Hooptedoodle #32 - The Blue Peter Effect

There is a high probability that any non-UK readers may not understand this post, though I am sure you can change the names of the shows and find parallels on your own domestic TV channels. For so long that I cannot remember its beginning, there has been a kids' programme on BBC TV called "Blue Peter". It is a hugely successful programme - it has had countless millions of devoted fans over the years. Yet it was always notable as a very soft target for a send-up by undergraduate comedy shows, TV skits and so on - particularly for the very odd way in which groups of presenters, their numbers carefully balanced as regards gender and ethnic origin, took it in turns to read (very unnaturally) from the autocue, smiling uncomfortably at a spot some feet from the camera when it was not their turn to speak. Oh, how we larfed - it was a national tradition. Growing up, apart from the appearance of pimples, and of hair in previously bald places, was identifiable as the time when one began to find Blue Peter hilariously stilted.

Well, we needn't have laughed. The Blue Peter presentation style won hands down in the end, and it has taken over - it is everywhere. Breakfast TV, news programmes of every known sort, nature reports, popular music shows - it is everywhere. Couches loaded with matched pairs of grinning gits are inescapable - presenter B attempting to pull an appropriately regretful face, nodding absently, while presenter A reports a plane crash in Indonesia. Switch on your TV, skip a few channels - there they are - any number of the beggars. Is it compulsory? Has someone passed some equal opportunities law which requires multiple presenters at all times? Does someone, somewhere, believe that we are going to find the news more acceptable, less threatening, more readily understood, if it is presented to us by some sincere but terminally uninteresting couple, the like of which you could find in the bar of any provincial golf club?

Is it designed to help with some attention span disorder I have? - and how did they know, anyway? Yet again, I am saddened that I am so far from the mainstream. There must be a really big point here and, as ever, I am missing it - I honestly do not want the people on breakfast TV to be my friends, or part of my family. I do not even particularly wish them to have personalities - it doesn't add anything. Robert Dougal never had a personality. This is just radio with pictures, after all.

How much of BBC's burden on the licence-payer could be lightened by halving the number of presenters (and thus, presumably, quartering the number of makeup people and dressers)? Anybody care to guess just how big a team the BBC are planning to deploy for the flaming London Olympics?

So What's Next? - Summer Stock Taking

This blog doesn't seem to follow any discernible logic anyway - things crop up pretty much by themselves. I am coming into a busy period leading up to my holiday (to ensure that I am in a state of collapse before I go away), so it's going to be fairly quiet here for a few weeks, blogwise.

The Grand Plan for the armies is definitely getting there, and there is a shrinking to-do list for painting - I have a unit of Spanish volunteers which it is taking me ages to get around to finish (S-Range Minifigs with a few conversions), 2 units of Spanish irregular lancers (Falcata), 2 units of Portuguese cavalry (Kennington conversions), an odd battalion of French light infantry (possibly 2 of these, though the second one might be Neapolitan lights), a couple of British siege guns, some singly-based British infantry pioneers, and a bunch (maybe 6 or 8) of Spanish general officers. I've been holding off with the generals, to see what happens with the rumoured re-appearance of Falcata, but time is moving on, and there is no news, so I'll get them sorted out and painted up before long.

And then, of course, there's all the damn artillery limbers that need painting. Adoption of Commands & Colors rules has rather reduced my need for limbers, so it's really the completist illness that pushes me to get them done. I have been collecting them for many years, there's a hefty box full of the things - limbers, horses, drivers for the various nations - so it would be a shame not to do them, but there have always been higher priorities. There's some nice old Hinchliffe 20mm equipment in there, too, so they'd better stay on the Plan. OK - keep them in, but later.

There's odds and ends such as replacing that stupid oversize flag I let myself be talked into for the Regiment de Prusse, a cheeky little Qualiticast French command group which I am thinking of painting up as a mini-diorama piece involving King Joseph's coach, a couple of substandard buglers in the British LI that need replacing (creeping elegance again). At that point, I am scratching the bottom of the barrel, no doubt. Except that - well, except that I recently acquired at hardly any cost a great mass of unpainted French infantry - sufficient for 11 or 12 battalions. Now then. I could just do another vanilla French Line Division - my interest in campaigns is always haunted by Charles S Grant's awful warning that you should have figures in the cupboard for all the troops in your campaign, which might be just the sort of feeble excuse I need to add even more troops to a collection which is already stupidly large. Or - just think - I could do a Neapolitan army (ah, but that would get me started on the 1813-14 campaign in Northern Italy - I already have Italians and French, all I would need then would be a few thousand Austrians.... STOP IT).

What I think I'll do is this: I'll put my new unpainted Frenchers in a nice big box and do nothing with them for quite a long time. At least I won't be making any mistakes that way. Which brings to mind Foy's Eleventh Law, the Theoretical Snobbery Paradox:

If you are not doing something, you can afford to be very picky about just what it is you are not doing, and exactly how you would do it if you were.

