Activation – More Dithering

It often occurs to me that a blog can be kind of a mixed blessing. For example, if I really can’t make up my mind about some element of wargames rules, it would be more dignified – and I might well look a little less foolish – if I did my dithering and thinking aloud off-blog. On the other hand, I invariably get useful input via the Comments, and that more than makes up for the discomfort of being seen to blunder about in real time. People are very kind – maybe they take pity on me.

Having oscillated between hot and cold on the subject of the Victory without Quarter ECW rules for some time now, and having gone so far as to do a fair amount of amendment and rewriting of those rules, the announcement that once again I am not happy with some aspects of them might generate a range of reaction somewhere between mild eye-rolling and total indifference. So the fool can’t make up his mind – so what’s new? 

My concerns with VwQ are mainly about the activation rules. I’m really still not very happy with them – not even with my own revamped version – and they get a mixed press on TMP and elsewhere. Taking the core activation system out of VwQ might be likened to removing the nervous system from your favourite cat. The results are unpredictable. You might not like what you are left with. Might be better to think of something else to do instead.

As a last ditch effort to stop short of a completely fresh start, I’ve been doing a bit more reading about activation approaches, to see what else might just fit with the rest of VwQ. I have been revisiting all sorts of games. I liked the activation rules in the latest version of Ross’s Hearts of Tin rules, and these formed the basis of some further scribblings of my own, and I had an exchange of thoughts on this with Martin. As it happens, Martin recently purchased the John Curry reprint of Donald Featherstone’s Wargaming Pike and Shot (first published 1977), which is not the first place I would have thought of looking for ideas on activation. Martin’s enthusiasm encouraged me to buy my own copy, however. Well, well.

It's actually a pretty good book. The bulk of it consists of scenario descriptions of battles from the Renaissance and 30 Years' War period, but a new bit of this revised edition is a summary of some previously unpublished rules used by Don, and there is a discussion of turn sequences which uses a simple activation rule (or, as Don calls it, motivation – which I rather like) – it involves a fair amount of dice-rolling, so it might be a bit labour intensive for my taste, but it looks interesting. I haven’t tried it out yet. Naturally, I couldn’t just use it as published, so I’ve started by meddling with it and tweaking to fit with my own games better. What follows is not Don F’s rule, but it is influenced by it and is not unlike it.

Let's start with a slight detour. First thing you need for this is some easy way of identifying units which are part of the same formation, or which all report to the same commander. A while ago, when I was under the spell of Sam Mustafa’s Fast Play Grande Armée, I adopted a very handy idea of his, which was to put coloured markers on the bases of units which were brigaded together, so you could see the breadth of an individual general’s command at a single glance. Naturally, once again, I fiddled with the system until it looked like this:

This is a Napoleonic example – here you see some labels waiting to be cut out and attached to unit bases. This is a collection of leaders and units from Maucune’s Division, which you will see has the distinguishing colour of yellow. The brigades are identified by the colour of the inner square. Thus it is very easy to identify all Maucune’s units (yellow outer square), or all the units which report to General Montfort, who is one of Maucune’s brigade commanders (red within yellow). These labels are much smaller in reality than they appear here – I laminate them, cut them out and attach with a smear of BluTack. [OCD on the battlefield.]

Right, you may be thinking, this must be leading up to something. There is obviously some reason why we might wish to identify higher formations in this way. And you will be correct - at long last, we come to the ideas about activation.

1. A brigade should consist of between 3 and 8 units. If a higher level of organisation is suitable for your game, a division may comprise between 2 and 4 such brigades.

2. When the player takes his turn, he nominates one of his generals. In a big game, he may have a choice of nominating 1 of his division commanders or up to two of his brigade commanders – decide for yourself how this would work.

a. For the nominated general he now rolls 2D6 for each unit in that general’s command for which he wishes to issue an order – this is where the coloured labels come in handy, so you don’t miss any.

b. A natural roll of 9 or more activates the unit – give them a counter or something – they are under orders for this turn.

c. Otherwise, adjust the dice roll as follows:

i.          For a good general, add 1

ii.         For a poor general, deduct 1 – sort-of-OK generals require no adjustment

iii.        For a good unit, add 1

iv.        For a poor unit, or one with heavy losses (shaken, whatever...) deduct 1

v.         For each complete 6 inches (or whatever you fancy) that the unit is distant from the general, deduct 1 (for hexes, this would be “for each hex beyond the first...”)

d. If the result is 4 or more, the unit is under orders

e. This continues until all units under the general’s command are activated, or until one fails the test, in which case no more units are tested. This means that it is important to take care over the order in which units are tested for activation – go for the good guys who are near at hand first – one failure and that’s your lot for this general on this turn.

