Jamie the Postie Is Doing a Good Job

Our friendly postie has been doing stout service in wet conditions once again. Yesterday he turned up with an excellent parcel of S-Range Minifigs Spaniards very kindly sent to me by Matt - all the way from New Zealand (no wonder Jamie looks tired). I knew these were coming, but was delighted to see their condition, and they are painted, and there are enough of the fabled SN1s figures here to produce an 1812 Spanish light infantry battalion with very little work. There are also some 1809-period grenadiers who may well be the start of the first battalion of Granaderos Provinciales, if I can raise some matching friends for them. Thanks again, Matt!

I've been doing well on the donations front of late - I also was recently sent a very nice stash of unpainted SN1s chaps by my mysterious painting friend, Goya, so the 1812 Spaniards are kept bubbling along. I have only very rarely met a free parcel of soldiers which I didn't like.

Jamie also brought me a slightly off-the-wall addition to my non-collection of buses. This is a Commer (Rootes Group, Chrysler...) minibus in the colours of Crosville - the destination is Ynys Station, which was on a now-defunct railway line running south from Menai, in North Wales, through Caernarfon to Afon Wen. The bus companies used to run minibuses like this in country areas which were too sparsely populated for a full coach service; the minibuses also took a role in handling post and parcels. I must say the model (by Oxford Diecast) looks absolutely tiny, but it is 1/76 - the normal HO model railway scale - the same scale as the double deckers I have already in the non-collection, so I guess minibuses must have been a lot smaller than buses. That's probably where they got the name from. [Duh.]

The number plate ending in a B dates this vehicle from around 1964 - any North Welsh readers remember these little chaps? The railway closed in 1964 (thank you, once again, Dr Beeching!), and Crosville provided a bus service to replace it, so the full-size original of this van must have been provided new for the start of that service. I imagine these little buses would operate as feeders for the main bus service - so this would be a local shuttle running passengers into Ynys to connect with the (bigger) Caernarfon/Menai run. Note that the vehicle has a raised roof to allow passengers to stand up. The sheep would not be allowed on the seats, I guess.

Original rail route-map of Menai to Afon Wen service

Waterloo 200 Playing Cards

While spending a spare hour in Waterstone's book store in Edinburgh on Monday, I spotted a set of playing cards to commemorate the 200th Anniversary of Waterloo, by Piatnik of Vienna. Only £4.99 to you, sir, and very attractive too. Here's a sample of some of the cards - as a small gift (even for yourself) these have to be good value.

I am very fond of playing cards (I mean as objects...) and I have a few interesting sets - nothing valuable, and certainly nothing that might be regarded as a collection. My favourite is a pack I bought in Naples which has (I think) 6 suits - never learned how they play with them. I had a friend who was a serious collector, he used to specialise in Tarot cards from all over the world - beautiful, but definitely a bit weird for me.

Hooptedoodle #167 - More Buses for the Non-Collection

The original scope for this ad hoc collection was that they had to be real buses, with some relevance to my childhood years on Merseyside. In the wider interests of personal nostalgia, the range has increased a little, I guess, but I am still fighting off any suspicion that I may have become a bus enthusiast.

Here are three more - two which arrived this morning and one which I received a while ago, but never got around to photographing.

Another Crosville, this one a little later than the previous photos, but still 1960s -
Route H16, Elizabeth Rd, Huyton to Liverpool Pier Head. This picture is
dedicated to the bold Mr Front, whose dad used to drive Crosvilles out of their
West Kirby depot.

Eastern Scottish service bus from Edinburgh to my present home village, 1970s
period. Route 124 survives to this day, but the buses, of course, don't look like proper
buses. In those days, on the rare occasions I journeyed to North Berwick I'd have
used the train.

This is a real nostalgia feast for me. Edinburgh Corporation service 16, Oxgangs
to Silverknowes; for many years, I travelled to work on this route every day
- South Morningside School to St Andrew Square. I remember that at one time
I read the whole of Loraine Petre's book about the 1813 campaign on my bus
journeys. Tricky unfolding the maps on the bus, I recall.

Max Foy's Mad March Mug-a-rama - results...

Well, the deadline has passed, and I must have sat up until several seconds past midnight sifting through the entries. Thanks very much to everyone who sent one – a number of people said they were going to, but obviously thought better of it, and a surprising number sent a note saying, “I’ll take one, ta…” – obviously these are people who visit the supermarket with a reversible jacket, so they can go round the free samples several times – quite right too.

