Hooptedoodle #387 - Ads for Morons, Created by Morons

 Wow - I was on the CNN site this evening, trying to get the latest on the gold statue of Trump that some bottom-hole has put on display in Orlando, and some fiendish cookie or other got busy and - hey! - I got a personalised ad, just for me. That's quite something - I mean I'm not even very famous (though my reading about Trump might have been a clue), but I'm pleased that they realised I would be interested in this sort of thing.

 

North Berwick

To put this into perspective, here is a photo of my home village. I am fascinated by this potential jet service - how impressed would my friends be, for goodness sake? I am wondering whether the jets land and take off in the fishing harbour, or they use that big field behind the telephone exchange - of course, they'd have to shift the horses, but it's marvellous, isn't it?

Amazing what they can do nowadays, as I always say. There - I just said it again...

Hooptedoodle #386 - The Strange Tale of the "Normandie" - in fact and the movies

 

Yesterday I got rather sidetracked by the Internet (as one does), and as a result finished up watching a movie on my TV, late in the evening. I have promised myself that I'll have a more productive day today, but I'm getting off to a poor start by writing about the time I wasted yesterday...

So there are two related threads here - the ship and the movie I watched. I'll start off with the ship.

I did some reading about the SS Normandie, a ship I recognise vaguely from old photos, but never really knew very much about. It really is a very odd story - sad, undoubtedly, and filled with some astonishing bad breaks and terrifying incompetence - if you are interested, you can find lots about it online, but here's a quick skim.

Built at St Nazaire, in Brittany, the Normandie was launched in 1935; it was the biggest, fastest, most technically advanced, most luxurious passenger liner of its day, and this in an age when the big transatlantic liners were at their most prestigious. It's success was tempered a little by a shift in the market - by design, the Normandie was heavily committed to catering for the very wealthy, and as the 1930s neared their end there was a big upsurge in demand for more economical travel, which gave the British Cunard ships an unassailable advantage.

 

After the attack on Pearl Harbour, since the USA was now at war with the Axis Powers, and France had become German-occupied territory, the Normandie, which was stranded in New York, was requisitioned by the US Navy (with the full co-operation of its owners), was renamed the USS Lafayette (see what they did there?), and after some dithering about, during which it was briefly proposed to make her into an aircraft carrier (the ship, you understand, was enormous), eventually a plan was produced to convert the vessel into a troopship. 

Conversion work was rather rushed, trying to meet a very ambitious commissioning date, and on 9th February 1942 the ship caught fire, at the refit berth at Pier 188, Brooklyn. Sparks from a welding torch set alight a store of kapok-filled life-jackets which were in a passenger saloon, the fire spread rapidly, as a result of inflammable varnished wood panelling not having yet been removed, and, helped by a stiff northeasterly breeze, which blew the blaze along the length of the ship, within about an hour, the three upper decks were engulfed from end to end.

The ship was equipped with a sophisticated fire-fighting system, and lots of appropriate equipment, but the system had been disabled and most of the equipment removed. Further, the NYCFD's hoses did not fit the ship's French connectors. Some valiant, though hopeless, efforts were improvised to fight the conflagration. As water was pumped in from shore-based fire tenders and the port's fire-boats, the ship began to settle in the dock, and took on a list to seaward.

The Normandie's designer was present in New York, since he had been involved in discussions of the refit. He arrived at the dock, with a plan to save the ship, but the harbour police refused him entry. His idea was to go on board, open the sea-cocks to flood the lower hull, allowing the vessel to settle the few feet to the bottom of the dock, which would enable the fire to be put out without risk of capsizing. The Navy commander on the spot, Admiral Adolphus Andrews, rejected this idea.

The authorities eventually declared that the fire was under control, and rescue operations ceased, but some 6,000 tons of water had been pumped on board. Continuing entry of water below the surface resulted in the vessel capsizing later on that night. This had been a major emergency - many individuals were injured, and there was one death. Andrews placed a complete shut-down on all reporting - no press were allowed anywhere near the scene.

