Napoleonic & ECW wargaming, with a load of old Hooptedoodle on this & that


Saturday 29 December 2018

Hooptedoodle #319 - Nostalgia Trip



Posts have been a bit sparse of late on this blog. No matter. One thing I had been meaning to say something about was a recent visit I made with my wife to Liverpool, my birthplace, at the start of December. We went only for a few days, and we weren't very lucky with the weather, but it was good fun, and I did a few things - mostly rather silly, personal things - that I've been meaning to do for years.

I have only one surviving relative in Liverpool these days - cousin Mark, with whom we met up for dinner one evening while we were there - so normally there are no pressing reasons to visit the place, apart from self-indulgence, and my last visit was in 2012. We stayed at the Campanile, which is very cheap and cheerful, at the Queen's Dock. We visited the cathedrals (on the wettest day I can remember) and trogged around the old city centre, with me trying to recall what old buildings used to be on particular sites in my day. Yes, I know - how pointless is that?

I have to say that the city is far cleaner and more prosperous than I remember it, but it is disturbing how much it has changed - I have a feeling that some of the change has lost a few things as well. Babies and bath-water come to mind.

I went to have a look at the house where I was born - well, all right, I wasn't born there at all, I was born at the Maternity Hospital (in Oxford Street?) like most other people from the South end, but I lived there from ages zero to 10.

6, Belvidere Road - that's Liverpool 8, Toxteth, if you insist, but it is certainly among the posher bits of Toxteth, and I suppose it's more accurate to refer to it as Princes Park. We got the bus from the city centre to Princes Avenue, and walked down to Belvidere, which had changed very little (though the houses look better-maintained, and some charitable soul has replaced the railings and gates, which obviously were not required to be thrown at Hitler after all).

We had a splendid walk through Princes Park to Sefton Park, and then through Sefton Park to my grandmother's old house in Mossley Hill. When I was a kid we used to do this walk (both ways, in fact) most fine Sundays, and I was keen to see it again. It always seemed an enormous distance to walk with small children, but in fact it's not nearly as far as I remembered - probably only a couple of miles each way.  It was a fairly dry day, and everything seemed very fresh and familiar. I haven't walked through Princes Park since the 1960s, I guess, but it hasn't changed much.

From my grandmother's old house we continued up Penny Lane to Smithdown, had a coffee and took the bus back into town. That's another one for the bucket shop list - I'm really pleased I did it, and I don't need to think about it any more!

We also took advantage of our only other dry day to travel by ferry across the Mersey to Seacombe. Then we walked along the riverside promenade past Wallasey as far as New Brighton, on the end of the Wirral Peninsula, complete with the Perch Rock Fort, which Turner painted in some of his wilder sessions, but the old Tower Ballroom, where as a youth I once saw Little Richard, is long gone. New Brighton was definitely looking a bit gone-to-seed - we took the Mersey Railway back under the river to James Street. Great walk - I was impressed by the number of fishermen on the promenade - when I lived in those parts there would have been nothing alive to catch in the Mersey, that's for sure!

On our last evening we went to the Philharmonic Hall in Hope Street, to see the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in action. Marvellous. High spot of the concert for me was Stravinsky's Firebird, which is a great favourite of mine. The previous occasion on which I was in the Phil was probably Speech Day in my final year in the Sixth Form at Quarry Bank School. Hmmm.

Some photos follow - nothing too onerous, I hope.

Over the hills and faraway - travelling south on the M6 over Shap Fell. The Lake District is somewhere over to the right
It still surprises me that Liverpool has become a tourist centre...