Since the entire episode was a dreadful conceit and self-promotion of my own I can hardly crib about the limited response. After a short ponder, I decided to award one to Epictetus for his stout effort in Limerick form (it would be graceless to mention that my nom de blog is pronounced Fwa) – this is it, and very good it is:

A philosophical wargaming bloggist

Thought a free mug was not to be missed

So for better or worse

His thoughts turned to verse

In an attempt to make the short list

His input to the hobby was duff

His painting was really poor stuff

He had written no rules

And his blog got no views

There was no way that he’d done enough

He suspected that he’d get no joy

With the arguments he could deploy

Still he gave it a go

Because you just never know

With that estimable chap MS Foy

I also awarded one to the worthy A W Kitchen, for straightforward brass neck, since he reckoned he deserved one of my mugs because he had recently broken the handle off his own. I like his style.

Though he made no formal entry, I also feel I should send one to Polemarch, whose blog got me thinking along these lines.

If you 3 gentlemen would care to send me a comment bearing your postal address (which I will not publish, of course) I shall wrestle with the logistical problem of how to send a fragile item through the Royal Mail, so that you may have the pleasure of my ugly mug watching over your wargames.

I's a Muggin' - Silly Giveaway

This follows on from a discussion on Polemarch’s very fine blog – there was a passing reference to de-emphasis of the unseemly, or politically difficult, aspects of wargaming (such as death, which we shall refer to as the D-word henceforth). 

I felt that a mug bearing a suitable message would be amusingly silly, but then dismissed the idea. Later, I thought better of it – such a mug would not only be superbly tacky, but would be just the thing to extend the intermittent range of Max Foy collectibles – sadly the much-admired tee-shirt (click) is no longer in stock, but the mug would surely be a must-have. Think how your wargaming friends would envy you if you had one, or – if, like me, you have no friends – just think how people might visit you to see it.

View of both sides of the mug - not your cup of tea?

Anyway, I ordered some, and here they are – they exist. As you see, they bear an improving message on one side and my own portrait on the other – how inspirational is that? I shall give away two, as a token of my selfless devotion to the hobby, my supreme lack of both taste and humility and my shameless determination to promote my crappy blog. If you would like one, all you have to do is send me a comment (which I shall not publish) explaining why you truly deserve one (or need one) and how much you would like to receive one. Any details of your personal contribution to the hobby (or anything else, really) will be most welcome – there are no rules at all, except that you must be a follower of this blog. Whichever two submissions amuse me most (and there may be extra points for relevance, but it’s not essential) by midnight on 5^th March will receive the mugs – I’ll retain some stock so that I can (maybe) offer them as some sort of special award in the future.

I’ll probably publish the best entries – as long as they are not too rude, of course.

The Spaniards of 1809

This is all a bit of an about-face, since I have previously decided – and justified – that I would use an unexpected supply of bicorned Spanish infantry to provide units of Urban Militia to supplement my post-1811 army, rather than starting to tinker with adding battalions of white-uniformed chaps from 1809, however attractive they might be.

The decision was fairly easy, since I couldn’t possibly expect to collect enough figures to make a decent 1809 army, and since the earlier and later versions of the Spanish army don’t really mix very comfortably. Well, not for me.

Since then I have very quickly obtained a pile of figures – remainder stocks of NapoleoN and Falcata still existed, if you ferreted about a bit, and someone unloaded a stack of unpainted figures on eBay. Suddenly – to my considerable surprise – a proper 1809 army is a real possibility. Amazing what you can achieve when (because?) you are not really trying. OK – let’s be honest – they may not be much of a prospect for winning battles, but they should be beautiful. The white uniform introduced in 1805 is a great favourite of mine.

At present I have enough figures for some 18 battalions of line infantry, 4 of light, 4 of grenadiers, plus an adequate supply of generals, command figures and some very natty sappers. Some of my existing (post 1811) army will slot right in – particularly the light cavalry and the voluntarios in round hats. I am negotiating (haltingly) with a supplier in Spain for some 1809 artillery and cavalry, and am looking very seriously at the Kennington Spaniards – these last are just a tad small compared with the NapoleoN and Falcata boys, but self-contained units from a single manufacturer will be fine; Kennington do very nice artillery crews and line infantry. All sorts of possibilities are shaping up.