In many ways this is an extension of The Principle of Enforced Expertise, but it is an excellent, and very useful, law in its own right. As a very specific example which I've seen a bit of recently, it empowers people who do not fight wargames to dictate how everyone else should be doing it, and allows all of us to be very critical of all sorts of things about which we know (if truth be told) naff all. All those who are sick of people who claim to embrace, or represent, or speak for the true spirit of something-or-other, without any evident qualification, credentials or mandate so to do, please put up your hands. Thank you ever so much.

One thing I have been spending some time on, and which will eventually find its way into a post or two, is the revamping of my campaign rules to co-ordinate and dovetail with my CCN battles. I have taken part in, and run, campaigns in the past, and enjoyed them greatly, but am well aware of the challenges they present. Anyway, the main concepts are firming up, there is a wealth of detail to be sorted out, but I am pleased that I have a blend of things which have worked well for me before with ideas that I have improved on, or have shamelessly nicked from elsewhere. I need a campaign system which is capable of being played solo, which makes sense, which covers things like scouting and supply without removing my will to live, and which generates interesting and stimulating combat. That in itself is a fair old shopping list, but I should also add that the game must also allow for off-table resolution of petty incidents which do not warrant a separate game, and some means of integrating sieges nicely into the rest of the action - anything else would give a sad parody of the Peninsular War, would it not? The excellent NapNuts website's campaign material has provided a lot of useful thought, I've also pinched bits from Omega Games' War to the Death (and Rafa Pardo's excellent work with Gamebox maps for it), and from Ray Trochim's campaign system for Battle Cry. I need to have a look at Frank Chadwick's A House Divided next. I always like to take a notebook and some pens on holiday with me - I think I know what I'll be scribbling about this year!

"Kolberg" (1945) - contd

Yes - they're still out there, and still singing

Well, I watched it – twice, in fact. Interesting. The film is obviously very dated, but it is well made and the story is underpinned by a good number of events and people which are recorded historical fact. I had not realised, for example, that celebrities of the calibre of Gneisenau and Von Schill were present at the defence of Kolberg.

The conflict between the old mayor and the old (and incompetent) fortress commander is well handled – there’s a lot of humour in their arguments. I had a slight personal difficulty empathising completely with the plucky mayor, since he looks like the fat groundsman at our local bowling club, a man with whom I have had a deadly feud for some months, but that is not entirely relevant to this post.

Gneisenau is scary – spends much of his time staring wide-eyed into space and shouting. Apart from the shouting, in general, the propaganda elements of the film were no more extreme than you find in its contemporary US and British equivalents. Since I have caused offence in this area before, I emphasise with some haste that I am not at all a fan of Nazi Germany, but many of the film’s comments on war and expressions of patriotism are humanist rather than nationalist, and would translate well to other countries, other wars, other times. The townspeople of Kolberg appear to have had an instinct for standing in geometrical formations, and a tendency to hang around in the town square and sing Wagnerian songs, or else chant complicated unison messages to the commandant (in the style of “A Life of Brian”), any of which would have frightened away a would-be assailant.

General Loison, who is something of a hero of mine from his (later) service with VI Corps in the Peninsula, is the commander of the besieging force, and he is a very bad man indeed. He continues the bombardment after a ceasefire has been decreed, for one thing.

At a trivial, nerdy level, I am a little disappointed that the uniforms were not better researched, and that the batteries of very small cannon come into action with the barrels at high elevation, like WW1 howitzers – still, there was a war on. I was also delighted to learn that Kolberg was in old Prussian Pommerania, and that Von Schill (who has a disappointingly squeaky voice for a hero) sets sail in the end for Stralsund (along the coast in Swedish Pommerania), where, sadly, he was killed in 1809 (out of scope for the film, but hinted at), after which point he and his head had separate and extremely gruesome histories.

Overall, I recommend the film. The introduction contains a lot of interesting stuff, and is very heavily anti-Nazi, but political cant in the main feature is otherwise pretty sparse. The appeal to the German nation to fight for their homeland is mostly fundamental stuff about pride in their history and heritage, protection of their honour and their families. The Party does not feature – apart from picking up the tab for the movie, of course. The treatment of brave little Maria, the farmer’s daughter, who sails away to Konigsberg to take a letter to the King (requesting replacement of the old goat of a commander) is very dated and very patronising, and potentially will cause more offence than any subliminal plugs for the National Socialists.

At one point, Gneisenau declares to the king that “the storm bursts”, which is, I guess, a German play on words referring to the Volksturm – the German home guard. The introductory feature shows Goebbels screaming this exact phrase in 1943 or so. I had assumed that Goebbels was quoting Gneisenau, though there is also the more intriguing possibility that in some way Gneisenau was quoting Goebbels. I wonder how that could have happened?

