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.

Flotsam and Jetsam (and Sesame)

At the end of 2016 I spent a remarkable month clearing out my mother's house - in a big hurry - prior to selling it, since she was going into a care home. I did this more or less single-handed - just a bit of help to shift big items. I used my van to take things to the dump. Long days, late nights. Looking back, I have difficulty believing that I managed to be so vigorous and single-minded about it - I guess I was focused on how badly we needed to sell it.

I spent a while with mountains and boxes of junk in our garage. A lot of things went to the charity shops, we gave stuff away by the cubic yard; I did manage to sell a few things, locally and on eBay, but mostly this whole period was just a monster chucking-out session. In amongst all the other debris, I hung on to a few items which had some personal sentimental value to me - not very much, in fact - my granddad's pocket watch, a couple of bits and pieces that meant something in my childhood.

I left home when I was 17, to go to university, and never went back apart from short visits. Over the years, my parents lives and my life rolled along independently. That does make it easier when ditching a lifetime's agglomeration of someone else's junk.

Just a doo-dad. Old junk - £1 coin for scale

One thing I rescued was the little item in the photo. From my earliest memory, it sat on the dressing table in my bedroom. I knew it had been in the family for years, but knew nothing else about it. Originally I didn't know what teak was (I assumed it was a part of a ship), though I did know that HMS Sesame was a ship (or had been a ship). I remember being painfully embarrassed at the age of about 5, when my Auntie Monica spotted it and asked me about it. Not only did I know nothing about it, but she explained to me that it was not pronounced Sessaym - two fails in one effort. Amazing how these things stick in the memory.

Since I rescued it from the back of a cupboard at Mum's house, it's been sitting on top of my painting bureau, collecting solitary cufflinks, buttons, paper-clips, rubber bands, pins - pretty much the same stuff that went in it in the old days. Typecasting? Anyway, it occurred to me that I still know nothing about it, though it and I are old friends. So I had a poke about online.

First off, there are masses of these on eBay and elsewhere. Also barometers, inkstands and similar, all with the same plaques. There must have been a lot of teak in the old Sesame. Shades of fragments of the Original Cross. Or the Berlin Wall. The other thing I found out is that there were two HMS Sesames.

One was a destroyer built in 1917, which was broken up in 1935. The other was a rescue tug which was sunk by an E-Boat a few days after the D-Day landings. Since the ship sunk in 1944 is in fairly deep water off Le Havre (it is a well-known wreck site for divers), and since the public appetite for souvenirs from sunken ships would have been pretty feeble in 1944, I guess that my little barrel must be from the 1935 breaking-up of the destroyer.

No big deal, obviously, but I'm quietly pleased to have finally got around to checking up. You may well have one of these sitting on a shelf somewhere yourself - there are certainly a lot of them about. Mine, as you see, is rather battered. If anyone knows of any interesting stories concerning HMS Sesame, I'd be very interested to hear them.

One Step Forward - any number of steps back

Some years ago I decided to try to get my book collection back under control (one time among many), so I selected a goodly number of volumes to sell off, give away, bin etc. Among the books that went at that time were the original (green and black) War Games by Don Featherstone, and the original (orange) Practical Wargaming by Charlie Wesencraft. I got rid of them because (a) I never looked at them any more, and (b) well, my wargaming had outgrown these books anyway, hadn't it? I sold both books on eBay, and got reasonable prices for them - these things were in demand at the time. Fine.

Sadly missed - now back in the library

Of course, it took me just about a month to realise this was all a mistake. My life was poorer without them. Whenever I needed cheering up about why I played with toy soldiers, those old books were what I missed. Therapy. After about a further year I saw a good copy of the original edition of the Featherstone book, so I bought it (yes - I did feel like a bit of an idiot, but I paid less than I had received for my original one, and I will maintain (stubbornly) that the replacement was in rather better condition).

I also replaced the Wesencraft book, by buying the new, John Curry-edited paperback. Since I bought this edition, I guess I'm entitled to an opinion; my opinion is that I am delighted that John is re-publishing all these old classics, but I found his reprint of Practical Wargaming disappointing - numerous typos, tables laid out in a way which I found very difficult to follow, and I don't like the scans of the half-tone photos at all. So, you can guess what I've done now - that's right, I've bought a nice, clean, pre-owned copy of the orange, hardback Practical Wargaming from eBay. [I was about to go on to discuss the comparison of the selling and purchasing prices, but in fact I'm too embarrassed to bother.]

So everything is now back as it was - just some stupid footling-about in between.

Anyway, what this all amounts to is me trying to put a positive spin on my Full Donkey achievement of having sold two books on eBay and then having to buy them back again, also on eBay.

Whatever, I'm happy with the arrangement.

Thought for today: How many idiots does it take to make a market?