Jesse Hartley's old port sometimes doesn't sit well with the new buildings - my father, his two brothers and their dad all worked at Liverpool Docks at various times - I wonder what they'd make of it now


6 Belvidere Road - my first home - we lived in the top flat (which I think is two apartments now). It looks better maintained now than it was back in my infancy. The street is quite elegant, and hasn't changed a lot, but the labyrinth of little terraces around the back - Miles St, Clevedon St, South St, Hawkstone St and so many others - real Toxteth - has been knocked down and replaced many years ago

Let us not speak of the purple dustbins...
Princes Park - scenes of childhood...
...and its lake, which once had rowing boats for hire
Linnet Lane - apart from the lack of my kid sister's pram and a few modern cars, looks about the same
Lark Lane - quite arty these days - leads to Aigburth and my old primary school at St Mick's
The cafe in the middle of Sefton Park - seems to have sprouted some modern wings, but recognisably the same place. I think it was painted cream, and I remember there was a Wall's Ice Cream man selling ices from a pedal-tricycle cart here on Sundays. Note the shadow of the Ghost of Christmas Past

The quiet end of Queen's Drive, Mossley Hill - this is the great ring road which loops around the city to Seaforth and Bootle in the North.
My Nan's old house, on the corner of Briardale Road and Herondale. She was still resident here when she died in 1980 - not much has changed, though someone has roofed over her backyard - how very odd?



Sefton Park's celebrated Palm House, a fabulous old facility which has been rescued from vandalism and general wear and tear numerous times over the years

The Peter Pan statue in Sefton Park - one of my earliest memories from childhood; in fact it has been shifted - it is now located near to the Palm House; as far as I remember, it used to be in the flower garden near the big lake.

This is something - very quirky building - Dovedale Road Baptist Church, where my parents were married in 1945. They had met at the youth club here. The building was completed (I think) in 1903, and by the perversity of history it had closed as a church about 6 weeks before our visit! Right opposite was Dovedale Rd Primary School, which included John Lennon and my cousin Dave among its alumni. Yes, I believe the church may have been designed by a madman.

Absolutely - THAT Penny Lane. Lucky to have kept its name - the city council was planning to change the names of all streets in the city which referred to families who were associated with slavery or slave-supported businesses - the plan was shelved when they realised that Penny Lane was one such, and that there would be a great many disappointed tourists if it had been called Nelson Mandela Street instead.
The Lady Chapel in Liverpool Anglican Cathedral. Speak it in whispers, but I was a member of the choir here when I was about 12 - that was until they found out what was wrong with it.
The Royal Iris - the latest of a great many Royal Irises - the ferry for Seacombe (Wallasey) - back in the day, the Seacombe ferry had a white funnel, the Birkenhead ferries had brick-red ones.

Wallasey Town Hall, looming above the River Walk


Nothing else to do now but wish everyone all the very best for the New Year. 2018 has definitely been a duff one for me and my family - we are hoping for rather better in 2019. Once again I regret to observe that I have been overlooked in the New Year Honours List, but I thought I'd share with you my great pleasure that John Redwood has been knighted, presumably for being a pain in the arse for so many years, and for services to xenophobia. How lovely. Gives me a warm feeling in my stomach - possibly dyspepsia?  

***** Late Edit *****

Penny Lane Supplement...

In response to Steve's comment, a couple of old pictures. Penny Lane is an old street in the Allerton area of Liverpool (Liverpool 18, in old money) which runs between Smithdown Place and Greenbank Park. Apart from the fact that it intersects with the road where my Nan used to live(!), it is not all that interesting. On the other hand, "Penny Lane" was the name of the old tram terminus which was at the intersection of Allerton Road, Smithdown Place, Church Road (Wavertree - where the Bluecoat School is), Elm Hall Drive and - well, Penny Lane. The area was known as "Penny Lane", mostly because that was what it said on the front of the trams and buses. As it says in the song, the shelter for the transport terminus is on a roundabout in the middle. That shelter has now been tarted up into a Beatles-themed place. The barber's shop still exists, though back in the 1960s it was owned by Roger Bioletti's granddad (Roger was a year below me at grammar school) - nowadays it, also, lives on the Beatles connection. The main point here is that both the shelter and the barber were, and still are, in Smithdown Place, which is the (sketchy) setting for the song, at the area which has been known for donkeys' years as "Penny Lane", though Penny Lane itself is only one of the streets which runs into that junction.