Later there were a number of proposal for projects to restore the vessel in some form, but after a lot of wasted time and expenditure the ideas were axed, and the hulk was scrapped in 1946. Since then there have been many theories suggesting mob involvement and so on - interesting, but I'll spare you all that.

While I was reading about this, I learned that the capsized vessel appears in the 1942 Alfred Hitchcock movie, Saboteur. Now, as it happens, I have a big box set of Hitchcock films, which one of my sons gave me for Xmas some years ago, and I was pretty sure this one is included. It is.

Which brings me to my other thread - the movie, which I duly watched last night. In fact I have seen it before, some years ago, but I remembered very little about it (the plot was spoiled rather less for me last night by what I had remembered about it than by what was pretty obviously predictable anyway). The film has a big wartime message about patriotism and public awareness of national security, though there are some odd plot twists involving a wealthy, privileged elite who are masterminding the Fifth Column and sabotage in the US - seems strangely in tune with modern conspiracy theories?

The movie is fun - not a very demanding watch, and is in many ways a film of Great Silliness, not the least of which is a Hitchcock cliché - a climactic ending, set on yet another famous National Monument (yes, AGAIN). I sat up and saluted when I (briefly) saw the wrecked Normandie/Lafayette (or USS Alaska - a battleship, no less, as it is cast in the plot). 

OK - so what? Well, so nothing, really, but there is something odd about the dates. If I had been less tired, I am sure I'd have tried to find out a bit more, but I'd had enough by this stage.

Here's the thing - filming took place from December 1941 to February 1942 - not a generous timescale, but there was a war on. The capsizing of the "battleship" is not a strategic high spot of the story, but it is an impressive part of the build up to the finale. Given that the ship only sank in February 1942, I am forced to assume that there was some very fast footwork, and Hitchcock changed the story to include his (prohibited) shots of the Lafayette - I guess that the story was largely patched together as he went along anyway, but that is impressive. As far as I know, none of the conspiracy stories involves Hitchcock commissioning the sinking of one of the biggest ships in the world, to fit into his latest movie, so it must just have been opportunism on his part.

It brought him a lot of grief - his use of illicit shots of a ship, the sinking of which was the subject of a lot of denial, and the hints in the story that the Navy's security and competence might be a tad suboptimal resulted in the movie being "red-flagged" by the censors, though it was allowed to be released because of its positive wartime espionage messages, and was premiered in April 1942. We may assume Admiral Andrews never forgave him, however... 

Hooptedoodle #335 - Me and the Bird Man...

Another Hooptedoodle - three on the bounce is normally a sign of something or other. On this occasion, it's because life is a little upside-down at the moment with my son's school exams - not a great deal of upheaval for me, since the Contesse is doing the organising and transport, but I have had a few days on my own at home. I've taken the opportunity to make decent progress with prepping more soldiers for the French Refurb, but I am reluctant to post yet more photos of bare-metal Les Higgins figures and the pervading mess. I could, of course, just keep quiet for a few days, but that could set a very dangerous precedent.

Yesterday I was reading about an incident I saw - or at which I was present, I suppose - when I was a small boy. On Whit Monday, May 21st 1956, I was taken by "Uncle" Duggie - a family friend - to the air show at Speke. Duggie was a Liverpool police officer, he was ex-RAF (he had been a middleweight boxing champion in the RAF) and he had more brass neck than you would believe, so he was an ideal man for taking you around - he seemed to know just about everybody, and he was quite happy to walk into areas which were supposed to be off-limits to the public.