Wargaming Infrastructure - Dodgy Antique

I've been keeping an eye open for some good, easily visible means of keeping score in war games - Victory Banners, or Field of Battle's "Army Morale Points", or much more of the same. Hand-written notes on a whiteboard are OK but lacking in elegance, and prone to errors or accidental erasure; cunning schemes of keeping track with miniature playing cards, chips and so on are - again - OK, but easily forgotten about if you are under fire; scribbled pencil notes on the margin of the rules QRS are just dreadful. And so on - easier to identify things I don't like than things I like.

So, I thought to myself, what games traditionally have a formal, easy-to-use-and-understand arrangement for keeping score? I considered cribbage boards (a bit small, and a bit fiddly), portable table-tennis scoreboards (big and clunky, and the numbers are likely to wear out) and various other cunning devices.

Finally came up with this, which has a certain Gonzo charm all of its own. It arrived yesterday.

Just how badly did you want to know the score...?

It is, as you see, a billiards/snooker scoreboard of a rather unusual design, mahogany and brass - date uncertain, probably 1930s-50s - it's in nice, lived-in condition. Partially restored, but a couple of dents and missing bits - it works. I like the thing, actually, just as an old object. For knackered read possessing a convincing patina, and you're getting close.

It's a little over 86cm wide. The numbers are on brass rollers, so each of the two score rows can be switched to 1-20, 21-40, 41-60. 61-80 or 81-100. Yes, it's a bit worn, but it's old, right? The black panel on the left is a small blackboard - I had a fleeting idea of converting it to a (black) magnetised mini-noteboard, but then realised what an outrage that might represent - so blackboard it shall remain. [No writing in blue chalk, though.]

One thing for sure, in future I may have no idea how my games are going, but I will be in no doubt about the score.

If anyone is expert in this area, I suspect that it was made by EJ Riley Ltd, of Accrington, Lancs, as a special order, but have no proof - the fellow who sold it to me doesn't know the background. I'd be interested to know a little more about its pedigree if you have any ideas. 

Hooptedoodle #308 - An Unknown Uncle

Back in my mother's archives - more from Cousin Dave's notes on family history (the last, incomplete work of one of the world's happiest librarians). Don't worry, this isn't the start of a whole new blog.

Starting point is the same people I was writing about yesterday - in particular the immediate family of Robert James Moore (1875-1930), the gentle, big man from an Irish family who was a coal merchant in Birkenhead and also drove armoured cars in the desert in WW1. [As an aside, it is a sad coincidence that RJM died of prostate cancer at 54 - which is the same illness and the same age which took away Cousin Dave - no matter.]

Robert James Moore married a very vigorous woman - Winifred Agnes Booth. She had a difficult childhood - it's her family I'm going to write a bit about today - beset with some real hardship. She became a local legend in Birkenhead. She was a devout Fabian socialist, and a Quaker (I was surprised to learn), and a prominent Labour firebrand on Birkenhead Town Council for many years. For such a small town, Birkenhead has a remarkable history of social innovation - first wash houses, first public parks, you name it - and that tradition was strongly embraced by Winifred. For all her good works, she seems, in fact, to have been something of a monster - she completely dominated her two sons (particularly my maternal grandfather) and must have worn out her poor, quiet husband. My mother remembers her as "a right battle axe", in fact, the actual wording was "a right, fat battle axe" - the grandchildren were terrified of her, and one of the great joys of my mum's childhood in Paris was the occasion when Grandma Winifred visited them and sat on a chair in the girls' bedroom, to lecture them about something or other (as was her way). The chair, bless it, broke under the strain and left Councillor WA Moore stuck fast for some time, her regal derrière protruding majestically from the fractured seat.

This is my great-great-grandmother, Sarah Jane Miller, with
her second husband and their son - anybody have any clues
about the cap badge?

Let's not dwell on Winifred - enough has been written and said about her over the years, and she surely worked very hard to ensure this was so. No, today's tale is really about Winifred's mother, a much more unassuming person, it seems. It's not an entirely cheerful story, to be sure, she had to overcome more than her fair share of trouble, but it also throws up another relative I didn't even know I had.

Sarah Jane Miller was from an Irish family (from Galway - there must have been some English families in Victorian Liverpool, but it seems I'm not related to any of them), and she married a Scotsman, Richard Pithie Booth (he came from Peterculter, near Aberdeen). They had 5, possibly 6 children before Mr Booth was killed in an accident at Birkenead Docks in about 1890 - the Dock Authority refused to pay the normal compensation for such an accident because there was some dispute about whether Booth was officially supposed to be at work that day. Sarah and her family were left destitute, and she became a teacher in the village school at Bidston. One of her sons left home very early to go to sea, to help support his mother.

Eventually she remarried; a widower, another Scotsman (yes, all right), from Kirkcudbright, named William Beattie, who was a master bookbinder and whose business appears in trade listings for Birkenhead from 1883 onward. Beattie had children from his previous marriage, so the combined family was large, though now quite prosperous. In later life Sarah became active in the Birkenhead Cooperative Society and the Cooperative Women's Guild.

