of catching a few fish rather than sitting motionless behind our alarms waiting and hoping for a big carp. The other reason was that New Speci usually gets rather busy at this time of year, and that turned out to be true, with more anglers on the lake than we would have liked, so we felt our choice had been vindicated.
I quickly set up in a swim I've fished before that gave some good results, and I didn't have to wait long before I was playing the first fish of the day which turned out to be a small common of around 4lb, taken on a new Liquid Baits boilie called Mexican Honey - a lovely sweet smell of honey that no fish could resist! Soon after that, I landed another small common, this time on a Salami boilie. This was great news as it continues to show the fish really do go for the Liquid Baits flavours, and I have the utmost confidence in them.
The rig I used was just an extremely simple hair rig, made of Korda N-trap 15lb, a Korda Kaptor Kurv size 8 hook and a normal swivel. The following picture shows this set up:
It was finished off with a Korum lead clip to enhance fish safety in case of a break and a 2oz flat pear lead from the Leadshed. They make great quality leads at a ridiculously low price and I highly recommend them!
We'd also popped down to Rosie's and the Snake a few weeks ago for a bit of surface fishing, but I didn't make a video as I only had two fish, but it was a fun session, walking around barefoot to get closer to the fish on Rosie's as it's a really shallow lake. I think the fish were in the middle of spawning, which would explain the lack of interest shown, but it was a really sunny say so just being outside in that glorious sun made it worthwhile!
The rest of the day on Old Speci continued with more fish coming in, the biggest of the lot around 8lb, so nothing spectacular but all were welcome additions to my total, which reached 12 by the end of the day!
So, to sum it all up, I had a very pleasant session, and I look forward to a summer filled with fish and other enjoyable things. Look otu for more videos coming your way from both me and KCK, and more blogs, exclusively here at KCGD!
No more school, ever!
I'm glad to announce that over this summer you'll be seeing a lot more blogs and videos coming your way from both KCK and KCG, simply as we now have a lot more spare time on our hands, which will be used beneficially to go fishing and do other fishing related things!
Things I've got planned for this summer include: a night after eels and wild carp, a 3 day session on Old Speci, a 3 day session on House, and finally the YouTube bloggers match! I have to say I'm really excited for all this, and I would do more but I've got lots of other commitments over the summer - come September you'll be seeing regular videos again.
The following section is a report of a session fished recently at Wylands, the video for which can be found here.
On Friday the 21st of June, Merlin and I packed our gear and set off for Wylands early in the morning. Our lake of choice was Old Speci - a bit of a change from New Speci as we just wanted to have a day of catching a few fish rather than sitting motionless behind our alarms waiting and hoping for a big carp. The other reason was that New Speci usually gets rather busy at this time of year, and that turned out to be true, with more anglers on the lake than we would have liked, so we felt our choice had been vindicated.
I quickly set up in a swim I've fished before that gave some good results, and I didn't have to wait long before I was playing the first fish of the day which turned out to be a small common of around 4lb, taken on a new Liquid Baits boilie called Mexican Honey - a lovely sweet smell of honey that no fish could resist! Soon after that, I landed another small common, this time on a Salami boilie. This was great news as it continues to show the fish really do go for the Liquid Baits flavours, and I have the utmost confidence in them.
The rig I used was just an extremely simple hair rig, made of Korda N-trap 15lb, a Korda Kaptor Kurv size 8 hook and a normal swivel. The following picture shows this set up:
It was finished off with a Korum lead clip to enhance fish safety in case of a break and a 2oz flat pear lead from the Leadshed. They make great quality leads at a ridiculously low price and I highly recommend them!
We'd also popped down to Rosie's and the Snake a few weeks ago for a bit of surface fishing, but I didn't make a video as I only had two fish, but it was a fun session, walking around barefoot to get closer to the fish on Rosie's as it's a really shallow lake. I think the fish were in the middle of spawning, which would explain the lack of interest shown, but it was a really sunny say so just being outside in that glorious sun made it worthwhile!
The rest of the day on Old Speci continued with more fish coming in, the biggest of the lot around 8lb, so nothing spectacular but all were welcome additions to my total, which reached 12 by the end of the day!