Valentin demonstrating some of his later wings, suspended from a scaffold. If anyone thinks this looks like a bad idea, please put up your hand. [This set-up was a pose for photos, one of which subsequently appeared on the cover of his book]

It was a lovely, hot day. The place was packed. One big attraction was the scheduled appearance of the French Bird Man, Leo Valentin, who was to fly with strapped-on wings for our entertainment. Not much happened in those days - not like this. The events of that day, I learn, were also remembered by other, eventually more famous Liverpool kids than me - George Harrison and Paul McCartney were there (at that time they both lived in the new council housing estate at Speke, close to the airport), as was Clive Barker, the sci-fi writer and film-maker. Of course they were. There were 100,000 people there - anyone who could get there was bound to have been there - a big family holiday-out for the whole city. I was a very timid child, and was very worried about the Bird Man, and some of the planes were a tad noisy, and I didn't care for big crowds - so it wasn't such a perfect day for me, maybe!

Liverpool airport is at Speke, which then was outside the south end of the city. I remember being parched with thirst - no-one carried water in those days, for some reason, and queuing for a cup of industrial tea didn't seem such a great idea. I also remember that it was very hard to see much. If you were a small person, it wasn't a straightforward matter to see the sky between the adults. Valentin's flight was delayed - when he eventually made an attempt it was in a period when the crowd had started to wander around the airfield, and the events, which certainly did not last long, almost appeared incidental - many of those present must actually have been unaware of it. Valentin's approach run (with a new, larger style of wing, ferried up in a DC3) was pretty much unnoticeable (we couldn't hear the commentator anyway), his exit from the plane went wrong, he damaged one of his wings in the doorway, and I got a very brief glimpse (between adults) of Valentin, wrapped in his parachute, falling to the ground, maybe a mile away. There was a bit of a collective gasp, but a great many people around me never noticed.

A strange atmosphere fell over the place. It was one of those "nothing to see here, move along please" moments - the organisers obviously had to allow a slight gap for emergency reaction, but the show must go on. It was only when I got home (via the 82 bus) that I realised what had happened. I had simply assumed that Valentin wasn't flying today. In fact his emergency chute had failed, and he'd fallen 9000 feet into a cornfield, at Halewood. He was, of course, as dead as a door-nail. For some reason the local paper made a big fuss about the fact that his watch was still working. Someone missed an advertising opportunity there. Here's a nice little, rather homespun, video clip, to which I link with humble thanks and no permission.

Valentin had been a war hero, and was given a fancy military funeral in France - none of this reached the UK press. As far as I was concerned, he was really just another example of a common phenomenon of the times - you queued for hours to see something, and then nothing happened. Well, not for me - obviously things must have been a bit intense for him.

I believe this is the actual Beverley, at actual Speke, on the actual day [actually]. I am not on board - not bloody likely.

At some point in the afternoon Uncle Duggie got us past a rope barrier to look at a Blackburn Beverley and chat with its pilot - a friend of his from the RAF. Although the official record of the show says that the Beverley was a "no-show", I can confirm that it was very much there, and it did perform a fly-past later, with Duggie's pal at the controls. Duggie had managed to negotiate a look inside the thing, and asked me did I want to have a look around it - not flying in it, you understand, just having a peek, which wasn't allowed either. Since my timidity would not allow me to do anything which was not permitted, and since claustrophobia was another problem to add to my aforementioned list, I declined. I am ashamed to say that I turned down the opportunity to look around a newly-commissioned RAF Beverley, in 1956. Sorry, gentlemen. Sometimes I wonder how I ever survived this big, tough world. Sometimes I think that if I had a time machine I would go back and give myself a kick up the backside.

When there was no airshow, the spectator gallery on the roof at Speke was quite a popular attraction. I went a couple of times - it was very windy up there, and there weren't many planes to look at, I can tell you. What a miserable beggar I was!

Speke airport is now known as Liverpool John Lennon Airport. It always strikes me as ironic that Lennon himself only had a very brief involvement with the airport as a youth, when he was (I think) fired from temporary employment as a gopher in the cafe, for having a generally unhelpful attitude and making a deliberately unsavoury job of the sandwiches. That's how you go about getting an airport named after you. Charles de Gaulle had to work a bit harder for his airport, maybe.   