Thus far I’ve sent two 2-battalion regiments of infantry to be painted (Africa and Reina), but it now behoves me to sit down with the order of battle for the real Army of the Centre from early 1809 (which I have managed to correct and re-engineer by painstaking comparison of various sources) and plan exactly which bits of it will make up my new army.

The idea – to start with – will be to have infantry divisions each containing (typically) 2 x 2 battalion regiments of line (or guard), 2 or 3 battalions of lights, 2 battalions  of provinciales (dressed in white like the line, but all with red facings), 1 combined battalion of grenadiers and a foot battery. How many such divisions is possible or even sensible I have yet to decide – 3 might be a decent effort – I’d like 4, but that’s not feasible at present, so I’ll maybe go for a Vanguard Divn, a Reserve (with the guards in) and a Line Divn.

Having made some token show of top-down planning, I can now get back to the fun business of drooling over which uniforms I fancy! My sketch OOB includes 2 battalions of the Guarda Real, 1 of the Walloon Guards and 1 of the Regimiento Irlanda, this last in their sky blue with yellow facings, so that should all be a good colourful addition. The grenadier battalions will mostly be converged from the relevant companies of all the regiments in a division, so mixed facings will be the order of the day. I am contemplating the painting of the ornately embroidered bags on the grenadiers’ bearskins with a little alarm…

There’s no rush – I’ll just work away at building the army, and when they reach some kind of critical mass they can start doing some fighting. Pictures will appear here from time to time as parts are completed.

Cavalry is interesting – I have 2 regiments of light cavalry from my existing Spanish army who will be perfectly fine in the earlier period, and two regiments of irregular lancers, just right for Baylen. My friend Goyo is working to get me some cavalry figures which will work well as Line Cavalry (in blue) or dragoons (in yellow – I always wanted some yellow dragoons!).

Just a labour of love, really.

Hooptedoodle #127 - The Loft Legacy

Lords of the Nursery wait in a row,

Five on the high wall, and four on the low;

Big Kings and Little Kings, Brown Bears and Black,

All of them waiting till John comes back.

from "Forgotten" - Now We are Six - AA Milne

This post follows from a couple of recent discussions with friends – my apologies if you recognise extracts from a personal email in here – especially if you wrote it…

I’m not feeling particularly unhealthy or anything – in fact it is my intention to live forever – but I’ve had a number of involvements recently with the unmentionable issue of what happens to our toy soldiers when we are finished with them. I mean really finished with them – as in dead or demented. It is a matter worth thinking about, I think.

This is not unique to toy soldier collections – there must be countless model railways, record collections, radio-controlled model aircraft, motor-cycles-in-bits etc etc (make up your own list) which will be a source of puzzlement to our survivors. To some extent this is a time-of-life thing. There is a very large cohort of fellows who were young and enthusiastic (and usually penniless) some 30 to 50 years ago, who have persevered with (or come back to) their hobbies when spare time and money became less of a problem, and when there was a fresh need for something to stimulate their interest. I shall gloss over the social trends which may have influenced this, but the garden shed and the garage and the painting room have become icons of our time distinctive enough to feature in jokes and TV sitcoms.

We might hope that when the time comes our prize collections will be rare and valuable, but it is likely that supply will rapidly outstrip the demand. The nerds are dying out, my friends.

I recently bought a load of secondhand ECW figures - they had belonged to some chap who, sadly, died quite young, and he left an enormous collection of figures - all sorts of periods. You might say he was a dabbler, except that the numbers of soldiers were very large. He clearly had both sides for all the conflicts he was interested in, so - like me - he probably was a solitary kind of fellow - not a club member. After his death, his wife had no interest in, nor understanding of, his hobbies, and the problem of getting some money for them was tricky, so she just gave them all to a charity shop, who stuck them on eBay at cheap prices.

Should he – should I, should any of us – have done a little succession planning?

I also had the sobering experience a couple of years ago of helping a widow make sense of her late husband's vast collection of models and militaria (including a mass of Historex, which I put on eBay) and try to find someone who could help her get rid of it.

The world must be full of elderly guys with attics and cupboards full of painted lead which - ultimately - is just scrap. Collections come on the market occasionally, but it will become more and more common as time passes. An insightful (if irreverent) friend of mine once told me that Hinton Hunt figures may be hard to get and very expensive nowadays, but if you hang around a while there will be more of them than anyone wants; the regulars that buy old figures from each other on eBay are all getting old together. He then went on to point out that I would be long gone by the time this happened (bless him). It is a thought, though – since our toys are likely to be around longer than we are, what will become of them?

