Hooptedoodle #64 - A Little Holiday

On the whole, I much prefer the conflict in my life to be restricted to the wargames table.

Although I enjoy my occasional Hooptedoodle rants on this humble blog, they are normally intended to deflate through humour, and as often as not – when it comes down to it – it is me or my own inability to cope with the changing times that is the real butt of that humour.

Outside of the blog, my recent saga of attempting to do business with Falcata Miniatures has been a disappointment. Not a big deal – really not a matter of any importance at all, in the overall scheme of things, but it has made me more fed up than I would have expected. I like my toy soldiers and my little wars to be a happy place, not another source of stress, and not a reason to fall out with anyone. The episode is closed now, but it will take a little while to get the sunshine back up to full brightness – wargaming and soldier collecting are rather touchy areas for me, it seems.

I’ve also been getting a few strange, hostile emails again and the odd torpedo in my blog comments. I would rather not think of myself as thin-skinned – my self-indulgent way of expressing myself probably means that I deserve to have people shoot back occasionally, and normally I would enjoy the exchange. Some of this stuff is disturbing, though. Since my blog writings are not fired by any dark intent, and (especially) since they are of no real consequence at all, I would have hoped that anyone who came across them and was irritated would simply move on and read something else. It comes as a surprise when someone takes the trouble to explain to me, in detail, what an asshole I am.

Must keep the thing in proportion. I have made some very good friends through blogging, and I’ve learned a great deal and received a lot of real help. It has all been overwhelmingly positive, but I think I – and the world at large – could maybe do with a bit of a holiday from Prometheus. Next week I shall be away on a short trip to visit the city of my childhood, and the week after that will be my walk along Hadrian’s Wall. I expect I’ll put something here about The Wall, but in the meantime this station will close down to give the transmitter a rest. I’ll still check incoming comments, and if anyone else wants copies of the pdf files for the C&C-style ECW game please do get in touch – it might take me a few days to get back to you, but I will.

On a completely different theme, I’ve been asked a couple of times why Prometheus in Aspic anyway? – does it mean something? Is it simply the most pretentious name I could come up with?

Not sure, to be honest. I’ve always had a very soft spot for the Promethean legend – the idea of someone who did his best and was tortured for it is an easy one to be moved by. The portrayal of Napoleon as Prometheus is something of a cliché, but there may be a trace of that association in there. It is also possible – though I would rather not think about it too much – to identify with Prometheus at a personal level. The truth of the matter, as I remember it, comes from when I was trying to set the blog up in the first place. I had so little success finding available names that were anything like what I had in mind that in the end I went for something that was so unlikely and so stupid that it hadn’t been used before!