First Round to the Beast

I used to have a boss whose catch phrase was "Don't spend much time telling me what you're hoping to do - tell me when you've done it". I'm sure this is identifiable as some labelled style of defective management (like the once-celebrated Mushroom Management, Fox-in-the-Henhouse Management and a host of other Nineties jokes which I'm sure no-one remembers now), but his approach did have some advantages. If I applied this principle to myself now, and I'm sure a lot of fellow wargamers are in the same situation, I'd often have very little to talk about.

The so-called "Beast from the East" [Donkey Award nominee] storm in the UK did eventually cause a postponement of our Marston Moor game - it was probably always a safe bet, but the hoped-for easing of the weather conditions on Thursday and Friday didn't happen, and this morning (Saturday, the official day for the event) the travel situation is still pretty awful - no trains, for one thing, and the country roads are not safe at all. Thus the logistics have killed us.

No problem - I've photographed the tabletop set-up in detail, I've put the (ready-labelled) armies in their box-files in exactly the same order they'll go back on the table, and I've put all the scenery elements in a box of their own, all ready to go; we can re-arrange the game later in the month. In the meantime, the Dining Room can be used for dining, as specified. I'd best make sure I've typed up all the scenario rules and features - you know - in case I forget...

Obviously I am a bit disappointed, but when Nature decides to take a poke at you she doesn't mess about, so let's get on with it. If I have to put my battle away in its boxes, then it's a good idea to put it away really well. There - that feels better.

I include a couple of photos, if only to demonstrate to Jonathan (who knows his snow) that we did get proper snow in the end. The road along the coast from our farm to the village has been impassable for two days, as has the road past the farm down towards the A1 and places like Dunbar, Haddington, Edinburgh, England - everywhere, really. This means that we, and the village of North Berwick, have been cut off from the Outside World for two days. Problem has been the type of snow, and the high winds. I'm not sure an idiot layman's description of snow is just what you wish to read today, but in our garden we had, at the most, maybe 20cm of very soft, puffy snow - like polystyrene packing beads, about the size of Rice Krispies. Because it was so cold it was very dry, and blew about in the wind.

That's someone digging out the main road from North Berwick to the outside world,
3pm Friday - 48 hours after it was cut off. I know these things are routine in Canada
and Russia, but we are not really used to this.

About a mile away, on what passes for a main road here, the east wind drifted this puffy stuff across what will later be wheat fields and it got trapped between the hedges, on the roadway. This is where the photos were taken - on the A198. I've never seen anything like this around here. The drifts also put the single-track railway to North Berwick under about 3 metres of snow in a cutting near Ferrygate, I'm told. Marston Moor is just one of a great many things which aren't going to happen today!

This is around the same spot, the road past our farm, Thursday morning, looking the
other way. Some people don't believe in the Red Weather Alerts, do they?

Forecast for next week is not brilliant, but seems to be wetter, which might be OK. I'm certainly pretty bored with what we have at the moment.

Must mention a classic manifestation of Sod's Law. Two nights ago a big chunk of the cement seal around the flue-pipe of our wood stove suddenly dropped out. That's never happened before, either. Of course, my stand-by tub of ready-mixed fire cement has set rock-hard, and, though they have shelves of the stuff in the hardware store in the village, we haven't been able to reach the village. Hmmm. Above the howling wind, I am certain I heard faint laughter.


***** Late Digression - PINBAT's revenge *****

Digger or not, the A198 is still not viable today, and it's still snowing. Apparently it is just about possible to get into North Berwick from Edinburgh (the opposite side from us) along the coast road from Longniddry, and so yesterday Tesco managed to get a truck to their supermarket here by coming that way, and driving through the town, since the usual route was blocked by snow. Just in time - supplies are running very low.

Now then, back in 2007, when it first opened, Tesco was the subject of a lot of local hostility here. I don't live next door to the place, so my view may be coloured by this fact, but I regard the presence of Tesco as a huge improvement in our quality of life. Whatever, at the time there was a fearsome militant movement - recruited mostly, it seemed, from the ranks of residents who commuted to Edinburgh everyday and thus spent little time here - named PINBAT (People in North Berwick against Tesco). The opening of the store was eventually secured after negotiations which yielded cash donations to the local community and also - I now learn - an agreement that Tesco's wagons would not drive through the town.

