First off, Happy New Year to everyone who is kind enough to
drop in here. I hope your year is good – in my own case, I am hoping for a
rather more satisfying year than 2012, which was a kind of not-quite year – a
lot of minor things that didn’t go too well, and then there was the weather,
which I have decided to take as a personal affront. However – I’m still here
and still fighting, and each day is the start of the rest of your life, as a former
work-colleague used to have written on a poster above his desk for a while.
Come to think of it, that same fellow is no longer with us – he drowned himself
in a freezing Scottish loch not long after he retired, so let’s gloss over that
quickly – inappropriate recollection.
This morning, Amazon emailed me to ask me if I would care to
rate my recent purchase of a pot of red GW paint – did it meet my expectations?
Pretty much, yes. They also suggested that, since I recently purchased CDs of the
Esbjorn Svensson Trio and some concerti by Telemann, I obviously like music and
thus might be interested in a new album from One Direction. Now that is impressive
lateral thinking, but no.
Last night I spent 40 minutes on the static exercise bike,
in the interests of getting the blood thinned down a bit after Cholesterolfest.
Went OK – backed off a bit towards the end to keep my pulse under 140bpm, but
no problems, and it was good for the first of a new series. To avoid spending
my time on the bike thinking “Good grief
– still 29 minutes to go....”, I watched one of my library of approved exo-bike
movies. Last night I watched the first half of The Charge of the Light Brigade – that’s the 1968 one with David
Hemmings. I haven’t watched it for ages, and it’s a bit dated now, but still
pretty good. The relationship between Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave and the other
fellow is what I would describe as uninterestingly soppy – not very engaging,
and I couldn’t really care much about the characters themselves. The military
bits are nicely done, but what really compromises it for me is that it comes
from a period when all British films used the same short list of actors, and I
find it distracting to keep noticing that the sergeant major used to be in The Onedin Line on TV, for example.
It may have been a "brilliant moment of madness" - it could even have been
a "mad moment of brilliance" - but such moments are fairly commonplace
on my tabletop, I think
The whole thing is rescued by Trevor Howard as Lord
Cardigan, who presents the most wonderful portrayal of a pure bastard it is
possible to imagine. I know it’s all going to end in tears, but I’ll watch the
rest of the story on my next pedalling session tonight. After the Crimean
unpleasantness, I think I’ll watch Tom Berenger as Longstreet again – yes –
haven’t seen that for a while either.
In this rather disjointed not-quite-holiday period as the
world gets revved up again, there is an opportunity to revisit all those
wargaming background projects which seem to grind on forever. One such is the
box of bits which I have earmarked to complete my collection of limbers and logistics
vehicles for my Napoleonic armies. Although it comes under the general heading
of Mucking About, every so often I
open up all the little margarine boxes and switch things around to make sure I
have the best combinations of parts for the various units. I still have to
paint up limbers, teams and drivers and pulled guns for all the French
artillery – which is 3 foot batteries at 2 horses each and 2 horse batteries at
4 horses each. I also have outstanding limber teams for one Italian foot
battery, three Spanish regular, a Spanish volunteer one and one for the Duchy
of Stralsund-Ruegen.
Then there’s two more British caissons and two French ditto
to finish off, a couple of odd wagons and a bunch of pack mules to paint up.
It’ll all get done in time – maybe this year – I got a fair amount of this
stuff completed last year, so there’s no stress!
The bits are all-sorts – limbers are a mixture of Hinchliffe
20, early Lamming and some Minifigs 20mm, cannons are similar, plus a few Les
Higgins. Horses and drivers are Lamming, Scruby, S-Range and Alberken, and I
even have a few rather posh Art Miniaturen teams for the French line. The mules
and oxen are mostly Jacklex, and the Spanish muleteers are Hinton Hunts. Should
be fine.
Going through the boxes reminded me (not that I had forgotten, of course) that I have
a couple of really nice Minifigs kits to make up – a general’s carriage and a
French flying ambulance – I really must get on with those – I’ll enjoy that.
General's carriage - all bits present
Ambulance-in-a-bag
And, of course,
having counted, examined, swapped and generally fiddled with all the bits, they
all went back into the plastic tubs and back into the big box marked Napoleonics until next time....
Good fun though, and it avoids doing anything really useful.
Also, I have a vague feeling that talking about it here makes it more likely I
will do something about it soon, but don’t hold your breath.