"Kolberg" (1945)

Last night I watched a bit of a DVD I've obtained from the US - "Kolberg", dating from 1945, about the Napoleonic Wars in Germany. I am astounded that I have never heard of this film before. It was a pet project of Goebbels - intended to fire up the German people late in WW2 so they would rush to join the Volksturm. Decidedly strange in places - some of the dialogue is lifted from Goebbels' own speeches - Gneisenau is portrayed as a rather unhinged zealot, who constantly berates the stammering (and very short) King of Prussia about the need to mobilise the citizens to defend the Reich. The main plot surrounds the brave defence of Kolberg against the French by the Prussian people's army - to be honest, I haven't got very far into the main film yet, and I'm not even sure which campaign is depicted.

Thus far, I have mostly watched the introductory feature, describing the circumstances in which it was made - all sorts of sub-plots about Goebbels objecting to individual performances etc. At a time when Berlin and the other chief cities were being bombed into ruin and the German regular army was very short of men and everything else, he was granted vast numbers of soldiers, many hundreds of horses and anything else he needed to make a propaganda film. No expense spared. The initial version depicted what the director considered realistic battle scenes - Goebbels apparently was very upset, accused the director of presenting warfare in an insufficiently glorious light, and they had to cut a huge amount of the film. Of course, the war ended before they ever got to show it to anyone. The version I have is (I think) restored to the director's original.

I'll watch it properly at the weekend - I think it is going to be of academic interest rather than true entertainment, but I'll certainly give it a go. Being a geeky person, I note that we seem to have Prussians in shakos fighting French in bicorns - hence my uncertainty about the period depicted - but it's a fantastically ambitious production - full colour, the works - and the restoration looks pretty good.

Tomar Militia Battalion

This evening I have mostly been fixing flags to my recent new units. A healthy dose of the commonplace after the giddy excitement of last week's Pommeranians. Here's a humble unit of Portuguese militia - I had enough odd NapoleoN and Kennington figures to make up a battalion. The more observant may notice that the Kennington boys are out of step with the NapoleoN figures, but this is the militia, after all. These chaps will come in useful for all sorts of duties, but one of their jobs is general labouring for the Allied siege train - heaving things about, digging holes, all that.

Once again, my clever but over-enthusiastic camera has brightened the colours - they are not really as psychedelic as this.

Pommerania - The Army of 1808 (2) - complete

Off-line project No 514a is finished. The forces of my mythical Duchy of Stralsund-Rügen (otherwise known to history as Swedish Pommerania, just to the right of Mecklenburg on the Napoleonic map), duly signed up to the Confederation of the Rhine, are painted and ready for action. To their considerable disappointment, they are destined for counter-insurgency and LOC duty in Spain.

In the unlikely event that you wish to read a little more about the (mooted) history of the Duchy, there are some earlier posts here and here and here.

Here's a general view of the troops lined up on the big parade ground at Korkmatz, ready for inspection by old Herzog Friedrich. From left to right, the infantry units are the Grenadier battalion Zum alten Greif, fusilier battalions Putbus and Graf von Grimmen, and the Franzburg jaegers. In front you see the combined sharpshooter companies, looking suitably sharp, and the foot artillery company Stadt Stralsund.

On the right is General Graf Leberknödel (the Duke's son-in-law) at the head of the two regiments of Jaeger zu Pferd - Herzogin Katarin and Herr Friedrich.

As befits a project with an Old School feel, figures are by Scruby and Garrison, with various odd bods drafted into command roles. My particular thanks to Rob Young for providing out-of-catalogue Garrison figures in some haste (they are back in the catalogue now!) to help out when some of my intended Scruby figures failed the flash quotient test. Thanks also for the people who egged me on to do this in the first place.

I am confident that there are tales of glory ahead for these fellows. As for myself, I'm just waiting for the phone to ring - it will be Osprey wanting me to do a Men at War title on Napoleon's German Allies: Stralsund-Rügen.

More Guerrilleros

Another parcel from David the Painter came yesterday - a fair amount of finishing touches and basing to do, but I have a few quiet days coming up so I can enjoy getting on with that.

First off the assembly line, here's some more of the excellent Qualiticast guerrilla infantry - yes, they include women and slingers - faintly reminiscent of my days with my Iceni/Trinovantes army (long departed).

And here's something you don't see very much - the first of my irregular Spanish cavalry units. These are cobbled from the leftovers of the garrocheros in the Falcata boxes after I had cherry-picked the best for my Lanceros de Castilla, which will be in the next shipment for painting. A pile of spare weapons from Musket Miniatures, a lot of hacking and filing and much Superglue, and here they are. Pleased with them, in fact - they turned out better than I expected.