3. The activated units now move, fight and all that stuff, as you would expect. End of turn.

4. Then the opposing player nominates one (or maybe two) of his generals, and so on. And that’s it, really. It may involve too much dice throwing, I'm not sure, but it has a few ingredients which appeal:

a. It’s simple, and easy to understand

b. Restricting activation to a single general keeps the game focused and ensures a quick rotation of turns

c. The fact that you can choose the general gives more direct control – less of a random element than a card system, for example, but some bad luck with the dice can still make life difficult.

5. And, as an add-on, we propose that any general who is a casualty has to be replaced, but should be replaced by an officer who is one degree worse. 

                                                                     -ooOoo-

Re-reading this now, it seems to me that most of this is familiar anyway, and I’m not sure why it has taken Martin and me so much correspondence to get to this stage. I am not even sure that I shall go on to test it, though I have thoroughly enjoyed the development process. However, in a spirit of what I hope will charitably be taken as innocent enthusiasm, I offer it for your thoughts.

ECW Dragoons - including squad players

DIS...(wait for it!)...

...MOUNT!

Restored after some damage inflicted by Royal Mail, I now have a unit of dragoons to add to each army. Lovely painting, as ever, by Lee, with a little subsequent gluing, straightening and touching up by moi. I have little to say (nay - in truth, I am afraid to say very much) about the shipping incident, other than to mention that once again I have learned that it doesn't really matter how carefully you pack goods for mailing, there will still be some height a package can be dropped from, some degree of lateral acceleration which can be applied, which will defeat your efforts.

Anyway, here they are. The first pictures show Col. Henry Washington's Royalist unit, in both mounted and dismounted guises. In my rules, mounted dragoons may ride up to three hexes, or may ride up to two hexes and dismount. Dismounted dragoons may walk one hex, or may mount and ride up to two hexes. These distances, of course, are subject to normal terrain issues. Mounting/dismounting consists of switching 3 of the 4 bases, as shown. The command base remains mounted, to represent horse holders who may not fire, and also to make it easier to spot them in the woods! Dragoons who end their move dismounted may fire - they may not fire from horseback. They may also, of course, take part in melees in either state, but are not very good at it - mounted dragoons are half as effective as normal cavalry in a melee.

Overall, to be honest, dragoons are not very lethal - an irritant rather than a major threat. They have the advantage of being able to move and fire (which normal musketeers cannot), and they can fight as soon as they arrive in woods or a village, without forming up, but they are gnats rather than hornets. They have been known, though, to pick off the odd general...

Roundheads + subs

They do look nice. Here are the Parliamentarian unit. This is a posed team photo, featuring a typically dastardly Roundhead trick of fielding the substitutes at the same time as the original line-up - they would not be seen like this in a battle. The unit purports to be Tom Morgan's boys, though of course they could be anyone.

The figures are Les Higgins, mounted on Higgins horses, though the command chaps are SHQ/Kennington, also on Higgins horses. The careful observer may notice that the officers are rather better fed and wear slightly bigger hats than the rank-&-file, but you'd expect that. They probably have thicker underwear too. By the way, I keep seeing mention of "out of production" Les Higgins ECW and Marlburian figures on eBay - not so - the ranges are alive and well and available in any numbers you fancy from Old John, whose blog is here. These lovely old figures deserve better recognition, I believe - I keep doing my best to plug them.

My special thanks to the Contesse Foy, whose heirloom embroidery scissors were just the thing for cutting out those pesky dragoon standards.