This is a real phoney war period. The Christmas visitors
have gone, it’s not time to put away the decorations yet (though I’ve thought
about it), and there is not much to do except maybe a quick supermarket trip to
top up on groceries before everything shuts again for New Year. Not an easy
time to settle to get on with anything on the hobby front – I’ve made a good start
with volume 1 of John H Gill’s 1809 Danube trilogy (excellent), I’ve got my
third Spanish regular foot battery painted up and based (not interesting enough
for a picture), and I’ve got a couple more ECW foot units cleaned up ready for
painting, but I haven’t dug out the boards for the wargame table.
In a day or two I’m going to paint a French colonel of
dragoons to head up a cavalry brigade, and I have some notes for the start of
the next two weeks of my solo campaign. There is an opportunity for a cavalry
skirmish coming up, which might be interesting, and my new colonel might find
himself fighting as soon as the varnish is dry.
Since we have some brochures lying about, and since the
weather yesterday was real Black Dog stuff, I stirred up some preliminary
discussion about what we might do for a holiday next Summer – with the faint
echo of my post about the Hotel Palumbo still lingering in my head. As ever
with these discussions, we have a bigger list of things we do not want to do
than of things we do, but we’ve made a start, which is good. One problem I have
is that the UK
holiday industry is built around catering for vast numbers of people who work
in cities, and who wish to go somewhere warmer and more relaxing to vegetate
for a week or two. I don’t really fit in – I’m lucky enough to have a fairly
quiet life in a rural, seaside area, so that a fortnight on the Brittany coast, for
example, would be a bit wasted on me – apart from the food, of course.
Once my son had gone to bed, we got sidetracked into tales
of past holidays, and once again I produced my tale of the Purple Speedo, which
I enjoyed sufficiently to think about posting here. I probably enjoyed the tale
more than my wife, to be honest, but she quite enjoys the consistency checking,
to ensure the story has not altered since the many other times I have told it.
Time for a pointless yarn... [or should
that be yawn?]
[wavy lines.... sweeping
arpeggios on a harp.......]
This story dates from an age before I divorced my first wife
and before the Berlin Wall came down – strangely, I can see certain parallels
in these two events. Twice in the late 1980s my first family went on holiday to
old Yugoslavia – first to
Istria, in what is now again Croatia,
and later to Slovenia.
The trip to Croatia was all
new and all a bit intimidating, starting right from the flight from Edinburgh to Pula.
We were made very welcome on some kind of Russian
Boeing-clone. The flight attendants were tough and capable – not unlike the New
Zealand All-Blacks’ front row, and that was the females – but there was a
faintly agricultural feel to the aircraft. My 3 sons and I were seated at a
plywood table of the sort you might find in an old caravan – we faced each
other across it, and I was looking backwards along the full length of the
fuselage. I was opposite the main door, which consisted mostly of
non-upholstered spars and framework, with a big handle in the middle. Like a
giant piece of Meccano. The safety briefing got off to a bad start when the
stewardess went to get the dummy seat-belt out of an overhead locker, and the
door of the locker fell off with a resounding thump, which seemed a poor
testimony to the quality of engineering and maintenance, and had me looking
sideways at the Meccano door.
My backward facing seat gave me a remarkable view of the
ground rushing away from me through the side windows, not to mention a very
conspicuous bend in the fuselage, during take-off, but otherwise our flight was
comfortable and routine. When we arrived at Pula, all the window blinds had to be lowered
on approach, so that we could not see the military aircraft parked at one end
of the airfield. Landing blindfolded seemed a bit dramatic, but apparently this
was a temporary measure – the previous weekend on this same flight an
ill-advised enthusiast had tried to take photographs of the military aircraft
and, as far as we could learn, he was still in prison. Thus we obediently
followed the (pistol armed) immigration officials into the airport building –
clearly, this was not quite like visiting the Isle of Man.
The hotel was pretty good. It was big and modern, but
excellent value for money, and the service was terrific – the tourist industry
in Istria was a huge earner for Yugoslavia
at that time. We were at Rovinj, the port
of Rovigno from the old VenetianRepublic. The old town was fascinating –
the oldest inhabitants seemed to have Italian as a first language, which had me
racking my brains, trying to remember just when they stopped being Italians,
but I had a feeling that was probably not a good question to ask. There wasn’t
a great deal to do. I spent some time wandering around the harbour and the old
town, but apart from state-owned shops selling lace and fairly tatty filigree
silver work there was little else to look at, and history seemed to have
started in 1946 or so, so there was not much in the way of museums.
So it was swimming and sunbathing. I had my running kit with
me, but the air in the forests by the sea was humid to the point of being
rather like treacle pudding, and it was very, very hot, and the running stopped
after two half-hearted attempts.
