Foy's First Law

Foy's First Law is:

Nerdism is more easily detected in others.

If I had known two years ago how much time I would now be spending reading wargaming blogs - well, I would have been surprised, that's for sure. I have been fascinated by the effort and care that goes into these works; some of them are absolute treasures - illustrated tours of battlefields, comprehensive catalogues of defunct ranges of figures - just marvellous. Funds of information for which the readership is too sparse to justify a commercial venture.

I have had a faint hankering to have a go myself, but used to worry about a few things:

(1) Although I am frequently opinionated, I'm not sure I know very much that anyone would wish to hear about.

(2) I have a regrettable tendency to digress at huge length and with some venom about topics I can't even remember the following day (which may have something to do with the proportion of our dinner guests who never make it to a second visit).

However, on wider reading I see wargame blogs which include posts on sailing holidays and all sorts of flotsam, so I am reassured. If I find the need to complain occasionally about things like the British banking system or the value-for-money represented by my TV licence, I shall not be uniquely out of order in this repect. Or at least I will be able to point to precedents.

I've been wargaming for nearly 40 years now, with a couple of extended breaks. My interests have gradually boiled down to just Napoleonics (I sold my last Ancients a while ago to make more room in The Cupboard - a thing of which you will hear more), and I am unusual, I think, in that my armies (Peninsular War) are almost complete, and should be finished to plan within a few months.

If that in itself does not destroy all trace of credibility, I'm sure I'll come up with something else. I am pretty much my own man when it comes to wargaming, I think.

Welcome to anyone who is actually reading this - I hope to get some fun out of the exercise. If no-one ever reads it then I shall have lost nothing (and, obviously, neither will anyone else), and it should be a useful place to record my thoughts on my hobby, and to sound off about anything else which comes to mind. It will also save me unloading my thoughts on my poor wife or on email correspondents who probably deserve better.