Syringa vulgaris ‘Madame Lemoine’

Elsewhere, Spring has definitely, finally arrived in our garden. We have a super little lilac bush which blossoms every year, but the flowers are fragile and short-lived, They go brown within a couple of days, and they are so easily wrecked by rainfall or any kind of a stiff breeze that it is very easy to miss them. If you blink, or the weather is wrong, you have to try again next year. Well, this month they are in fine form - does your little heart good to see them.

And just wait till you see how the edelweiss are getting on. Assuming the flowers come out nicely, and the deer can refrain from eating them, there should be quite a show later on.

Hooptedoodle #88 - Back in Training

With the prospect of some serious walking in the Salzkammergut next month, and very much aware that I haven’t had much exercise since Hadrian’s Wall last Autumn (what with the flu and other distractions), I went up into the Pentland Hills yesterday with Nick.

Very pleasant day – marvellous views – but once again Scotland did its famous climate trick. Having been persuaded by the warm sunshine to leave my extra fleece in the car, I found the wind at the top of Carnethie so cold that I would have been very pleased to have taken it with me. Unusual naivety for us – I always work on the principle that it is easier to remove extra clothing and carry it than to put on clothing that you didn’t bring along.

Good walk – I’m a bit stiff this morning with the climbing – I’m sure that Carnethie gets steeper each year. In truth, some of the climbing does get harder, and much of this is down to the worsening erosion of the paths – the climb up Scald Law and down its Western side is pretty tricky now with all the scree and broken stone.  Especially since there are a great many sheep and lambs on the hills, I am amazed that it was possible to meet an unleashed rotweiler on a narrow ledge – is it just me, or are there a few dog owners who don’t seem to have much of a grip on reality?

Happiness, by the way, is finding a pork pie in your packed lunch when you are on top of a hill.

We think this one is Castlelaw - if you have exceptional eyesight you
may be able to make out the army rifle range targets, right of centre

Looking south-east from the lower slopes of Turnhouse Hill. The hills in
the distance are the Lammermuirs

Nick conquers the pile of rubble which used to be a cairn on top of Carnethie

Fearsome sight - Foy on campaign in Flaming June. In the background are
Scald Law and East Kip, and then, further away, we must be getting
into Lanarkshire

The walks in the Salzkammergut, we think, will be rather less demanding than some of the Alpine stuff we did in the Tyrol in the last two years, but one has to be ready. Part of the script for yesterday was to try out my new boots, but I had not yet got around to wearing them in the house first, so I used my old ones. Yes - we'll just have to go out again as soon as possible.

My planned September break this year will not involve anything as daunting as Hadrian's Wall - the intention is to make a serious assault on the coffee shops of Regensburg and Vienna. I'll need to get in some training for that, too, now I think of it.

In passing, I might mention that Nick and I were discussing yesterday whether Captain Scott and his chaps on their South Pole trip spent much time saying, "Gosh, what a fantastic view!", or even, "Ooh, it's freezing here".

Oh, my aching sides

Also in passing, I got a quick blood-pressure workout at the end of our walk when we got back to the car park at Flotterstone and I found this attached to my car. After the initial self-righteous panic, I quickly realised that it was a spoof, and contained some advice on how to avoid having your vehicle broken into when it is unattended, authored by some well-intentioned bunch of cretins known as the Penicuik Crime Prevention Panel. It certainly got my attention, but how hilarious is that for an idea? One way of preventing break-ins, of course, is to put a sniper in the trees to pick off any unauthorised person going within 3 feet of the car. 

My C&CN-based ECW Game - new Rules Booklet

I have had a few expressions of interest in my ECW rules, and one of the more common suggestions has been something which I think makes a lot of sense. My game has always been an overt extension of the GMT Commands & Colors: Napoleonics (CCN) boardgame, adapted for miniatures and for the particular theatre of the British Isles in the 1640s. It has also been, very much, a project for my own use.

Thus my documentation has been minimalist. Anyone wishing to learn my game has had to download and learn the rules book for the original CCN game, and then incorporate the changes and extensions listed in my short summary note. That's a lot of work for someone with no previous experience of CCN, and work, moreover, which is required just to get to a starting position with the ECW variant (with no implied guarantee that it will be any good!).

Even I have found this inconvenient. If, during an ECW game, I wish to check on the details of Cavalry Breakthrough, for example, I have to find that section of the CCN booklet, read and understand it, and then check my extension summary sheets to remind myself what, if anything, I subsequently changed for the Civil War.