So, to sum it all up, I had a very pleasant session, and I look forward to a summer filled with fish and other enjoyable things. Look otu for more videos coming your way from both me and KCK, and more blogs, exclusively here at KCGD!
Friday 5 April 2013
A cold, windy and vengeful New Speci, 1-3 April 2013
Seeing as it is the Easter holidays, Merlin and I decided to go to Wylands for a three day, two night session on New Speci as a continuation of the quest for a 20lb fish from that lake. We got there at about 9 am on Monday morning, and as soon as we got out of the car, we saw that the lake was very busy. We went for a walk round the lake with a bait bucket each so that we could claim our swims and prevent anyone else from taking them. Luckily my swim at the far end was free, but there was someone doing a day session in Merlin's swim (which is to the left of mine). This meant that he would either have to fish in a different swim for a bit, or he could go and do some stalking on Old Speci. He chose the latter as the sun was starting to come out and the forecast was for a very sunny day.
We proceeded to ferry all our gear to our end of the lake, which is about a five minute walk each way when carrying gear. Luckily, someone lent us their barrow which made the carrying a lot easier! When Merlin has passed his driving test and we have two cars, a barrow is the first thing we're going to buy! I then set up my pod and rods, and cast out, fishing in my usual spot under a tree close in to the island, but my right hand rod was slightly displaced as there was someone to the right of me. I then set up all my overnight stuff starting with the bivvy. To my utter dismay, it was filled with water! I remembered that I had last used it as a shelter on a day session when it had been raining, and so it was still wet when I packed it away, meaning some water had got inside. The sun soon dried it out, and I will clean the mud out at some point in the future.
At 1:30 pm, the right hand rod went off, and I struck into a decent fish. It put up a good fight, probably because it hasn't been caught all winter. When we had unhooked and weighed it, it was 9lb 6oz, and was a really pretty common. Most of the fish in New Speci are commons, but I don't know why. I'd prefer there to be a few more mirrors, but you can't have everything!
The afternoon was very quiet, I spent most of the time inside my bivvy, either watching the water (unfortunately there wasn't much to see) or reading. I had taken the GoPro camera so that I could film fish being netted, and for the fish I caught, it worked quite well. I need to figure out how to use it to look at the bottom, and maybe catch some fish feeding, but hopefully I'll find a website somewhere telling me how to do this.
In the early evening, just as it got dark at around 7:30, I made myself some supper. I had some rather delicious Tesco Jalapeño burgers with cheese, no ketchup. It really is important to keep the food going in when you're on the bank especially in the cold weather we've got at the moment. On another note it's lovely that it now stays light so late, you can just get a lot more done every day and it's really helpful when fishing. I then went to bed quite soon to keep warm, and I was woken in the morning by Merlin, who had some fish he wanted filmed and photographed.
In all honesty, there is nothing I can say about the second day except the conditions were almost identical to the first day albeit with a little less pressure on the lake. I think I didn't catch anything because of the wind pushing into my swim, all the fish were behind the island in shelter.
So, here's a nice picture to make this a little more interesting!
On the last day, Merlin and I moved over to the left hand bank of New Speci, so that we could cast to some slack water off the bank of the island. This brought some success for Merlin, who caught a few nice fish, including the biggest of the session, relegating mine to second place. I hooked one, which took me straight into a snag. I didn't get to the rod in time because I had just picked up Merlin's rod after a fish did exactly the same to him just 30 seconds prior to my run. The loss of this fish greatly annoyed me, and I finished the session on a slightly sour note, but not as sour as for Merlin!
That is because on the Wednesday morning, while throwing some boilies out over his swim, his camera flew out of his coat pocket, and rolled into the lake! As you can expect from treatment such as this, it is now broken. Luckily he managed to retrieve it and recover the footage from the SD card (or "slavage" it, as he put in his video - you really must check your videos and descriptions for typos in the future Merlin!)
So to end, the session wasn't as fruitful as I might have hoped for, but hopefully we'll be able to get down for a day next week, when the fish are perhaps a little more willing to eat my nice hooks. Talking of which, I really must restock my tackle, as Merlin used most of it by catching trees!