I knew some of this, in very little detail, but I never realised that William Beattie and Sarah had a child together. There he is in the picture - this is James - that's (let's see) my mother's father's mother's half-brother, James. Not a very close relative of mine, then, but I never knew he existed. He hardly did - James Beattie was killed in France in 1917, aged 19. This photo, which must have been taken in 1916 or 1917, was published in the Birkenhead News and the Wirral Advertiser in December 1923, after Sarah - who had become quite a prominent citizen after her personal struggles - passed away.

So there you go - a complete relative I had never been aware of.

I promise not to unload any more family history for a while. Back to the toy soldiers - I'm involved in a wargame this coming weekend...!

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

OK - did some further hunting around.

The cap badge is clearly that of the Cheshire Regt - that would make sense, since Birkenhead was in Cheshire in those days.

And I found great-great-uncle Jim. My dates were a bit out, but the idea was correct.

1 South Hill Rd, Birkenhead today, courtesy of Google Maps (on the
left of the two houses)

He was James Wallace Beattie, son of William Beattie, of 1 South Hill Road, Birkenhead. He was with the 10th Bn, Cheshire Regt, which, as part of the 75th Brigade, landed in France in Sept 1915. His serial number was 49435. Private JW Beattie was killed on 11th October 1916, almost certainly at the Battle for Ancre Heights, which followed the Battle of Thiepval Ridge. The history notes that the Germans put up a determined defence, and it was pissing with rain. James is buried at Thiepval. He was, as stated, 19 years old.

Ancre Heights, Oct 1916

Jesus Christ.

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

Didn't mean to add anything further to this post, but I've now seen a scan of a form which was issued in 1922 to provide details of individuals to be included on a war memorial for the fallen of Birkenhead. The information was completed by James' mother (Sarah), and the only information additional to all the above is that his date of enlistment is given as 31st March 1916 - so he must have gone out to join the 10th Battalion, who were already in France, shortly after that date. That puts a very narrow window of time when the family group above was photographed. Must have been April 1916 - something like that.

And here is the Birkenhead War Memorial - located in Hamilton Square, opposite
the Town Hall. It's been cleaned recently. Unveiled in 1925, there were some additions
after 1945 to deal with yet another war - very obvious disproportion in the numbers
of losses for the two wars. Sarah, who died a year after completing the
form above, never lived to see it.

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

Hooptedoodle #307 - Auntie Kashie's Basket

This isn't Kashie's Actual Basket, of course, but it was just like this, only a different colour...

I've been sorting out some boxes of old papers that I am minding for my mother - partly because I was looking for some old photos, but mostly just to see what's in there. The problem with this kind of activity is that most of what is in there is, of course, rubbish, but occasional items of interest appear, and it is very easy to get distracted - drawn in, so to speak. I take care to write my name and address on the soles of my slippers before I get too far absorbed.

In there I found a sheaf of notes and photocopies compiled by my cousin Dave; when he found out he had terminal cancer he started (pretty much from scratch) researching his/our family. Sadly, he didn't get as long on the job as we would have all wished, but he certainly found some fascinating stuff. Yesterday I found some notes about "Auntie Kashie", and I sat up straight, because I haven't heard of her since I was a very small child.

From my very earliest memory, I used to keep my toys in a very old wickerwork laundry basket. It was Auntie Kashie's Basket, though I didn't know who Auntie Kashie was, and I'm not altogether sure my mother did either. It was very like the basket at the top of this post, except it was painted (or stained?) green. The basket went on its way before we moved house when I was 10, so I haven't thought about Auntie Kashie for a very long time. Well, I've never thought about her at all, really. Just another name in a bewildering family history.

All these years later, I know who she was, and Dave's notes fill in a lot of gaps. If I may start by way of a short detour, I wrote a blog post some years ago about my great-grandfather, Robert James Moore, who served in the Royal Armoured Corps in Egypt in WW1 - he drove a Ford Model T armoured car, which you can see in that post. Robert was my mother's father's father (that's not too complicated, is it?), and apart from his military service he lived most of his life in Liverpool and Birkenhead, where he was a coal merchant.

Robert James Moore's father was also named Robert Moore (confusingly), and he was born in Tralee in Ireland in 1842. Robert senior was a professional soldier in the British Army, and his children were born on his travels - Robert James Moore was born at Pembroke Docks [it says on his birth certificate] in 1875, and a daughter, Kathleen Annie Marcella Moore, was born in Cork in 1876. The daughter was known as Kashie. Ah.

St Mary's Anglican Church, Walton, Liverpool

Both the children were confirmed at St Mary's Church, Walton, Liverpool in 1892 - by this date their father had been discharged from the army, and was living in Liverpool. He seems to have held various jobs as a night watchman, janitor at a school and similar.