Not great. I was asked if it would be possible to produce a single document which set out the ECW variant as a standalone ruleset which did not require this kind of cross referencing, and the answer, of course, was no - it's a nice, logical idea, but a lot of work for something which is only a hobby project.

Well, as time passed I found the idea more and more sensible, so I have finally done it. There is now a first edition of a combined rule book available as a pdf - you'll find it listed in the available downloads in the top right of this screen. If you wish to download it, please do so. I would still recommend having the CCN booklet available as well as a back-up - the diagrams and examples are useful, for a start.

Some very quick (and obvious) caveats and qualifiers here, so there is no misunderstanding. My new booklet is a rewrite of the GMT CCN rules, incorporating my own alterations, and I claim no credit for the ideas or the wording which are GMT's. I don't believe there are copyright implications - the GMT rules are freely available as a download from their website (which is also linked from this screen), and I hope my booklet makes it clear that I am not attempting to parody CCN, nor pass off parts of it as my own work. The main elements of the game are now widely used in other of Richard Borg's games (and elsewhere) - just assume that anything in my booklet which works well is Mr Borg's, and any fluffs are down to me. Naturally I do not wish to get into any kind of customer support role here, but I would be grateful for warnings about any obvious howlers or imminent legal proceedings.

If you try the game, I hope very much that you enjoy it.

Also because I was asked about it, this is my adaptation of the CCN "Infantry in Square Track" for the ECW - here is the "Stand of Pikes Track", which is identical in just about every aspect of its use. Right-click on the image to get the full-size version, download it and print it on stiff card.

 

The Man Who Killed Pythagoras – and other tales

Pythagoras, indicating the tricky diagonal

I’ve recently been involved in a number of Real Life issues which have left me very little time for any hobby-related activities, but I have managed to spend the odd moment reading other people’s rules, and scribbling and pondering ideas – some of them very old ideas, it has to be said.

I have banged on about hexagons and their pros and cons at great length in the past, and am confident that I don’t have very much more to say on the matter – you would think...

In one of my odd moments, the other day, I was recalling a series of debates that I had with a few friends – a very long time ago now – in which we considered gridded miniatures games and their advantages, but which mostly served as an excuse to drink beer. We agreed, very early in our discussions, that the most innocent comment any of us had made on the topic to date was credited to our resident optimist, Alan Low, and it went along the lines of:

“It is much easier to consider the merits of hexes if you can rise above all the prejudices and sacred cows which they seem to upset.”

Yes, Alan, we said – but you can’t really separate these things – the problem is that the biggest single disadvantage of hexes is that people hate them. Whether that is justifiable or even fair is beside the point – if HG Wells had been pictured with hexagons scribed on his floor then no-one would worry about it. As things stand, hexes are an affront to everything which is cherished in miniatures gaming. Worst of all, they are associated with BOARD GAMES, which are the greatest affront of all. We are, after all, talking of orthodox religion here.

We also agreed that the only acceptable plea we might make on their behalf was that Joe Morschauser was famous for gridded games – though I believe that at the time Joe was regarded as less Old School than he is now. His game was generally seen as a harmless eccentricity, and not proper wargaming.

Morschauser, of course, used squares. Squares are easy to draw, and have an ancient precedent in the chessboard, but for wargames they have some inherent snags, the very largest of which is Pythagoras. Orthogonal moves of 1 square are fine, but a diagonal move of 1 square is 1.4142135 (etc etc) times as far. Some games get round this by prohibiting diagonal moves or combats – somehow, units which are adjacent to each other along a diagonal cannot see each other – or, as in the De Gre/Sweet game, the square root of two is taken to be a rather more convenient 1.5. That certainly helps.

A to B is easily seen to be 4 hexes

Hexes are not easy to draw at all – even with an accurate template, you can get a gradual drift with accumulated small errors, so it is necessary when marking out a hex table to have copious guidelines and preliminary sketchings. They do have the advantage of six-fold symmetry, and they get rid of Pythagoras, but many gamers object to the fact that they distort straight lines. You can either lay out your hexes so that there are straight columns going across the table (like my own hex-based games) – in which case your units may advance in a straightforward manner (literally), but do not line up side by side very neatly – or you may have the straight columns running sideways across the table (like Commands & Colors) – in which case you may form exemplary lines of battle, but your units advance in a rather odd zig-zag.