Monday 11 March 2013
Flickr - various pictures
Hello again everyone!
I just wanted to let you know that I also have a Flickr account, on which I will be posting a larger collection of my fishing pictures than you will see here, and some of my experimenting with photography.
I hope you enjoy them!
KCG
I just wanted to let you know that I also have a Flickr account, on which I will be posting a larger collection of my fishing pictures than you will see here, and some of my experimenting with photography.
I hope you enjoy them!
KCG
Tuesday 5 March 2013
First video!
Here it is - the first ever KCGD video!
I am proud to announce that this is an historic day for KCGD. Even if I've only been here for a week or two, it's still historic!
It is just a short video to explain a bit about the channel, about me and my plans for the channel in the future.
I shall say no more, apart from leaving you with the link to the video, and I hope you enjoy. Please like and subscribe if you enjoy the video and to make sure you don't miss any future videos!
Click me for the video!
I am proud to announce that this is an historic day for KCGD. Even if I've only been here for a week or two, it's still historic!
It is just a short video to explain a bit about the channel, about me and my plans for the channel in the future.
I shall say no more, apart from leaving you with the link to the video, and I hope you enjoy. Please like and subscribe if you enjoy the video and to make sure you don't miss any future videos!
Click me for the video!
Sunday 3 March 2013
Marker float
Today Merlin and I went down to Wylands after school again - not to fish, but to lead around with a marker float. We stopped off at Kent Tackle en route to buy the marker float - we settled on an Avid Carp Marker Kit which is composed of a float, two beads and two leads of 3.5 and 4.5oz.
When we arrived we quickly went round to our spots at the far end of New Speci, and proceeded to lead around and plumb the depths. Merlin was doing the casting and I wrote down what we found out. I made a diagram of the lake and numbered spots where we cast to, then I wrote down the depth information.
This trip also gave me a chance to test the camera, and I've attached a few sample pictures. I'm still getting to grips with it so some of the pictures I took were inevitably blurry, but I got a few decent ones - the wonders of modern technology!
I realise this hasn't been a particularly long blog, and I warn you that it may also be a week or two before we get out on the bank again, but I will hopefully be able to make my first KCGD video at some point, maybe on making rigs, or a review of some gear of mine.
On a final note, if anyone has an idea for a name for the camera, feel free to share it with me!
When we arrived we quickly went round to our spots at the far end of New Speci, and proceeded to lead around and plumb the depths. Merlin was doing the casting and I wrote down what we found out. I made a diagram of the lake and numbered spots where we cast to, then I wrote down the depth information.
This trip also gave me a chance to test the camera, and I've attached a few sample pictures. I'm still getting to grips with it so some of the pictures I took were inevitably blurry, but I got a few decent ones - the wonders of modern technology!
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| Marker float, complete with snag! |
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| New Speci looks bare after all the work. |
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| A rather nice picture of some gorse, if I do say so myself! |
On a final note, if anyone has an idea for a name for the camera, feel free to share it with me!
Thursday 28 February 2013
Camera, and short session!
Hello again everyone. I've got a bumper blog for you all today - the camera, and a short but very sweet session at Wylands!
I have good news - the camera is here! And what a camera it is! It's such a nicely built piece of precision engineering that it might almost be German, but not quite. It takes some rather fabulous pictures and I'll give you a couple of examples of them further down. I haven't tried out the video capability of it yet as I haven't got a tripod and microphone yet, but they are next on the shopping list I assure you.
It's a really nice camera, with an 18MP APS-C sensor, a flip-out 3" LCD screen that's really handy for filming, and various modes. I'm using a Canon 28-135mm lens on it, which I bought second hand, saving around £125 over buying it new. I think this is a good plan when buying a lens as they don't really go off, as long as you buy one from a reputable source. It's a good all round lens in my opinion, as it can do fairly wide angles, but also a fair measure of zoom if need be. I have it in a Lowepro Toploader Zoom 55 bag, which has space for it with the lens hood on, or if you reverse the hood you can fit another lens underneath. I have a Canon 70-300mm lens in there for when I need that bit more zoom. It also has space for spare batteries, SD cards and any other small accessories you can think of! As an SD card I am using the SanDisk Extreme Pro 16GB card, which is the fastest SD card out there as far as I'm aware. I will probably have to get a second one, as it can only hold around 44 minutes of Full HD video according to the manual, but it should be good for around 2000 photos!