Almost all the tourists were friendly, middle-class Germans,
and it was all very pleasant and relaxing around the hotel. Our hotel had a
small, open-air children’s pool, in which the kids could safely be left
unsupervised, but it was full of babies [aaargh!],
which always makes me worry a bit about the purity of the water, and the
astonishing range of insect life made the water like some kind of exotic bouillabaisse
by mid afternoon. So we used to walk through the gardens to the much larger
pool at the neighbouring hotel, which we were allowed to use, but there was a
very strict rule that you had to wear a bathing cap. Since we knew about this
in advance, we had brought a fine selection of coloured Speedo caps from Britain with us
– my sons and I had one each in light blue, dark blue, yellow and purple.
Fantastic.
On our first full day, I took my two younger boys down to
the big pool, the eldest having already been down there for an hour or so. When
we got down there, the eldest lad decided he had had enough, and I took the
other two in for a swim. We found we were short of one cap, so I asked son no.1
to leave his (purple) cap with us, and he put it on the side of the pool while I
got his brothers set up with theirs. When I got around to putting on the purple
cap, I found it was no longer there, and there was a fellow right next to me in
the water, wearing it.
I was flummoxed. If ever I have been flummoxed, this was that
occasion. I indicated the gentleman’s hat.
“Excuse me – sorry to bother you – is that your hat?”
“Hat! – Hat!” said the man, beaming and pointing at it.
I tried in my tottering German, same result – “Hat! Hat!”
and a big smile.
I confess that at this point I began to shout at him.
Meanwhile, some very large ladies in white coats – possibly their daughters
were flight attendants – were also shouting, and pointing at me, making it very
clear that I would have to have a cap or they would remove me from the pool in
small pieces. This was getting very embarrassing, but it reached a wonderful
climax as I was approached by an Englishman who had a moustache like David
Niven’s, and a voice to match.
“Excuse me, old fellow – are you British? Look – we don’t
want any trouble, do we? I’m afraid you will have to rent a cap from the
attendants or you will have to leave.”
“I have a hat,” I explained, “that purple one – I think this
gentleman has taken it...”
But when I looked around, of course, the hat and the
gentleman had gone. David Niven raised a rehearsed eyebrow, and – I regret to
say – thus provided a perfect focus for my hatred of everyone and everything on
the planet, and I expressed myself to him in sufficiently short words to make
it difficult for me to remain in the pool. Ultimately, I had either to retire
with what was left of my dignity or else pay about 3 Deutschmarks’ worth of
dinars for a very secondhand clear plastic shower cap, and swim around looking
like a clown. I retrieved my sons and – breathing righteous indignation – stormed
back to the hotel room. I hated Croatia
already.
Back at the room, my eldest son commented that we were back
very early.
“Someone took my swimming cap.”
“Which cap? – that one?”
And there, as you will have guessed, was the purple Speedo,
on the dresser. My son, seeing the cap still lying on the poolside while I
kitted out his brothers, had decided I did not need it and had taken it with
him. I could feel the long, donkey’s ears growing out of my head, and started
to think wildly how I could avoid bumping into David Niven’s brother and the
innocent hat-nicking suspect during the next two weeks. I did not arrive at a
solution in time. That very evening, in a dining hall catering for about 1200
people, the man with the purple swimming hat turned out to be at the next table
– you wouldn’t expect that now, would you? He was disabled, in a wheel chair,
and deaf, which is presumably what had made our discussion difficult.
Too late, I attempted to hide behind the menu card – he had
spotted me.
“Hat!” he said, waving gaily and giving me a cheery
thumbs-up sign, pointing at his head.
I smiled back, feebly, and returned the thumbs-up. My family
laughed about it for weeks – in fact I still laugh at the recollection all
these years later, but never without a spasm of embarrassment.
Thinking around the general theme of running away for
Christmas, I immediately came back to a fantasy I’ve had for years. Flight to Naples, limo from the
airport to the Hotel Palumbo, Ravello. My mobile will be switched off for a
while.
Of course it would be ridiculously expensive, and to tell
the truth I don’t even know if they open at Christmas [yes – I think they do, but they are booked up for years]. Ravello
is on the cliffs above the Amalfi Drive, on the Gulf of Salerno – comfortably
away from the crazy traffic on the coast road, about 1000 feet up, and the
Palumbo has views right along the coast, over Maiori and Minori towards Vietri
sul Mare.
A few books to read, a glass of brandy on the balcony, maybe
even the occasional walk as far as the main square (now pedestrianised), just
to work up an appetite for dinner. The odd snooze in the afternoon. Hmmm.