Well - guess what? Some superannuated survivor from PINBAT yesterday registered an official complaint that Tesco had broken the 2007 agreement by rerouting a supply van to avoid the blocked roads. Accordingly, Tesco sent this morning's wagon by the official route, up the A198, and it got stuck at the village of Whitekirk, as we might have predicted. Thus, people, there is no food in North Berwick today. 

Someone, somewhere, must think they've won a little victory. I sincerely hope the rest of the community don't find out who it was.

Hooptedoodle #282 - Bump! - Gotcha!

Generic media picture of a minor accident, to grab reader attention

Well, the bad news is that the Contesse has had a minor accident in her car. The much better news is that no-one was hurt, the accident was not her fault (someone ran into the back of her car at a give-way at a T-junction - unless they reversed into you, it is pretty much a given that if you drive into the back of someone it is your fault), the damage is not very serious (a new rear bumper panel will sort it out, though it is a bit of a shame, considering the vehicle is less than a year old), the car is still driveable and everything should be sorted in a week or two. Things, in short, could be much, much worse; motor accidents can wreck lives in an instant, so we have to be very, very grateful, and it is a useful reminder not to take so many blessings for granted.

We have very few mishaps on the road, I am delighted to say, so we have little opportunity to develop any well-grooved procedures for dealing with this sort of situation. However, we have had the same insurer for 15 years or so now, we are quite happy with them (efficient, and very competitive charges) and we have a good idea of what you do if you have a bump.

The last time I had a vehicle off the road after an accident was two cars and six years ago when someone ran into my pick-up when it was parked (definitely not my fault, I was somewhere else at the time, Your Honour). The procedure was simple enough - I contacted my insurer (the same one as now), they booked the truck into a repair shop, who came and took it away, and lent me a courtesy car - a tiny, bright pink Ford Ka, with "Excelsior Coach Repairs" written on both doors in large black letters. It did the job, though the painted advertising does imply a subtitle: "KEEP AWAY FROM THIS ONE - HE HAS ACCIDENTS". The claim was settled, life carried on.

Generic picture of a courtesy car

This time more people were involved. A lot more. And there are a lot of added-value services laid on - if you expect someone else's insurer to pay for all this, it is tempting to just keep saying yes - why not? Everyone else does.

Interesting. The insurance company were efficient and businesslike, as ever, and provided the Contesse with contact numbers and details of the repair shop and the "car-rental company", who would be in touch. They also encouraged her to upgrade to a larger rental vehicle than the basic courtesy car on offer, which seemed surprising in an age when we are all trying to keep costs (and premiums) down. So she agreed to that, and, as promised, people began to ring up. Within a couple of hours everything was in motion.

The Contesse was not comfortable with the contact from the car-rental people, who asked her a whole pile of questions about the circumstances of the accident which seemed to be out of scope for their part in this deal. It turns out that they are not a car-rental firm at all, they are a credit hire company. They offer delivery to your home, and collection (which is attractive, since we live on the Dark Side of the Moon), they will obtain for you an over-spec vehicle, and the Terms and Conditions, legal small print and lists of fees and penalties run for screens and screens of the email attachments. With alarm bells clanging, she did some research online and found a lot of hostile client reviews - what used to be a minimal extra service provided as part of an insurance claim appears to have become a major scam industry. Apart from the wasted cost contributed by the insurers, the credit-hire firm and the rental vehicle providers all lining each others' pockets (yes, there are commission payments travelling upstream as well, so it was in the insurance company's interest to recommend a vehicle upgrade), details of the parties involved are also sold to the market, so that clients are subsequently beset by phonecalls from so-called lawyers, encouraging them to make further claims for whiplash, post traumatic shock, loss of earnings and that mysterious fungal growth in the lawn. It is, basically, a scam. A scam, moreover, which fits right into that much-loved British ideal of an industry which contributes very little, but generates income for an extra level of parasite. The courtesy car add-on associated with a car repair used to involve maybe two people to set it up, and cost very little. Now it involves about half a dozen people, who inflate costs and pay each other commission, and it just milks the system.