Kashie was musical. When she grew up she worked as staff pianist at the Empire Theatre, Liverpool, where she met and married the manager of that theatre, one Kingstone Trollope (I am not making this up, I swear). Kingstone was an actor of some national reputation - quite why he was working as a theatre manager in Liverpool is a mystery. I think my mother has a suitably theatrical photo somewhere of Mr Trollope, but I can't find it at the moment - I need to have a good look through her piles of old family pictures again.

By 1911, Kingstone seems to have resumed his career as an itinerant Thespian - his name crops up in old theatre programmes - in 1937 he appeared in "London After Dark" at the Shaftesbury Theatre, London, in a pretty serious production, and in 1940 (by which time he must have been in his 60s) he was in "The Importance of Being Earnest" with Peggy Ashcroft and Jack Hawkins. I don't know what happened after that (you will be delighted to learn).

Queen's Road, Everton, when they were knocking it down (1960s?) - all new
houses there now

Whatever, in the 1911 Census a Mrs Kathleen Trollope is recorded as resident at 7 Breck Grove, Queen's Road, Everton, Liverpool, but there is no record of Kingstone, who must have gone back to treading the boards. Kashie kept a basket of Trollope's costumes and other gear for many years, and eventually it became my toy basket, so I guess he never came back for it.

Now I'll have to do some further reading in the boxes, and I must have a proper search through those piles of photos. I'll have to watch this - you need plenty of time to devote to it, and I am uncomfortably aware that my cousin has passed this way before, but he ran out of time.

If it turns out Kingstone Trollope is actually world famous, please someone let me know!

I could use that old basket for my wargame scenery now, I tell you.

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

Since I promised, here's that picture of Trollope - by the way, his full name was Norris Kingstone Trollope, and he was born in Camberley, Surrey. Kashie threw him out in 1908, so his basket was hanging around for a long time!

*** Even Later Edit ***

And here's an extract from a programme from the Prince of Wales Theatre, Cardiff, for a performance of "The Importance of Being Earnest" on 9th Oct 1939. This image kindly provided by Callum (see Comments). Kingstone seems to have worked a lot with John Gielgud at this time; it's a very heavyweight cast for a touring play!

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

 

"Jason" Figures - guest appearance

Following my recent post about Les Higgins, my noble friend The Bold Albannach kindly sent some photos of some 30mm Jason figures from his collection. These were produced by Les Higgins Miniatures in the 1970s, featuring in the catalogue I scanned and posted last month, and they are rare now. Albannach uses these with Minden and Cran Tara figures, and says they fit in well.

Thanks Iain - these are lovely. The "Katzenstein Supporters Club" seem well pleased with their insurance policy, but quite what the aforementioned "Courtesan" lady is doing in the artillery is a matter for discussion, I think. Printable suggestions welcome.

Hooptedoodle #294 - 37 Avenue Foch - Memory by Proxy

This may be difficult to believe, but I do try to stop my blog morphing into a personal diary. I think it is a tricky balance; I frequently see the work of others on social media platforms (especially blogs) and think to myself, "Ouch - I think I would have written that post somewhere private...", and then, of course, I worry a bit about the extent to which I already blur these (rather arbitrary) boundaries.

Whatever, please be assured that, though my writings are always going to be from a personal point of view, I do try to be a bit selective about what I put here. Having said which, I must warn you that this post is about some more family history, so it may be less enthralling to others than I find it myself.

My mother is 92, and is now in a care home, not far from where I live. We had a bit of a saga getting her there, but now it is going well; she is happy, she probably has more friends in the place than she ever had in her life, and she is warm, well-fed and well looked after. Of all the difficult decisions I've had to make over the years, that is maybe the one over which I've had fewest regrets.

I visit her about once a week, at some random time of day, so she can't accuse me of being late (!). She doesn't remember my visits anyway, and I find them rather hard work, though something I am glad to do. I don't suppose we get too many opportunities to care for ageing mothers, so I am getting the hang of things as I go along.

She doesn't walk now, and she cannot see. In both these respects, I am convinced it is mostly because she has decided that this is so. Certainly she had a recent eye-test that confirmed she has fair residual vision (she had a cataract op in the last 2 years) and that the prescription of her spectacles is correct. Problem is that she refuses to understand when to use her glasses, and doesn't expect to be able to see anything when she does. As the manager of the home put it, the problem seems to be one of process rather than a medical condition. No point disputing the matter - if she has decided she cannot see then she cannot see. I'm slowly getting used to this kind of thing.

She is usually in her bed when I visit. Not because she is confined to her bed, but she likes to listen to her radio, and that's a comfortable place to rest. At night she sleeps only a little (probably because she snoozes a lot during the day, though she denies this), and she says she is fascinated by the flow of her memories - she says it's like a cinema show. Certainly in recent weeks she has been rabbiting on about all sorts - mostly recollections of her childhood, in immense detail (bear in mind that she has no idea what happened yesterday, so the older stuff can run undisturbed).