Now for some test shots from the camera:
I will upload a few more tomorrow when I've taken it outside.
Moving on to the session now. On Tuesday afternoon Merlin asked me if I would be up for a session after school the next day. I said yes, so we left school at 1:25, and were underway to Wylands at 2:00 on the dot, after an episode of forgotten shoes from Merlin! We soon arrived, got the rods out and sat down in our communal seating area - an area between out two swims from which we can see and get to our rods. After about half an hour, I was into a small fish. I soon landed it, and it was around 4lb. Here's a picture for you:
As you can see, it wasn't massive but it was a good start and I felt that it had definitely been worth making the effort to come down in the cold!
After another hour or so, I got another run, and hooked into a fish. It felt fairly decent, but unfortunately it only stayed on for a few seconds before it came off. Both these runs came on the Liquid Baits Bun Spice, which really is a top bait - I can't stress it enough. We took it to a lake that it had almost certainly never been used on before, and it is just catching fish after fish, even in these freezing temperatures that we are experiencing!
Just as we were starting to pack up, Merlin hooked into a decent fish. It turned out to be an 8lb 15oz common that gave a great fight. I recommend you check out his video of the session, as it's a good laugh and you'll get to see his fish!
I'm going to call it a day here, I've been playing with the camera all afternoon and clearing out shelves to make a home for it, so I'm fairly knackered. I hope to see you soon with another blog, but for now, tight lines and wet nets!
I have good news - the camera is here! And what a camera it is! It's such a nicely built piece of precision engineering that it might almost be German, but not quite. It takes some rather fabulous pictures and I'll give you a couple of examples of them further down. I haven't tried out the video capability of it yet as I haven't got a tripod and microphone yet, but they are next on the shopping list I assure you.
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| The fabulous, magnificent, awesome 60D! |
It's a really nice camera, with an 18MP APS-C sensor, a flip-out 3" LCD screen that's really handy for filming, and various modes. I'm using a Canon 28-135mm lens on it, which I bought second hand, saving around £125 over buying it new. I think this is a good plan when buying a lens as they don't really go off, as long as you buy one from a reputable source. It's a good all round lens in my opinion, as it can do fairly wide angles, but also a fair measure of zoom if need be. I have it in a Lowepro Toploader Zoom 55 bag, which has space for it with the lens hood on, or if you reverse the hood you can fit another lens underneath. I have a Canon 70-300mm lens in there for when I need that bit more zoom. It also has space for spare batteries, SD cards and any other small accessories you can think of! As an SD card I am using the SanDisk Extreme Pro 16GB card, which is the fastest SD card out there as far as I'm aware. I will probably have to get a second one, as it can only hold around 44 minutes of Full HD video according to the manual, but it should be good for around 2000 photos!
Now for some test shots from the camera:
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| My cute little cat, trying to attack my hand! |
I will upload a few more tomorrow when I've taken it outside.
Moving on to the session now. On Tuesday afternoon Merlin asked me if I would be up for a session after school the next day. I said yes, so we left school at 1:25, and were underway to Wylands at 2:00 on the dot, after an episode of forgotten shoes from Merlin! We soon arrived, got the rods out and sat down in our communal seating area - an area between out two swims from which we can see and get to our rods. After about half an hour, I was into a small fish. I soon landed it, and it was around 4lb. Here's a picture for you:
 |
| My little 4lb common from New Speci |
As you can see, it wasn't massive but it was a good start and I felt that it had definitely been worth making the effort to come down in the cold!
After another hour or so, I got another run, and hooked into a fish. It felt fairly decent, but unfortunately it only stayed on for a few seconds before it came off. Both these runs came on the Liquid Baits Bun Spice, which really is a top bait - I can't stress it enough. We took it to a lake that it had almost certainly never been used on before, and it is just catching fish after fish, even in these freezing temperatures that we are experiencing!