Another friend of mine (I must have two, then) was recently at East Fortune Sunday Market, not far from here - a traditional flea-market, where you can get everything from secondhand reading glasses to oak dining tables - and there was a fellow selling hundreds and hundreds of painted metal 54mm knights out of cardboard boxes - I didn't see them, but apparently they were beautiful. The seller knew nothing about them - where did he get them? - he found them in a skip – they were scrap - no-one was interested in them. I wonder how many cherished collections just get thrown out if no-one can be bothered getting expert help to sell them, and how this will develop over the next few years.

I think that is probably quite enough of that.

ECW - New Team Pictures

The armies, posed facing each other - Parliament this side. The grey appearance of
this end of the Parliamentarian line indicates a good Covenanter presence (ready
for Marston Moor?), and the similarly drab far end of the Royalist line shows the
boys from Northumberland, to balance things up 

Since it was wet and cold yesterday, Nick and I replayed the previous day's unpleasantness at Auchinrivoch. Again, it was a vigorous, fast moving game, and we finished - again - in rather less than 2 hours. This time the Covenanters won, though they were a bit lucky with the dice (and they were me, which proves it must be true).

Nick took some of his customary close-ups of the action, and I'll put a couple at the end of this post, since I find them interesting and amusing. Last night, before I put everything away, I decided to dig out all the ECW troops and have some new group photos, at long last.

This is not everyone - even after some crafty flag-switching I still have highland clansmen and a couple of other specialised chaps who only have a role in Montrose's activities, so I've omitted those - they are all, in any case, visible in the pictures included in the previous post. These, then, are my armies for fighting the First Civil War in Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cheshire and North Wales.

It is just two years since I bought my first figures for this period, and it was late Summer of 2012 before I had sorted out my plans and got the first units painted, so I am well satisfied with progress and the way things are looking and shaping up. These armies are bigger than I ever really contemplated - tabletop size limitations suggest that there isn't a lot more to do. I'm still short of leaders - that's a nice job to tinker away at, and I'm pleased with my experiments in custom-building odd personality figures from Tumbling Dice parts, so that can carry on for the foreseeable future. I'm also short of some Scottish cavalry and there is one unpainted Royalist unit of horse still to be painted, plus a couple of almighty siege cannons which can serve both sides.

Once again, I am reminded that my soldiers are deliberately old school (small letters) and toy-like, which is how I likes em, precious, and these pictures are not really an attempt to impress anyone - merely a celebration of the fact that I never dreamed I would get this far so quickly.

Once again, my sincere thanks to Old John, Clive, Lee, Dave Young, Peter V, Dave Gillespie, Iain, Gary and everyone else who has provided inspiration, advice, piles of metal alloy and classy paintwork over the last two years, and my humble appreciation of the scholarship and sweat of the guys whose books have fired me up recently - notably Stuart Reid, John Barratt, Stephen Bull and (I admit it) Nigel Tranter.

Oh - yes - and my deepest respect and reverence to Lord John Byron and Sir William Brereton, whose hoof prints I sloshed around in at Chester in December, and all the many thousands of other poor, nameless sods who marched, starved and fought in the North of England theatre of the Civil War, and whose existence I only really came to appreciate in the last two years.

Here, then, is the current state of the army of Parliament, circa 1644:

And here are the King's men:

Here's a couple of exciting snaps from Auchinrivoch 2, to show that soldiering is not all glamour and parades…

Hooptedoodle #117 - more buses - still not a collection, though

Another couple of buses have arrived. Again, I am sticking firmly to specimens from dates and places that mean I would have seen them as a kid. Sorry the photos aren't better quality.

Birkenhead Corporation Leyland PD2 with MCW coachwork, early 1950s.
This is exactly the kind of bus we used to get from the Mersey Ferry terminal at
Woodside to my Uncle Ernie's house in Bromborough.

When I was five we went for a rare holiday in the Lake District. The local buses that
took us to places like Cartmel and Pooley Bridge were Ribble single deckers, just
like this Leyland Tiger

Hooptedoodle #116 – not quite a collection – someone else’s hobby

This is a modern photo of a preserved Liverpool Corporation bus from the
1950s - hence the modern car and the lack of flat caps on the passengers

I recently surprised myself by treating myself to some lovely little 1/76 (HO) scale buses. This is an odd thing to do – I was never a true bus enthusiast – at least not on my own behalf. My cousin, who was the same age as me, just lived and breathed buses from about age 7 onwards. He had all the Ian Allan books, and as a boy I spent many long days with him at exotic places like Preston bus depot, underlining the numbers of the vehicles we spotted in his books.