Much of it I have heard before - some of it far too many times for comfort - but some of it is new. Because her parents separated when she was 10, I was brought up to accept some major distortions in the Official Family History. Many of the relationships, places and dates didn't line up very well. As a child you don't question these things. In recent years I've managed to get enough information to correct some of these old myths, so it has been something of an enlightenment.

It's OK - I'm not going to try to give a full run-down of the family history, but my mother has always been obsessed by the years she spent in Paris as a girl. They have had a great, looming influence over her entire life - more than would seem to make sense, proportionally - and I now realise that, since her parents separated in Paris, and her mother brought the children back to England in 1935, her entire recollection of a full family life is restricted to those few years. Her father's memory is certainly enhanced by the fact that she knew so little of him.

Definitely not Paris - this is Liverpool Pier Head, circa 1920 - the Liver Building is
the leftmost of the three big waterfront buildings

He worked, as a very young man, for Lever Brothers - for Billy Lever - the 2nd Viscount Leverhulme - of the family which originally made its fortune out of Sunlight Soap and which became Unilever. Grandfather worked in an office in the Liver Building, at Liverpool Pier Head. My mother was born in Liverpool in 1925, and her birth certificate gives her father's occupation as soap manufacturer's clerk. The company was very successfully importing palm oil and other products from Africa - mostly the Belgian Congo (as it was), and eventually grandfather was offered a job in Paris, working with a European subsidiary of Unilever. He was already married, with a family of three daughters, and in 1930 his wife and family joined him in Paris. My mother at this stage was 5, one year into recovery from a polio episode which has affected her entire life.

My grandparents, alas, did not get on. My grandmother did not like Paris, and does not seem to have cared much for my grandfather either - not least because he seems to have had a succession of lady friends (all of whom, it has to be said, appear to have been more interesting than his wife). By 1935 she had had enough, she brought the girls back to Liverpool. My mother's all-pervading 5-year upbringing in Paris ends there. She did not see her father again until he turned up at her wedding in 1945, and she did not see him after that until 1959, when she and my dad (incredibly, unbelievably) travelled to Paris from Liverpool on a 150cc Lambretta scooter, for a week's holiday. This visit was all a little awkward, since they were to stay with Grandpère, with his second wife and family, at his posh flat in Neuilly (Boulevard Bineau); my grandmother, who was child-minding me and my sister during their holiday, did not know this, and would certainly have been very upset if she had known.

And so the family story chugs on - I'll spare you any more. It's just another family story. The bit which has fascinated me recently was getting more light on my mother's Paris years - a lot of this was new to me.

Place de la Liberté, La Garenne-Colombes - rather before my mother's day

They lived in an apartment in the Avenue Foch, in La Garenne-Colombes. Because of the polio, my mum had treatments which meant that she was often unable to attend school, so she spent many of her most formative days surrounded by the sights, sounds and smells of a strange city. She has told me of the baker's shop opposite - if she hung around there they would give her macaroons or galettes; she loved the smells in the woodworking shop next door, where they made big items of furniture. She had a friend who lived in a house on a corner opposite - a girl of about her age, and there was a big dog and a lovely garden to play in, but the girl seemed to be looked after by nuns, and one day she disappeared without explanation, though the nuns and the dog were still there. At the end of that section of the Avenue Foch is the Place de la Liberté, where there was a big library, a Catholic church and, in the Summer, a fairground. My mum and her sisters used to like to sit out on the little balcony of their flat and listen to the music and the sounds from the fairground.

The church was of interest to the children since there were two statuettes in the entrance - Jeanne d'Arc and the Virgin Mary - my mum preferred Jeanne - she seemed less austere, and she and her elder sister used to spend time relighting all the candles placed by these statues, until the priests chased them. Mum thinks that a whole lot of prayers must have had confusing outcomes as a result of the candles being messed about.

I've never been there, but a few years ago, when she was still able to understand these things, I used Google Maps to download some street views of Avenue Foch, and the first view was the door of No.37 - apparently unchanged since the 1930s. She was thrilled to bits, and we had a look around the area, courtesy of Google. It is clear that a lot of the area has been renewed, as you would expect, and there seems to be a market building where the fairground used to be. The church is still there.

37 Avenue Foch - the scooter is not a Lambretta!

They lived in the second-top flat - a lot of stairs for a little girl with polio. Note the
little balconies, for listening to the sounds of the fairground

Most of the area is rebuilt - the building on the corner, far right of this picture, is
probably where the little girl with the dog lived

The Catholic church is still there, though they were constructing an underground
carpark when the Googlewagen passed

In 1959, on the Lambretta trip, my parents visited Avenue Foch, and went in. The concierge and her husband were still living there, in the ground floor flat, and were astonished that my mother had grown so strong and vigorous, since she had been a very sickly child. The concierge's husband still had to tend to the heating boilers for the building, though they were fired by gas instead of coal. The only other neighbour who remained from 1935 was an elderly lady on the top floor. My mother remembered that she and her husband had a business which made jewellery boxes and cutlery cases - Mum was fascinated by them when she was little. The business was no more. It had ended when the old lady's husband was apprehended in 1941 and sent to Drancy, whence he went on to one of the extermination camps in Poland.