I may have explained that so brilliantly that even I can't understand it any more. Here are the pictures - all borrowed from elsewhere:

 
Bioletti's barber shop, Smithdown Place, 1960s


The shelter, in 1956 - looking in exactly the opposite direction to previous photo - this time looking along Allerton Road - the barber's shop must be just off the left edge of the picture

Somewhat later view of the shelter - circa 1970? - here we are looking towards Church Road, with Allerton Rd off to the right and Smithdown to the left, and Penny Lane itself directly behind us.
The actual song is a bit of a montage of boyhood memories - some poetic licence in there - the Fire Station is in Mather Avenue - a couple of miles away past Allerton Road, on the way to Garston - on the way, in fact, to McCartney's home at Forthlin Road, which is off Mather Avenue.

All the Beatle-theming and tourist exploitation is probably OK, but ironic to those of us old enough to recall that Liverpool youth in the 1960s was regarded by the local authorities as just as much of a pestilence as you would expect. Visitors today may be directed to the New Cavern in Mathew Street, but they will not see much information about the fact that the council closed the original place down the first real chance they got. Mind you, it was unhygienic and failed every possible H&S test you could think of, but it's nonetheless true that they had regarded it, and places like it, as blots on the official presentation of Liverpool the Commercial City (and former Second City of the Empire, if anyone could remember that). That particular rubber stamp must have been banged down with a lot of satisfaction. How times change. How attitudes are re-engineered to suit.

Slavery and Beat Clubs - choose your viewpoint to fit the times in which you live!

***********************

Tuesday 25 December 2018

Hooptedoodle #318 - Unfamiliar Birds

Very quiet day here - grey and overcast. The Contesse and I went for a walk down by the River Tyne (as discussed previously, this is the Scottish Tyne, not the one that goes through Newcastle). Very quiet down there - maybe people are put off by the muddy conditions? We did see a couple of birds which we didn't recognise - since we didn't have a camera with us these are not our photos, but these are definitely what we saw - library photos courtesy of the RSPB, which is where we get our knowledge of birds anyway!

White-Throated Dipper
Goosander - male on the right
We walked along the river to the footbridge next to Hailes Castle, crossed over and back to the village of East Linton by (very quiet) public roads to reclaim our car. Good walk - only about 4 miles, but stimulating on a cold day.

The narrow bridge over the Tyne at the village of East Linton - until 1927 this was part of the A1, main road from Edinburgh to London!
Hailes Castle - another seat of the Hepburn family, I think - can't move for history round here!

Friday 21 December 2018

Hielan' Coos - and the Ramekin

Moo!
First off, I must wish everyone a happy and comfortable Christmas - all the very best to you and yours. Here's a suitably frozen picture of some Scottish cattle. Tourist stuff, but cute.

I also thought I'd take the opportunity to put out the current draft of my Ramekin add-on for Commands & Colors: Napoleonics. In truth, "add-on" is not ideal phrasing, since the Ramekin game is a simplification. As I attempt to explain in the note, this is not intended to replace C&CN, it is merely a variation to cope with games where the left/centre/right section cards are not appropriate, or where the battle requires a lot of preliminary movement to develop the armies, or where the game is so large that some streamlining of the activation system helps to push it along. What I have is still a working draft, so it will certainly change further, but a number of people have asked me about it.

Replacement of the Command Cards with a dice-based activation system feels a bit like a sell-out, and I had all sorts of ideas for making the dice system very scientific, possibly utilising the army structure - the Tempo Points system from Polemos' General de Division was a likely candidate (I've always liked that) - but in the end I decided simple is good, at least for starting with, so the system at present may be described as crude-but-fast. This may get improved a bit as I build some more experience, but it gets me up and running.

The scaling-back of the effect of ranged musketry is an experiment. I am keen not to destroy the balance of the game, but, as published in C&CN, musket fire at 2-hex range is about as effective as melee combat, which has always bothered me rather. Let's see how we get on with this. I've had a great many games where attacks get shot to pieces before the attackers can even get to close range - that doesn't seem to correspond completely with history. Anyway, let's see how I get on with the tweak. If I can get the changed version of Google Drive to work, you should find the note here.