In fact both these issues can be solved visually at a stroke by having the hexes a good bit larger than the units, so that you can place the units off-centre and smooth out the battle lines and the marches.

We rambled around this subject through many beers, enjoying the scenery but not really deciding anything, and then one Sunday morning Pat Timmins rang me and announced:

“I may have just killed Pythagoras.”

Pat had been applying square vinyl tiles to his kitchen floor – in a very bold combination of navy blue and white. His wife objected to the basic chequer-board configuration because, she said, it “gave her the buzzings” and seemed likely to promote epilepsy. He had tried various alternatives, and at one point experimented with alternate rows offset by half a tile, like this:

He realised that such an arrangement on a wargames table would allow movement in six directions, and was in fact a sort of hexagonal arrangement without the hexagons. Judging distances, for example A to B in the illustration, was not quite as intuitive as with hexes, but was still possible with a bit of methodology (I reckon AB is 5 squares distant).

We were unreasonably enthusiastic about this – perhaps we could pass off our offset squares (or “squexes”, as Pat called them) as a sort of logical descendant of Morschauser’s game, and overcome some prejudices. The next non-development was that someone suggested that the squares should not be squares but rectangles with sides in the proportions of √3 to 2, which would even up the six-fold symmetry so that it was a proper 60 degrees all round. It made the table layout closer to natural hexes, but made the board look even more distorted – at this point, we actually preferred normal hexagons, which put us back where we started. So we eventually decided that squexes had had their brief moment, and resigned ourselves to being outcasts in the wargaming fraternity with our conventional hexes.

Glinski's game - note the 3 bishops

Also on the topic of hexes, I invented hexagonal chess in about 1970. My excitement was tempered more than somewhat when I discovered that there were already in existence a number of varieties of hexagonal chess, and that my own new game had been previously invented by a man named Glinski. This was useful, since it allowed me to drop the idea and move on to dabble with something else. I expanded Glinski’s game into a 3-sided version. There are 3-sided chess games now, but mine used a board with a full hexagonal grid (most of the available games now use distorted squares) – the board was a little larger than the normal (normal?) Glinski board, and the 3 sets of pieces set up in alternate corners.

It looked spectacular, but it didn’t work very well. Early experiments revealed that a game of this type for 3 players brings some interesting problems. The first is order of turns – if red plays white into check then white has to respond immediately, which reverses the turn cycle if it was in fact black’s move next.

More fundamentally troubling is the very nature of 3-player strategy. It is very difficult to have a game in which each of the players is attacking both of the others – it makes more sense to have two gang up on the third, and then double-cross each other at the end, which gets you into all sorts of negotiation, time-outs for diplomacy and other stuff which we decided it was simpler to just ban. No chat, we said – no sign language, no secret notes left in the bathroom. This left us with a game in which the only possible recommended strategy was a passive opening - allow the other two players to attack each other and weaken each other. If all 3 players adopt the same strategy, of course, you get a very strange non-game. You may feel free to draw your own parallels from history on any or all of these.

A very smart looking 3-sided chess set - mine was different from this,
since it used the Glinski layout of pieces, and  the playing board was
a rather larger version of Glinski's

So we gave that one up as well, though we did briefly consider 3-sided soccer on a triangular pitch, but abandoned that very quickly, not least because we could not agree how the offside rule would work. We did, however, think that the winner might be the team which conceded the smallest number of goals.

How very silly.    

Alien Life Form

What are you doing in my garden?

The wet summer last year and the generally odd weather so far this year have had a marked effect on our garden. The most obvious excuse we can offer in our own defence is that there has been reduced opportunity to get out there and do something about it, but the damp has produced changes in the lawn, a lot of moss, almost uncontrollable weed growth and these things, as seen in the photo. The biggest is about 6 inches tall, but they have appeared very quickly, so no-one knows how large they might grow if left to get on with it.

We had a large tree cut down a couple of years ago, and I suspect that these are the result of the root system starting to rot away. Anyway, there's a lot of them (the tree roots, of course, will be under most of the garden) and I've never seen them before.