Of course we’d have to take a suitcase full of Lego for my
son, or he’d be bored out of his mind, and it really isn’t a very practical
proposition, but on a cold, wet morning in the Scottish Borders it will do
until I think of something else.
The “Venue No.1” heading for this post does not mean this
will be a series, and, no, I’ve never stayed there (don’t be silly), but I have
ogled the place for years, off and on, and I did once walk into the reception
area and ask for a brochure. Have a look at their website here...
This Christmas season at Chateau Foy we have been honoured,
once again, by a visit from la Duchesse Veuve Culdechat, the cherished mother
of my dear wife, the Contesse.
As ever, it has been a joy to have the company of the old
lady and – as ever – it has been a welcome opportunity to receive some timely
reminders of the areas in which our hospitality and the comfort of our humble
abode fall short of what might be expected in more esteemed circles.
A bed-chamber in the Guest Wing at Chateau Foy - too chilly for comfort
La Veuve is very partial to unattainable levels of heat in
the home, for example, and is deeply suspicious of any food which is
unfamiliar, or which might possibly reflect some undesirably foreign influence.
She has unusually extreme views on a wide range of topics, any of which
she is prepared to share at any time, regardless of the context or occasion
(somehow it is never too much trouble – a selfless habit acquired during a
lifetime of endless giving and suffering in the interests of others, bless
her). These views are remarkably uniform in being based mainly on articles
in certain right-wing newspapers which she has failed to understand fully –
possibly as a result of the time pressures inherent in caring for so many
others, and also as a sad consequence of the short attention span with which
Nature – sometimes so callous – has blighted her. In truth, one or two of these
pearls may come from a friend of a woman she met at the bus stop, but we value them all.
This morning her carriage was summoned as early as possible,
and she went on her regal way, with all our staff lined up in the drive and waving, dabbing
their eyes. She left us sad that she could not have stayed longer, yet quietly
grateful that we had her company for the limited time possible, and relieved
that we got through the holiday period without inflicting serious injury upon
her.
Once again we are left with the need to examine carefully our
values and our priorities. We may be slow learners, but I believe we are now
agreed that there is a need to distinguish between the seasonal traditions
which might be appropriate to (for example) theoretical families in story books
and those which are appropriate to us. Whilst I have to treasure these most
recent, brief moments of insight and lofty disdain, I also have to accept that I
am not worthy, and would prefer not to
repeat the experience very often.
Next year, I believe we may pack up our plate, our
hampers and our bottles of cordial early, and travel with our household to spend the Festive Season in the
mountains, or near the lakes, or anywhere, really – with no forwarding address.
This is a day earlier than I meant to publish the results,
but hits on the Quiz post have just about stopped now – I haven’t had any fresh
entries for a while – and I won’t have any blogging time for a few days, since we
have visitors staying over Christmas.
The Quiz...
Well now – interesting. Thanks very much to all who sent in
an entry, and also to those who thought about it but didn’t send one.
I received a total of 18 submissions, of which 13 were
correct. Google has to take a lot of the credit, naturally, but that is the way
things work now, and some good thinking went into the searches. Very well done,
everyone [thank you, Miss].
There is a faint clue in the fact that my Blogger profile
lists Vacances de Monsieur Hulot
first among my favourite films - I’ve always loved Tati’s earlier films.
The answers, then are:
(1) It’s a bronze statue of Jacques Tati, in character as
the sacred Monsieur Hulot.
(2) It is on the beach at St-Marc-sur-Mer, near St Nazaire,
in Brittany (France).
St Marc is where most of the film was shot in 1951.
(3) With so many direct hits, the deciding section had to be
the description of how you solved it, and some appropriate reaction. This was
all very entertaining – thanks for entering into the spirit of my silly
quiz. On first instinct I thought Gary
should have got extra points for having actually been there, but on second
thought that rather discriminated against non-Europeans. I awarded extra points
to entrants who ventured some original observation over and above a
cut-&-paste from Wikipedia. In the end it was a very close call, but overall
I found Fabrizio’s story the most amusing, and he also had the good taste to
send a link to a very fine picture of a statue of President Reagan, which had
suffered a sad dommage at Newport Beach – this was one of the better finds on
Google from “leaning statue beach”.
Result: Fabrizio
wins by a very short head from Steve, Gary and Pjotr, but there were lots of
great efforts. Thanks, again, very much. I’ll email Fabrizio to get his address
so I can send the prize parcel. Pjotr, you get a special runner-up prize
because it was so close and because yours was the only entry which included a
complete untruth – I’ll be in touch.