If you'd like to discuss the Ramekin, or make suggestions, or share you own experiences with it, please get in touch, but if you think it sucks then please keep it to yourself! Also, before anyone asks, I have no intention of publishing or maintaining a set of scenarios for Ramekin!

Have an excellent holiday, everyone.

Sunday 16 December 2018

Hooptedoodle #317 - Segovia - Not to Be Sneezed At


 I've had a fiddly sort of week, sorting out my accounts, paying bills, tidying up. I also invested a little time in sorting some more of the dreaded lead pile into potential units for painting, and boxing them up in plastic sandwich boxes, labelled with Sharpie pen - "3 bns French lights - no command" and similar. You can see how this might work - if I can find where I have now put the little boxes I can get them painted up - if I can't find them then at least I have lost the lot in a single step, which is efficient in a rather specialised sense.

While I was involved in this scientific and worthwhile activity (which must look uncomfortably like mucking around to the rest of the world), I was listening to BBC Radio 3, as one does (or could do - other stations are available, of course). One of the recordings they played was of the great Spanish maestro of the classical guitar, Andres Segovia, and I was reminded that I am old enough to have seen him in concert - long ago, when the world was young.

Sketch of Segovia in concert in Brussels in 1932 - before my time...
My recollection was that the concert took place at Leith Town Hall (that's sort of Edinburgh to you), but I could hardly believe that such a gig ever took place. So I took time off the sorting and boxing to check online, which, of course, is exactly why these jobs take so long and where the accusations of mucking about probably arise.

The Leith concert did take place - in winter time, in early 1971, when Segovia was a plump-but-sprightly 78, on what was expected to be his final European tour. I got a ticket through my friend Thomas, who was very keen and had recently joined (I may not get this quite right) The Edinburgh Classical Guitar Society - it was they who were putting on the concert, and it must have been something of a coup for them. I went along because I was a fan, and also because I might never have the chance again [digression: I once saw Louis Armstrong at the Liverpool Philharmonic, exactly because my mum thought I should go, since it might be the last chance. If Napoleon comes to your town, you should go to see him, so you can tell the grandchildren, or bore some future generation of blog readers].  

Leith Town Hall in sunnier times - in fact, I'm not convinced the concert was in this part of the building
Thomas and I arrived late, just before the concert started. There were a couple of hundred people in the audience. It was dark in the hall, and pokey, and freezing cold (you could see your breath at the start, and the guests all kept their hats and coats on). We seem to have been seated on folding wooden seats, so it was also creaky and uncomfortable, but the worst thing of the lot was the acoustic ambience of the hall. Church-like echoes, and Segovia himself was almost inaudible - everyone had to keep very quiet throughout, and it all got a bit tense. I am getting ahead of myself...

At the appointed hour, Old Andres came out onto the platform. He didn't speak or smile at any time of the show - I can hardly blame him. He tuned up for a minute or so, and then began his performance - a nice bit of Albeniz or something. After about 30 seconds, someone coughed, Segovia stopped, glared around the hall and started again - from the beginning. Same thing happened during the third or fourth piece - laser-beam stare and start again. Since everyone seemed to have a seasonal cold, the whole thing became very edgy indeed. Everyone in agony in case they sniffed, or their chair creaked. I began to convince myself that I was certain to sneeze. While aware of the privilege of just being there, I spent the rest of the first half just wishing the thing was over.

Came the interval, and I joined Thomas in an adjoining room, where cups of tea (from the municipal urn) were available. I recall that I was still wearing my gloves. Thomas was spotted as a new member, and was buttonholed by the secretary. How were we enjoying the concert? Thomas and I had just been moaning to each other, but Thomas was tactful enough to avoid telling the Hon Sec that it had been one of the most harrowing hours of his life. He did ask why the heating wasn't working, and the question was dismissed out of hand. Warming (wrong word) to his theme, Thomas suggested that if the concert had been at the Edinburgh Usher Hall, or any serious concert venue, some tasteful amplification would have been used to boost the sound to a level where the paying audience could actually hear it. A couple of good condenser mikes and a competent sound man and the music would have been perfectly fine with just a gentle boost. Tasteful - you know how it might be.