A Couple of Follow-Ups... old figures, old scales

Today's post is a bit of a quick revisit of a couple of recent topics. If there is a common theme, then it might be the subject of "the way we were", which will hardly be a first for this blog.

Old figures, old magazines - must get a cup of Horlicks...

First off, I received a very nice email from France, courtesy of Jean-Marc, which was sparked by the discussion of 5mm Minifigs troop blocks.

J-M included a reader's letter from the December 1983 issue of Military Modelling, contributed by Roger Styles, the main man at Heroics and Ros. Apart from the fact that he was obviously very close to the subject of very small figures, it is not lost on me that this letter is pretty much contemporary with the 1984 Claymore show which featured in my earlier post. It also emphasises my point that Peter Gouldesbrough's efforts to popularise the 5mm blocks were at a time when the blocks were OOP and - according to Mr Styles - 5mm as a scale was "moribund if not defunct".

I hand over to Jean-Marc at this point...

My [J-M's] remarks : 

1) I have never seen these 5mm blocks "in the flesh", only pics. But I have, in the past , looked for  them with determination.

2) As far as I know, the moulds are now in the US. [if they are, then one hopes they have the masters, because the moulds were shot to bits before the blocks went out of production - the problems of missing heads and generally unrecognisable artillery becoming major show-stoppers - MSF]

3) The 5mm blocks were produced in 1972. Heroics and Ros company was launched in 1973. 

4) By 1983 Roger Styles (owner and sculptor of H&R) considered that 5mm blocks had ceased to exist, a comment made in a letter to Military Modelling that I reproduce here.

MILITARY MODELLING DECEMBER 1983  (Readers' Despatch)

Question of scales     : 

Dear Sir,

We were most interested in Charles S. Grant's article on scales for wargame figures (Nov. 1983). Although we agree with his general remarks on 15mm and 25mm scales, we would like to correct some details about 1/300 scale.

There has been a tendency to call figures in this scale ''5mm''. This has its origin in the regimental blocks of figures which were produced by Miniature Figurines some 12 or more years ago. These have not been available, we believe, for some years.

The figures produced by Heroics and Ros have a different beginning. In the USA several firms began making model tanks some 15 or so years ago in a scale known as 1/285. In the UK, soon afterwards, model vehicles began to be made in '1/300 scale', The difference in the two scales is minimal, of course, and 1/300 was chosen because it is easy to understand and work to. One foot is almost exactly 300mm (304.8 actually), so that 1/300 scale means one millimetre on the model represents one foot in reality. Except in models of very large items indeed the fractional difference between 1/300 and 1/304.8 comes within an acceptable margin of error. Models of vehicles made in 1/285 are often considerably larger than those made in 1/300, but I am not aware of the reason for this.

Whilst several firms produced WW2 tanks in this scale, Heroics and Ros began to make figures of the same period to match. If 1 mm equals 1 foot, it follows that a model of a six foot man would be 6 mm in height. This is the scale that we have always worked to.

So when Mr Grant says ''5mm figures are very approximately 1/350 scale (although they are sometimes referred to as 1/300'' he is, we are sorry to say, confusing the issue more than somewhat. Our 6mm figures are very accurately 1/300 scale, as are our vehicles and equipments of all periods. The scale of 5mm is moribund if not defunct, and there is no-one working commercially in 1/350 scale to our knowledge. The wargaming hobby has been plagued by the scale problem since the early days. Terms such as''15mm''or ''25mm''are said to mean the height of a man from head to foot without equipment. Some men are indeed smaller than others, so variation in figure size is permissable, though this does not excuse the seven, eight and nine foot men that are often made in 15mm and 25mm scale. If figure makers adopted an accurate scale, as we have in 1/300, customers would know where they stand and each company's figures would presumably match, size for size all others.

Mr Grant brings up the point of painting 1/300 figures. He says ''painting is quick, there being little detail''. In fact our figures compare favourably for detail with larger scales, and have if anything, more detail than many 15mm figures. But painting is quick, not because the models cannot be made as colourful and striking as in other scales, but because there is less area of bare metal to cover. A whole unit of 1/300 figures may have less metal to be covered than one 25mm figure, and so takes less time to paint. Many of our customers paint them exquisitely, though, and take much trouble over them. As far as wargaming with the figures is concerned, there are no problems either for ''beginners'' or for old-timers. Conventional rules can be used by simply quartering all ground scales. The figures can even be based on single figure bases for Micro-Skirmish games. But the small scale allows enormous advantages on full-size tables. Unit sizes can be increased to give more realism, and units can be manoeuvred without falling off the edge of the table so often. I should point out that 1/300 scale is the choice of many wargamers, and they have been in existence as long as 25mm, and much longer than 15mm, and are still expanding into new periods.