No wonder that:

(a) unemployment levels in this ridiculous, bankrupt nation are lower than you would expect, though our output in goods and genuine services continues to shrivel.

(b) insurance premiums are unnecessarily high, and lawyers are never short of a few bob.

(c) the insurance industry (in which I worked for many years) is so widely despised and mistrusted.

Anyway - the ending. After a fairly short period of consideration, the Contesse called the insurer, and also emailed them, and cancelled the courtesy car. They can stick it up their corporate bottom, though of course she did not tell them this. They were pretty sniffy about it, and not prepared to discuss their business relationship with the "car-rental firm". We have email confirmations, and names of the people she spoke to on the phone, at both the insurance company and the credit hire mob. If some poor chaps turn up with a big, posh rental car for us on Wednesday then we know nothing about it, and they may take it away. They can hardly charge for a service they haven't provided. We shall cope with the vehicles we already have - my wife can use my car for a few days, I'll use my van, and we'll write off any small inconvenience against the money we have saved everyone, and the illusion of a tiny victory against a dodgy system.

Watch out for insurance claim add-ons. I cannot believe this is a uniquely British problem, though we seem to have a remarkable talent for creating money-making scams of this type.

Hooptedoodle #269 - Captain Tolley's Creeping Crack Cure and various other topics

A lot of work going on in these parts - fortunately, most of it is being carried out by an excellent Australian chap named Luke, who is almost certainly the best house painter around here. Some of the more tactical, fiddling-about work, though, falls to me.

Luke the Painter

As often happens, we had a small accident which has made things a bit worse than they might have been. As part of this mighty painting project, I have agreed with St Luke that he will also take on a couple of inside jobs, so he has something else to get on with if it rains. Sorry - that should have said when it rains. One of these jobs is the downstairs toilet/shower room, which will probably need to be out of action for a few days while it gets sorted out. During the lead-up to this, of course, we managed to break the mounting for the shower-screen in the upstairs bathroom (i.e. the one which will not be out of action during the painting), so it has become necessary for me, moi, Comte Maximilien S Foy, former General de Division and military hero of the First Empire and subsequent leader of the liberal opposition in France, to apply my many years of experience to installing a new shower screen.

As long as you double-check that everything fits nicely, and check for snags before you hit them, this is not a formidable undertaking, and I am pleased to say that the job has gone well. Shower screens, however, involve the dreaded silicone sealing mastic, which is right up there with Nitromors on my personal list of pet hates.

While I was poking about in the garage, falling over gardening tools, and wondering whether my existing tube of bath sealant would have solidified (it had), and whether the white spirit would be filed away with the weedkillers or the things for washing the car (do you have a garage like this?), I came across this faint blast from the past. It might be just the thing, I reasoned, to prevent water seeping into the fine joint line between the screen and its supporting stand.

Chortle now - thank you

That must be worth a chortle, surely? The Contesse thought it was funny enough to feature on her personal Facebook account, which must be a very positive indicator. I have this stuff in store because once - many years ago - I spent a fair amount of money on getting my old Land Rover 90 repaired and smartened up, and when it came back I was disappointed to find that the windscreen still leaked. This is stupid - I realise this - it is like choosing to live in Scotland and then finding fault with the weather; however, I tried various products and gizmos to eliminate the leak, not realising that a Land Rover 90 without a leaky windscreen is a fake.

Horace the leaky Land Rover 90 - this is what Defenders were called before
they were Defenders - on account of the 90-inch wheelbase. Photo taken circa
Autumn 2004, when his days were numbered.

Captain Tolley's magic brew did not eliminate my problem, but after a quick succession of further mechanical problems I solved all my difficulties with the LR90 by selling it and buying a modern Mitsubishi. Sorry about that - it's painful but true. If you have an old Land Rover and you love it, then you have my respect and my undying sympathy. I never looked back. My banker was grateful too.