Here’s another couple of pictures I took on that same day in
2008 at St Marc, to give a context. I was surprised how many people found an
answer on Google, but was also surprised that so few knew of Monsieur Hulot – I
guess you are all too young!
The most intriguing wrong entry was from Hannibal(?), who
was certain it was the promenade at Tenby (Wales), and thought the figure
might be a mime artist. Well, he sort of was. To remind us (primarily myself)
what this was all about, here’s a little clip from Vacances.
Which leaves me only to offer a Christmas wish to everyone.
I re-read what I said last year, and I think it still sums up my sentiments on
the subject, so the message is the same as before:
I wish everyone, whatever your
religion or political standpoint, a peaceful and comforting Christmas, and - to
anyone who reads this blog - all the very best to you and yours in the New
Year, and thanks for your company.
Following yesterday's post about the skirmish at the bridge of Barba del Puerco, Gary very kindly sent me some photos he took when he visited the place a few years ago. Most illuminating - I took a view of the bridge from Google Earth, and I reproduce three of Gary's pictures here.
The French side would be on the upper right of the satellite view, and on the far side of the river in the photos. It is very obvious, and Gary confirms - having walked it! - that the valley side the French came up after crossing the Agueda is very steep and rocky indeed. They would not be coming up there with any kind of momentum.
Which leads me to wonder what on earth Ferey thought he was doing. If the objective was to grab the bridge and take the main advance guard by surprise up in the village overlooking the valley, then that might just have been successful, but it was not a position that could be held by anything apart from a herd of goats. If - as happened in the event - the Rifles turned out in time to catch the French on the hillside, it would not take much to roll them back down.
This follows on from my reference to General Ferey a week or two ago.
John C was kind enough to send me some pics and a map for the action at Barba del Puerco, which was mentioned in the excerpt from George Simmons' memoirs.
I had a look at Simmons' A British Rifle Man, and checked out Oman Vol.III for details. The difficult pass between San Felices and Barba del Puerco crossed a narrow bridge some 90 metres long, over the Agueda. The pickets of Craufurd's Light Division and the French VI Corps maintained an informal truce along the Agueda into March, 1810. The following passage is from Oman:
The first test of the efficiency of Craufurd's outpost system was made on the night of March 19-20, when Ferey, commanding the brigade of Loison's division which lay at San Felices, assembled his six voltigeur companies before dawn, and made a dash at the pass of Barba del Puerco. He had the good luck to bayonet the sentries at the bridge before they could fire, and was half way up the ascent from the bridge to the village [of Barba del Puerco], when Beckwith's detachment of the 95th Rifles, roused and armed in ten minutes, were upon him. They drove him down the defile, and chased him back across the river with the loss of two officers and forty-five men killed and wounded. Beckwith's riflemen lost one officer and three men killed, and ten men wounded in the three companies engaged.
Craufurd now expected a full attack, but nothing further developed.
The first picture, at the top of this post, is a painting entitled Winter Cheer, by Christina Hook, and it shows a couple of riflemen of the 95th and a trooper of the KGL Hussars fraternising with a cantiniere and a couple of French soldiers on the bridge during the early months of 1810. I'm sure the other pictures here are copyright as well, so my thanks and humble appreciation to whoever owns the copyright. The pictures suggest that Craufurd had troops other than the 95th involved.
For the trainspotters, Ferey commanded the 2nd brigade of Loison's Division of (Ney's) VI Corps at this time, and the battalions from which his voltigeurs were borrowed were one of the 32eme Leger, three of the 66eme Ligne and two of the 82eme Ligne.
From a completely personal point of view, I was delighted to renew my acquaintance with Major Simmons. Of all the diarists and memoir-compilers of the 95th (of which there are a bewildering number), I have found him to be the most engaging. Harris's book is a collection of regimental anecdotes polished over many years of retelling; Kincaid is admirably cynical, but almost to the point of detachment; Surtees comes across as a snivelling, self-righteous prude, and so on. Good old George Simmons was always in the thick of things, was wounded or caught fever on a regular basis, and spent the rest of his time sending money home to pay for his brothers' education. I like him. He has a surfeit of neither imagination nor self-esteem - he just tells it like it was.
Fraternisation is interesting, too. Wellesley would hang anyone found dealing with the French, yet the practice was general and inevitable. Again, we gain insight into an age and a military system which relied on the fact that the soldiers of both sides were more frightened of their own officers than they were of the enemy.