R. B. Styles, Heroics, & Ros Figures.

Apart from the fact that his letter is an unashamed plug for his figures (and quite rightly so), Mr Styles is in some danger of getting us all back into the eternal "how tall is a man?" and "height or soles-to-eyes?" debates, which in turn will get us back into the traditions of the German flats industry and all points south. J-M mentions in passing that Styles is wrong about the existence of 1/350 as a viable scale, since Helmet Products made 1/350 aircraft from about 1975 - some visible here.

The important point (if there is one) is that the letter gives a manufacturer's view of scales from the same period as the Claymore show I referred to.

Since I am nothing if not persistent (or, alternatively, since I am a relentless bore when I feel the urge), I have come up with the original article by Charles S Grant, from the November 1983 issue. It seemed that it must have said something fairly controversial, judging from Mr Styles' response. So here it is - in fact it is pretty bland (with all due respect) - it also reminds me, now I come to think of it, why I stopped reading Military Modelling a couple of years before this - too many interests covered too thinly, too much vanilla, too much courtesy offered to the advertisers.

Still on the topic of very small men, I received an email from the Jolly Broom Man (who is also in France, as it happens), with some pictures of his 6mm Baccus ECW troops. I like them - they have a determined, jaunty look which is very pleasing - don't mess with these boys!

JBM was inspired by my guest picture of Steve Cooney's Hinton Hunt ECW cuirassiers to make the point that headswaps in 6mm scale are a daunting idea - though I'm sure someone has done it. In fact, if anyone has ever done it, I would suspect it might have been my good friend Lee, which gives me an excuse to show some old photos of his 6mm Baccus ECW troops, which have subsequently moved on to a new owner (and I, for one, miss them!).

To enlarge the view to 20mm, I was encouraged by Stryker to give a progress shot of the batch of vintage Der Kriegsspieler Napoleonic French infantry I am currently restoring. I am rarely embarrassed about publishing photos of my armies, but I produce these with some trepidation, since they are really just a recruitment exercise, and not really the sort of thing I would choose to expose to the risk of supportive criticism and the tender mercies of Dr Raul and assorted other worthies and reluctant friends of mine at a certain American-based miniature modelling forum whose name I am not fit to mention. Perhaps I shall be spared this time.

I am working on generating 5 line battalions from these old DK figures. These are heavily converted, old figures (certainly 12 or 13 years older than the magazine I have just been discussing), and the paint needs a bit of attention, to correct yellowed whites, faded reds and the general ravages of time and the spares boxes. I have still to source a full complement of command figures. I have retouched half of the fusiliers (who are now mounted on their bases, just to keep things tidy and organised), the other half of the fusiliers are in the official Next in Queue box, and the flankers are waiting for the next shift after that.

These photos may give an idea what is involved. Some of the chaps who have been finished are in the picture at the top of this posting. Some thoughts:

(1) Retouching is always - repeat always - more work than I think it's going to be, partly because I change my ideas on what I'm going to do once I see the effect of the new painted bits

(2) A half-batch of 30-odd fusiliers seems a lot when you're painting them, but they don't look like very many when you stick them on the bases!

The second half of the fusiliers are ready, in the Next in Queue box - scheduled
to start on Monday evening

The flankers and various command odd-bods are in one of the big store
boxes, along with the finished chaps, who don't cover much of the base area yet!

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

I received a rather apologetic email from Steve C, who supplied the big shipment of DKs, lamenting that he might have given me a huge amount of work to do to get them into shape; somewhat shamefaced, I've been re-reading my post, to check I hadn't accidentally been rude about them!

It is kind of Steve to get back in touch with me, but I have to emphasise (to him and everyone else) that I bought them knowing exactly what they were, am very pleased with them, and really wouldn't have started on the job if I hadn't thought they were worth the effort. I'm sorry that I sometimes express myself imprecisely - enthusiasm rather than malice! - and I shall attempt to be more careful in future. Thanks again Steve - no worries, mate!

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

Going... going... gone; Peter Gouldesbrough and the 5mm Blocks

Recently, someone made a jocular reference to the old Minifigs 5mm troop blocks, which, for me, come under the general heading of Did This Really Happen?

I'll come back to the 5mm blocks in a minute or two, but for me the strongest recollection is that they remind me of Peter Gouldesbrough, one of the better known of the earlier Scottish wargamers - who for a while was a great enthusiast for these blocks - and of a brief period when I spent some time with him, so let's start with Peter.

The General from the Braid Hills

Peter was retired when I met him. We were introduced by a mutual wargaming friend, who had mentioned to Peter that I had been working on some pioneering solo wargame projects involving microcomputer programs. Peter had just been given one of those newfangled Sinclair Spectrum thingummies as a present, so that must mean 1982 at the earliest. Since my first wargaming sabbatical started in 1985 (major dose of Real Life for some years thereafter), this dates things pretty accurately.