The Sec almost had apoplexy, and raved on about how you cannot possibly reproduce the sound of the guitar through a microphone or any type of amplification equipment. Eventually he paused to take a sip of his tea, and presumably to gather his strength for a further onslaught.

For the only time I can ever remember, Thomas got a bit annoyed.

"Tell me," he asked the Sec, "at home, do you have recordings of Segovia?"

"Oh yes, I have just about everything he has recorded, including some very rare pieces which I obtained through a Spanish subscription club of which I am a member - wonderful, wonderful music, much of it from when he was in his prime."

"And you enjoy listening to these recordings?" asked Thomas, innocently.

"Of course - there is nothing finer"

"You do realise," Thomas continued, "that there isn't a little man in your gramophone playing a little guitar? - the sound comes from an electric amplifier, though a loudspeaker, and was captured for purposes of the recording using microphones. You did know that?"

The Sec turned on his heel (quite rightly), went off to rub shoulders with Andres himself. With luck, Segovia might just have bent his ear about the state of the hall, especially the sound, the near-darkness and the bloody temperature, and the fact that, by the way, the tea was crap...

The second half was slightly less stressful - the presence of all those coated bodies must have warmed the place up a bit, but I was still more than a little pleased when it was over, we could move around a bit and I could get rid of the flat area on my backside.


Segovia may have stopped touring, but he was still recording in 1977, when he was 84. He finally died in 1987 - I hope he was warm and comfortable and everyone kept quiet for him. Thomas lives in Northamptonshire now, and is still trying to play classical guitar, bless him.

Me, I live in Scotland and spend time mucking around with toy soldiers. We are - all of us - always just one cup of tea from history.

Monday 10 December 2018

Same Old Painting Style, and a Brush(?) with Technology

Reports of my passing have been premature - I've been a bit preoccupied...

This afternoon I've finished off painting the mounted officers for my next Bavarian infantry regiment. These figures are new releases from Hagen, which turned out rather nicely, I think. They are uniformed as LIR 10, Junker.



Yesterday I visited the Stryker Estates, up in t'North, for a proper Old School style wargame, and very nice too. A new departure for us was live posting on Instagram - if I'd known I'd have arranged to take my make-up crew with me (my hairdressing people only work part-time now). The game was loosely based on Plancenoit, and finished as a draw, which surprised me since I had the impression all afternoon that my lot were getting thumped. Now that we have an international online audience available, it could be that a rematch will be almost as big a draw as the Fury vs Wilder refight. Stryker will have to get his advertising contracts dusted off.

General view early in the game
My French skirmishers were lethal
Stryker's splendid Old Guard - mine for the afternoon - pinned in square by Prussian uhlans - no-one came near them!
Excellent day, as ever - my thanks to Baron and Baroness S for their kind hospitality, and my compliments to Stryker and Goya for their company and the excellent toys. 

Thursday 22 November 2018

Hooptedoodle #316 - Things I Learned Living Next Door to Richard


Someone has to do it, I suppose
A very long time ago, I moved to the Morningside area of Edinburgh with my young family. I lived there for a good many years, and throughout that time my neighbours were Richard and his wife, Liz. Two more upstanding members of the local community, or people better equipped to represent its traditional values, it would be impossible to imagine. Richard was flawlessly respectable, always polite and smartly turned-out, and was an elder of the Kirk of Scotland. He was a lawyer by profession, and he was a remarkable individual. He had undoubted gifts, but overlying everything were the personal qualities which placed these gifts into context - he was, to be blunt about it, the most nit-picking, over-fussy, infuriatingly pedantic man I ever met (and I have met a few, take my word for this).

