I've only used the straight for the 6th time tonight and there's a lot of pulling. Is it possible that I've already dulled the edge through bad technique / stropping?

As for stropping, I was barely using any pressure and only enough to get that light scraping / singing noise from the blade (Dovo Best Quality). Also, I was never starting with the cutting edge against the leather, I started moving forward a little before bringing it in contact with the leather.

Think it would need to be honed? If so, are there any members from the UK that you'd recommended? All those in the Classifieds are US / International based. I was going to send it to Steve at Invisible Edge as that's where I got it, but he's got a notice saying that the sharpening section is closed until January 2013 due to backlog of work.