Peter was friendly with a number of the leading post-war lights of the hobby - Peter Young and Charles Grant for a start - and he is quoted in a couple of Featherstone's earlier books. He was a complete gentleman, always - I never saw him without a suit and tie, as far as I can remember.

When I met him he had recently disposed of his 20mm figure collection, and had converted to the Minifigs 5mm block system. He had redrafted his own wargames rules to suit this new scale, and this is where he wanted my help with some programming, so he could use his new Spectrum to do the record-keeping and the calculations. I was invited to participate in some of his new Napoleonic "microgames" at his house - his home and his games were every bit as dignified as I had expected. 

We made some good progress with the automation of his rules, though I learned the hard way that he could be a dreadful bully, albeit a gentlemanly one! I found a number of arithmetical errors in his rules, but when I drew them to his attention I had a hard job getting him to admit they were wrong, never mind getting agreement to correct them!

5mm blocks - picture borrowed from the Wargame Hermit's excellent blog. One reason
why these were short-lived, I think, was the poor quality of the casting - the moulds
were breaking up very soon after they were launched. Also, it is only now that I realise
that these blocks were introduced circa 1972, and withdrawn in 1976, so they were
already long-OOP when I was introduced to Peter's game!

The games themselves were visually interesting, though for my taste Peter had re-engineered his wargames in the "wrong" direction; a move to 5mm gave the opportunity to stage colossal battles in a compact space - this is what I would have done - but he had gone the other way. For example, he had French battalions consisting of 12 blocks of 3-deep infantry. His rules had very detailed instructions on the deployment of these half-company sections, so that changing from column to line, or sending out skirmishers (and the skirmishers were cast on tiny strips, which were exchanged for the close-order blocks as required) was a very precise, not to say painstaking, operation - as I recall, his game used 30-second bounds, to make sure we did it all properly. I also remember a couple of hilarious incidents when we lost some of the tiny troops on his battlefield. His wargames room was upstairs, on an attic level, and was rather dimly lit; add to this the fact that his table was a very dark green, like a table-tennis table, with Plasticine hills to match, and it was little surprise that the soldiers used to disappear from view. On a couple of occasions the French "lost" a regiment of light infantry on the hills, simply because we failed to spot them in the gloom. The skirmisher strips would gradually disappear, too - occasionally a couple would turn up behind the clock on the mantelpiece, one was found on the floor (fortunately before it was stood upon), one was spotted hanging from the sleeve of my sweater (wouldn't have happened with a suit), and on one occasion we found one embedded in a hill when we were clearing up.

Peter's thoughts on 5mm - despite what he says here, his interest in
manoeuvre resulted in his sticking with the 30-second moves!

When it was tested and reliably stable, I was roped into helping with a demonstration of the 5mm-block+Spectrum game at a wargames show one weekend in Edinburgh's Adam House, at the foot of Chambers Street, in the old University territory. This was a very long day - I was involved in the transport and setting-up, which wasn't helped by our being stuck in a quiet backwater of the basement, and thereafter I was the computer operator, gaming assistant and general gopher, helping out with numerous runs through a suitable set-piece battle. I recall that Peter had hand-painted a poster for his game, with the legend, "GOING... going... _GONE", with appropriate pictures of British Napoleonic infantry gradually shrinking into invisibility.

I regret it was not a terrific day. The weather was dreadful, the show was poorly supported (at least our bit of it was) and we had maybe a dozen casual visitors during the course of the entire day. Peter, understandably, was rather miffed after all his hard work, and became somewhat grumpy. At one point an acquaintance of mine came over and chatted with me for a couple of minutes. Peter was furious - I was not there to chat to my friends, etc. I fear that, though we didn't actually fall out, the day ended on a low note.

Ancient, appropriately grey photo of Adam House

I was unwell for a while with glandular fever, but a few months later my wife and I were invited to a party at Peter's home - a very pleasant evening, and everything was very friendly, but after that I lost touch with him. Eventually, as these things tend to go, it was so long since I had spoken with him that it became awkward to make the effort to phone him up. Thus, I am ashamed to say, I never met with him again. Mind you, it might well be that he was extremely relieved to be rid of me!  

Peter told me a number of very entertaining tales of his experiences in WW2 - since I am not a family friend I am reluctant to recount any of these at the moment.

I don't really know what became of Peter - this post is prompted really by my wondering whether anyone would care to contribute any tales of the Minifigs 5mm blocks, and in case anyone can provide any more information about Peter himself. I am very much indebted to Clive, the Old Metal Detector, for providing me with some clippings about him from Wargamers' Newsletter. Also, if anyone remembers the Edinburgh wargame shows at Adam House (must have been 1984 or 85, I reckon), please shout. I guess there was some more serious stuff going on upstairs!