Simply by osmosis and exposure to his enthusiasm, I grew up knowing all sorts of nerdy things about specialist coachbuilders, and odd Liverpool Corporation buses which had aluminium bodies, built by Crossley on AEC chassis…

You get the idea. Cousin Dave and I even assembled a small fleet of Dinky Toy buses, but the available selection in those days was very poor – Dinky made one generic double-decker which might have been a Leyland (we did have one, rare pre-war Dinky casting, and that seemed to be a Guy), and it was available in badly-sprayed green and cream or badly-sprayed red and cream.

Our little fleet disappeared into the toy boxes of younger relatives ages ago, but for years I kept an eye open sufficiently to be casually aware that the only HO scale buses I ever saw in UK shops were red London Transport Routemasters – usually in a twin-pack with an out-of-scale London taxi for the tourist market.

My cousin died a good few years ago, so my model bus ogling days are long gone, but recently – when I was looking for old photos of the Crosville buses to Chester in the 1950s – for this blog, in fact – I accidentally discovered what is on the market for collectors now. Wow. Very largely because I couldn’t help thinking how Dave would have loved them, I spent a couple of days gazing at all sorts of provincial exotica on the Internet, and eventually bought a few, with the very firm resolve that this would not be the beginning of yet another unofficial collection. I have restricted myself to buses that I used to see as a kid in Liverpool area – this is what real buses will always look like for me, in the same way as the cigarette cards of childhood are how real footballers look. Inculcation – you can’t beat it.

I still have one coming in the mail – that is a 1950s Leyland single-decker in the colours of Ribble, such as I used to see on rare visits to the Lake District. The ones that have arrived thus far are set out here; welcome to the land of the Not-Quite Bus Nerd.

These weren't too common in Liverpool - Ribble used to run services between
Liverpool and towns in Darkest Lancashire. We used to visit the big Ribble
depot in Skelhorne Street - behind Lime Street railway station - and saw
a great many Leylands like this (the destination town of Leyland is where the chassis
were made)

Early 1950s Crosville-owned Bristol bus, route 116 from Huyton to Liverpool Pier Head.
You could get on a Crosville bus to travel between stops within the city of Liverpool,
but the services were primarily to places outside the city, and the fares were a little dearer than
the "Corpy" buses

The single decker Crosville service between Liverpool Pier Head and Caernarfon
ran through the Mersey Tunnel, and was the best way to get to Rhyl and the
other North Wales resorts. On a Tuesday, most of the women in Flintshire
seemed to come on this bus to visit Liverpool market 

This is the business - the real deal from the early 1950s - an AEC Regent III
in Liverpool Corporation Passenger Transport livery, on route to Penny Lane.
Buses will always look like this to me. My cousin lived at my Nan's house,
in Briardale Road, which runs into Penny Lane - we knew the
Wavertree/Smithdown Road area served by this route very well.
Goodness me - I can stare at this for hours.

Just One More Bid

"Of eBay I've had quite enough!"
You declare, as you browse through more stuff,
"But there's Hintons and Rose,
And - oh look, what are those?"
So no-one is fooled by your bluff.

Yet more shoddy, overpriced trash,
With paint slopped on over the flash,
Greets your wearying gaze -
There must be more ways
You could fritter your hard-earned cash?

Before I go out of my mind,
What is it you’re hoping to find?
What’s the dream? What’s the Grail?
What’s the sting in the tail?
Please explain, if you’d be so kind.

Buy soldiers, if buy them you must,
But by now I would think you’d have sussed
You’d be best, in the end,
Doing swaps with a friend,
Or someone you know you can trust.

But the postman still comes to the door,
And you open your mail with a roar:
“That seller’s a bad’un,
They’re never by Stadden!”
I really can’t take any more.

...“If that’s a dragoon,
I’m the Man in the Moon!”
No, dear, you’re a foolish old bore.

© MSF 2011
Any association with any real person, living or dead, or in any intermediate state, is entirely unintentional. Especially anyone named Foy.

As a late afterthought, here is a faint response, borne on the wind...

"I once almost had them, you know -
Hinton Hunt light dragoons in a row,
But I lost them, gawd blimey,
Outbid by the Limey,
With only four seconds to go!"