More Transpontine Travels

I can only assume that Count Goya was granted bail - whatever, after a few weeks delay, the Battle of Raab is back on, for tomorrow, so I've been loading the invasion barge for another trip over the water to Tayside. Early start tomorrow - another grand day out. You'll hear more of this.

Foy's Roadshow ready to roll - you will observe the IKEA playmat on the floor,
which is a prized accessory, and much envied by the lads in the local garage

The French army is in the big boxes, with vast quantities of bubblewrap. Bungee
cords are necessary, of course - you can see that my 5 foot wide table sections
just fit, which is something to think about if I harbour ideas of upgrading to a
six-foot-two wide replacement. The van is a French Renault, appropriately

Topic 2 - the Doves of War, a possible suicide pact, and other oddities

Apart from our first-time-ever subjection to the delights of having nesting swallows on the premises, we have observed some odd things going on in the garden. First - and in passing - might I mention that our Collared Doves, those icons of peace and gentleness, have suddenly become violently aggressive. In particular, they seem to have taken a strong dislike to the neighbourhood Wood Pigeons, who are bigger, but slower and (apparently) less intelligent. The pigeons here live in constant fear now - they have to keep an eye open for squadrons of warlike doves, who can swoop in at any time and give them a mighty beating up.

Another strange recent development appears to be a large upturn in the incidence of flying accidents among the birdlife. After some thousands of years of successfully flying around obstacles, our local feathered friends seem to have forgotten something or other. We had a sad moment some weeks ago when, on a rather blustery afternoon, one of our resident baby sparrows collided with the sitting room window, and died very quickly, despite the attempts of my wife to look after it. This was particularly ironic, since the poor little chap had managed to survive its parents choice of a nesting site (inside the junction box for the high-voltage overhead cables), which is impressive enough. I guess Nature claims a few - one might point to lack of flying experience as a contributory cause - presumably this is why fledglings pay through the nose for insurance?

We have had a few more collisions with buildings since, none of them fatal, but yesterday we had a real disaster - a fully-grown hen pheasant managed to fly full-tilt into our French window; the window was undamaged, but the pheasant, alas, is no more.

Sorry about this - the victim was neither young nor inexperienced - just careless -
it must have been about 20 feet off course if it intended to miss the house. The
paving stones are 55cm across, so you can see this is a large, heavy object to have
impact your window. If you found this picture upsetting, please ring
800-DEAD-PHEAS for counselling support

It was a hell of a bang - I was busy packing French soldiers into magnetised box files (as one does), when I heard the most alarming noise - I really thought that a gutter had fallen from the roof or something - the whole house shook. It became obvious what had happened - very sad. What's going on here? - has our house become less visible? - are the birds not paying attention? - is it just a blip? - is it global warming? - you don't suppose it's our new radio-transmitted broadband service, surely?

I'm keeping an eye on things. I don't suppose there's a connection, but a magic fairy ring has also appeared on the back lawn - you can clearly see where the little people crept in from the wood, behind the wall, and danced around. You do believe in fairies, I hope?

Outings

Two trips in two weekends - this could be a developing trend? Well, maybe.

Topic 1 - This weekend - Wargame at Stryker's

Because of the indisposition of Count Goya, the planned trip to fight the Battle of Raab was postponed, which left me with a free day and a van loaded with wargame terrain and soldiers. I phoned the Bold Stryker, to see how he was fixed. It seemed to me that it was just as easy for me to unload the van and set up the contents on my dining table, if he would care to trek down here to join me. His alternative suggestion was that I could drive my travelling wargame circus to his house, and we could arrange something there - a very fine and generous idea - it may be related to the fact that I forced him to have lunch in the garden last time he came here...

So that's what we did. I drove gingerly over the Forth Road Bridge (bumpy-bumpy) and up the M90, with a slightly amended cast of hundreds to provide a generic Peninsular War battle. Stryker, of course, has a far more prestigious collection of soldiers than mine, but he has not yet fully unpacked them following his recent house move.