Just as we were starting to pack up, Merlin hooked into a decent fish. It turned out to be an 8lb 15oz common that gave a great fight. I recommend you check out his video of the session, as it's a good laugh and you'll get to see his fish!
I'm going to call it a day here, I've been playing with the camera all afternoon and clearing out shelves to make a home for it, so I'm fairly knackered. I hope to see you soon with another blog, but for now, tight lines and wet nets!
Monday 25 February 2013
Welcome and introduction
Hello everyone! I'm just going to outline what I have planned for this blog so you know what to expect from it.
Basically this is an offshoot from KentCoarseKid - a fishing blog run by a friend of mine. Some of you will probably be familiar with it because it will be how you got here, but for anyone who hasn't seen it, it's definitely worth checking out the videos there, as they are all filled with top tips and banter! The reason for starting this blog and vlog to go with it is because I wanted to give you an insight into the behind-the-scenes of KentCoarseKid and also to show you more of my fish ,which occasionally (but not often enough) pop up in the main KCK videos. I also plan on doing more extensive photography and videos of scenery and what the lakes look like that we're fishing. These photos will be included in the videos that I make, some will go on here, and I'll try to find somewhere that I can upload all of them so you can view them at your leisure!
A little bit about me as a fisherman - I started fishing in 2010 when Merlin (KCK) suggested that I start fishing. I was soon hooked (pardon the poor and much overused pun) and we began to go regularly. At first I was a bit of a novice as you can understand, but with practice, perseverance and a little (really a lot) of help from Merlin I was soon starting to catch decent fish! Now in 2013 I wanted to dip my toes into the water of blogging, and so I decided to buy a camera and start KentCoarseGermanDiaries, or KCGD for short.
Unfortunately I won't be able to get out on the bank for a few weeks due to family commitments like Mother's day and various other things, but the plan is that Merlin and I do a day session on the 24th March, and then there should be one or two overnight sessions from the 31st March until the 12th April! I can't wait to get out on the bank again, and hopefully it should be a lot warmer by then and we won't have to contend with frosts like we did in the last session!
If anyone's interested, the camera I've decided to buy is the Canon EOS 60D, because it has a lot of nice features and I already have a decent telephoto zoom lens to stick on it, which should make long range wildlife shots a doddle!
That's it for now, I'll post again early next week with some pictures when the camera has arrived and I've tried it out a bit - I'm quite excited if I'm honest!
Basically this is an offshoot from KentCoarseKid - a fishing blog run by a friend of mine. Some of you will probably be familiar with it because it will be how you got here, but for anyone who hasn't seen it, it's definitely worth checking out the videos there, as they are all filled with top tips and banter! The reason for starting this blog and vlog to go with it is because I wanted to give you an insight into the behind-the-scenes of KentCoarseKid and also to show you more of my fish ,which occasionally (but not often enough) pop up in the main KCK videos. I also plan on doing more extensive photography and videos of scenery and what the lakes look like that we're fishing. These photos will be included in the videos that I make, some will go on here, and I'll try to find somewhere that I can upload all of them so you can view them at your leisure!
A little bit about me as a fisherman - I started fishing in 2010 when Merlin (KCK) suggested that I start fishing. I was soon hooked (pardon the poor and much overused pun) and we began to go regularly. At first I was a bit of a novice as you can understand, but with practice, perseverance and a little (really a lot) of help from Merlin I was soon starting to catch decent fish! Now in 2013 I wanted to dip my toes into the water of blogging, and so I decided to buy a camera and start KentCoarseGermanDiaries, or KCGD for short.
Unfortunately I won't be able to get out on the bank for a few weeks due to family commitments like Mother's day and various other things, but the plan is that Merlin and I do a day session on the 24th March, and then there should be one or two overnight sessions from the 31st March until the 12th April! I can't wait to get out on the bank again, and hopefully it should be a lot warmer by then and we won't have to contend with frosts like we did in the last session!
If anyone's interested, the camera I've decided to buy is the Canon EOS 60D, because it has a lot of nice features and I already have a decent telephoto zoom lens to stick on it, which should make long range wildlife shots a doddle!
That's it for now, I'll post again early next week with some pictures when the camera has arrived and I've tried it out a bit - I'm quite excited if I'm honest!
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