The overwhelming impression of Richard which a stranger would pick up on immediately was disapproval - often straying into actual contempt; nothing was ever good enough for Richard. In a way this was a blessing; it was a blessing to everyone else, because it meant that we could all benefit from his unique abilities (and he certainly worked very hard), and it was a blessing to Richard because it meant that he could get on with his job without losing focus, and without risking his sanity in ways which might have troubled lesser beings.

A couple of examples from our neighbourhood might offer some insight into how this came across socially, and I'll discuss his job in a moment.


(Case Study 1) One winter's afternoon it snowed - briefly but fairly heavily. We lived in a quiet street, on a fairly steep hill, and the pavements were quite narrow, with a pronounced camber. Since the council would make no contribution to the amenity of such a backwater, and since we had a lot of elderly people living in the area, there was always some urgency to get snow cleared up before it froze or became impassable. At this time sons nos 2 and 3 from my first family must have been 6 and 5 years old - when I got home from work that day we put on our mittens and scarves and woolly hats, found the snow scrapers and a couple of brooms, and made pretty short work of the fresh, fluffy snow. We even took the spade down the gutter, and cleared a 9" wide channel next to the kerb, in the approved manner, so that the meltwater would have a clear run. This went so well that my sons wanted to carry on for a while, so I commissioned them to clear the sidewalk in front of Richard's house, with a little gentle supervision. Richard was always home late from work, so it would be a practical and, I suppose, neighbourly thing to do. It didn't take long, and we went inside to warm up and put the winter togs away.

I'd forgotten all about this, about 2 hours later, when the doorbell rang and there was Richard, obviously just arrived home. He was correct and polite enough, of course, but it was clear that he was simmering - he was furious that my little sons had cleared his pathway for him. Why? Was it because he had wanted to do it himself ?- had spent the afternoon, maybe, looking forward to it? No - don't think so.

Was it because he had difficulty, socially, with accepting kindness from others, in some way? No - probably not; elders of the Kirk, of course, are expected to be very strong on kindness.

It was, undoubtedly, because my sons had not done the job properly, as he would have done it. Like me, you might think that this is a possibility, though it would require some work of definition and inspection to put dimensions on it, and you might think that it was a small matter about which to get irritated. In his place, if it had mattered at all, I might have got out my own broom and spent a minute and a half putting things right. But not Richard. Richard was special.

(Case Study 2) For a while, I had the privilege of serving on the neighbourhood Garages Committee, which looked after maintenance and other communal issues connected with the area of lock-ups at the rear of the houses (the area was ancient enough for these lock-ups to have been stables in their day, I guess). I was the secretary. Richard, naturally, was the Chairman. I say naturally because Richard would expect to be Chairman - he would have failed to realise that he was tailor-made for the role of Secretary. He would have made a wonderful secretary, though someone might have killed him after a while.

There were many examples of things not being good enough. At one point we had to get the tarmac area surveyed and some estimates for repair work. I had to draft a letter to get this done. My letter could not be sent out until Richard had checked my spelling and grammar - and you just know that he changed it. I think it had to go back to him twice before it could go out. When the survey report arrived, Richard wanted me to go back to them and get some of the wording changed, since there were ambiguities (or Richard saw some) and it might become important later. After some huffing, the surveyor sent a corrected version, but Richard had thought of more changes he wanted. I refused to chase this any further, and things started moving again, but it confirmed my status as someone who was prepared to settle for imperfection, and my card was duly marked.