We had a splendid day - once again, my thanks for hospitality, good company and magnificent eats. I forgot my camera [idiot], so took some photos with my phone, but they were so dreadful that I have reproduced only a couple here - mostly just to prove I was there. Ian has published a post on his blog, which has good pictures, so I recommend you have a look there. I shall have to read up on how to take better photos with my phone, but I will have to do so without offering my son the chance to gloat over my stupidity.

17eme Léger spent the afternoon capturing this village and getting driven out
of it again - anyway, here's a snap of them on their holidays in Tayside

Know your enemy - that's him, Old Conky Atty, with his tree. Laconic to a fault.

5th Foot (Northumberland Fusiliers) taking a turn at looking after a village - do
you think that flag is the official shade called "Gosling Green"? - no, me neither.

It was useful to prove that magnetic box-files, bubblewrap and bungee cords make such transport feasible. My soldiers have only ever moved anywhere at all when I moved house, so this is valuable experience. No problems, no casualties. When I got home and put the boys safely back in The Cupboard, I could have sworn I heard a little voice say "...and where have you been?...", and then another little voice said, "Dunno, but it was dark and a bit bumpy, and then later there were dogs...".

Great day out.

Topic 2 - Last weekend - Classic Car Show at Thirlestane Castle, Lauder

The Contesse very kindly obtained some discounted tickets for this show and, since she could hardly be less interested in such things, I went down to Lauder with my friend Jack the Hat. Good show - much better than I expected. My photos are pretty much random - just stuff that appealed to me as I passed; there was a fantastic amount on display.

Classic cars are great things for someone else to own. I loved the 1934 Alvis Silver Eagle, for example, but the owner told me how much it had cost to restore it, what the maintenance costs were, and how few miles a year he gets to drive it. Bear in mind that he has to drive it to shows on a trailer, towed by his Land Rover, and that in terms of modern motoring it will be consistently outdragged at the traffic lights by nuns driving Nissan Micras, and you start to build up a picture of the reality. For me, classic cars are great things for other people to own and cherish, so that I can go and gawp at them, take pictures and ask damn-fool questions.

Any number of MGs - very nice - I don't know much about the pre-war
 ones, but I enjoy looking at them

VW Karmann-Ghia

Jenson? - think so - Ferguson system 4WD and everything

Ugly ugly - 1960s Ford Corsair - when I was at university, my landlord had one of these. 

I know that one - that's a 1954 MG type TF...

Yes, that's the thermometer on the radiator, so you can see when it's boiling - of course,
 when it boils, there will be so much steam you won't be able to see it

Morris 8

1934 Alvis "Silver Eagle" - now you're talking - dicky seat and everything - no,
of course I wouldn't want one - I'm pretty mad, but not as mad as that.

Bristol 401 - classy 1950 sports saloon built by the Bristol aeroplane company - engine
and inspiration ex BMW (the rights to the BMW 327 engine were acquired by the Bristol
company after WW2). These look impressive, and have a sort of cult following, but
were heavy and not very powerful.

Left-hand-drive Jaguar E-Type - present owner imported this one from California, and
now keeps it in Dunbar, on the Scottish North Sea coast - he says the thing just started
to rust like crazy after he got it, and he has to keep it in a ventilated cocoon - don't know
if he gets the air from California.  

Shelby Cobra - complete with racing numbers - right...

Now this is interesting - it's a kit car, but it doesn't look like one, and the build
quality is superb. This is a Royale Sabre, about 10 years old, and the running
gear is all Ford Sierra, which doesn't sound too exciting, but spares are readily
available and it goes nicely. Has the look and the vibe of a 1930s BMW - quite
like this. Not those crass wheels though - if you're going to do this you should
fit proper Borranis, or pierced alloys like the old BMW/Bristol/Frazer Nash
ones. Come to think of it, a set of Borranis might be worth as much as the car...