Richard, you see, was a lawyer who worked for the Scottish Office. His team (which I think probably meant Richard himself, since he worked such long hours that I can't believe he trusted anyone else to do any part of the job properly) was to prepare Government papers relating to Scottish Law (and this was long before the level of devolution Scotland has now, so we are exclusively talking of Westminster at that time). If someone wanted to introduce new legislation, or amend existing legislation, or put a Bill before Parliament, or a "green paper" (as I think statements of policy or future intent were termed) then Richard had to prepare it. If someone proposed a modest change to the use of ancient footpaths in Scotland (for example) then Richard (and his people, to whatever extent this was relevant) would have to research the existing laws and byelaws, going back to the Middle Ages, check the precedents, check the correctness of the language and legal terminology, the punctuation, the grammar, the cross-references, the footnotes etc etc. When it was right, it might go before Parliament, depending on the business schedules. If it were passed, or rejected, or - worst of all - required amendment, then Richard would get it back and the amount of rework was almost always horrifying. Well, I thought it was horrifying - Richard was confident that he was doing an essential job, and I'm sure he was correct. In matters of law, you have to be exact - I almost wrote "as exact as possible", but I could imagine Richard's face at the mere whiff of oxymoron.

Exact.

So the one important thing that I learned from Richard was that nothing is as straightforward as you think it is going to be. As soon as you get close to the functions of government, especially the legal bits thereof, you are entering a world of mind-numbing complexity, and any change - even the consideration of the possibility of change - is going to require an awful lot of expensive work from a lot of unusual people. Richard and his chums, of course, would know nothing at all about ancient footpaths (or anything else, really), but anyone who came up with some original thought on the matter would have to feed that thought into the legal grinder. That's where the lights grow dim. That's where so many ideas disappear without trace. You may call it bureaucracy - maybe you're right - but Richard would have called it doing the job correctly, and - you know what? - when it comes to the law, he would have been right, too.  

Don't, for goodness sake, get me started on Brexit, but that is what brings this back into the light for me. When we had the Scottish Referendum, any ideas anyone might have had about the attractions (or even the viability) of Scottish independence were dwarfed for me by the vision of the immensity of the amount of work required to accomplish it. This was a lot worse than new tarmac around the garages.

Whole armies of Richards. Immeasurable numbers of hours of checking, researching, getting input from experts and stakeholders, re-punctuating, agreeing, redrafting. I'm exhausted even thinking about it. Given the fact that no-one even had a half-decent idea of what they were voting for, or what would have to be delivered if the YES brigade scraped in, the whole thing becomes a farce. At the time of the Scottish Referendum, even if we had had some understandable vision of what was on the agenda, there just wasn't enough time to do it - and I mean do it properly. To Richard's standards. Given the arguments and the political spin and the uncertainty, it wasn't even worth starting to think about it. As it happens, of course, the Scottish Referendum decided NO, though it was a near thing. Making no change is a doddle - the only jobs needing to be done are clearing up the waste paper and the coffee cups and trying to get all the friends and relatives who fell out over the question to make it up in some way.

Cameron the Weasel, of course, was an unusually slow learner, and after he just about got away with the Scottish Referendum he decided he would push his luck with another Referendum on Britain's membership of the EU. Apart from the fact that we still can't get any agreement on what it was people thought they were voting for, there never was even the slightest chance that all the disentangling and redrafting work could be done in the time available. The whole idea is laughable, in a tragic, unfunny way - Richard could have told them. It can't be done. If your MP pretends it can, then either he is a moron (possible) or else he hopes to get some measure of personal gain out of the attempt (also possible). 

An MP
It seems there is now some concern that it will be impossible to sort out adequate terms for Britain leaving, in time for the scheduled exit date. Now there's a surprise. Good heavens. Let's find someone to blame - that's always a useful distraction, I think. 

 


Thursday 15 November 2018

Ready for The Cupboard, with a Quick Flash of Nipple Pink


All based and flagged, the two battalions of the Grenadiers à Pied de la Garde are now finished and looking for a fight. The guardsmen are 1970s Les Higgins NF1, and the command figures are modern Art Miniaturen castings.

Also completed today are another 2-battalion Bavarian line infantry unit, this one the 5. LIR "Von Preysing", resplendent in pink facings (Nipple Pink paint, thank you Foundry...). Their command figures are a mixture of Hinton Hunt and Falcon (from Hagen), the other ranks are Der Kriegsspieler. Too late for Eggmühl, but I'm sure they'll be in action before long.