I don't think we'll be eating them. It's unnerving when your garden turns into a science project. Damp and decay - theme of the month.

VwQ – Plus Point – Simple Treatment of Casualties

A running commentary on my growing collection of fixes and tweaks for the Victory without Quarter rules for ECW/30YW games may give the wrong overall impression of my opinion of them, so I thought I might offer a very brief moment of applause for a change, to balance things up.

In my previous post I made vague reference to a “list of likes and dislikes”, by which I judge wargames rules as they come along. One thing I am not fond of, my friends, is any form of separate, hand-written record of casualties – especially of the early WRG variety, where it is necessary to record losses as the fractional parts of a figure – i.e. in actual men. The great big chart tells you that 14 figures throwing bits of muck into the wind on a Thursday have disabled one twentieth of a figure. Result! - amend your roster sheet - where is it? - is that it over there? - no, on the bookcase, under your reading glasses?

Keep adding the bits up and – if you live long enough – in time this will accumulate to a complete figure, and you can remove him, and start to tally the fractions all over again. We shouldn’t make fun of this – it was (and may again become) the state of the art, but you can really see why WRG replaced it with the much preferable arrangement where a roll of 4 or a 5 might kill one figure (H) and a 6 might kill two (HH - YES!). Much more like the thing. More like a game, rather than a book-keeping exercise.

I do not care for anything which detracts from the immediacy of the wargame, or which takes the eye and the attention away from the action on the tabletop. I also very much dislike pieces of paper which clutter up the battlefield – why do we fight with miniatures if it is not for the spectacle? My late friend Alan Gallacher used to impose a spot fine of 1 non-staff figure – to be chosen by the opponent, for every offending piece of litter on the battlefield – you may regard this as extreme, but a good-humoured application of this house rule made a great difference once everyone got the hang of it. And litter, by the way, included reference sheets and rulers as well as plastic cups, beer mats, mobile phones and so on.

All this means that I really like the Victory without Quarter arrangement for calculating and tracking losses. A unit attacking another unit causes a number of “hits”, and 3 is the magic number. For every complete 3 hits caused in a single attack, the target is given one casualty marker, which they cart around with them thereafter. Any odd hits left over are ignored, insignificant, forgotten about and not carried forward. Which means that, quite often in VwQ, a sincere and wholeheartedly delivered attack may gain only one or two hits – nice try, but no marker. Perhaps next time? There is also a special rule for artillery - any hits by artillery, even if insignificant in the sense of not gaining a marker, will frighten the recipients sufficiently to require a morale check. Nasty stuff, artillery.

When the number of casualty markers for a unit becomes equal to the number of bases, the unit is eliminated. We do not care whether they are all dead, or disarmed or simply discouraged – they are no longer with us.

Just the sort of uncomplicated arrangement I like.

...so you lose eleven-twentieths of your bishop...

Topic B

On a completely different tack, I had a gentle rebuke from my new car yesterday. I am still getting the hang of what it will do. I recall that my relationship with my old truck was similar when it was new - I accumulated so many mental notes to sit down with the owner's manual and look up things that puzzled me that eventually I just did it, and I learned a lot. This was quite a good approach, I think, though "approach" might imply more formality than was really the case. If there had been any underlying reasoning - which I doubt - it might have included the following themes:

(1) Owner manuals are not the sort of thing you read right through for entertainment. Brain-death will certainly follow.

(2) The manual will often refer to a whole range of models, plus variants, and thus tends to be a bit on the generic side - after you have read the 25 pages on the optional in-car entertainment system you find that you don't actually have it.

(3) These cars are invented by clever people - they must be pretty intuitive to drive, right?

(4) ...right?

(5) Real men do not read instructions before they act. In the noble tradition of (I think) Bugs Bunny, it is not actually necessary to learn how to land your aeroplane until after you have taken off.

(6) Etc.

And so, encouraged by my previous success with this so-called approach, I have gone about things in the same way this time. I've had the new vehicle for some 4 months now, and I still don't know why the heater will suddenly blow hot air at me when the outside temperature is 25 deg C, or what that weird orange dashboard light that looks like a pineapple means, or why quite a lot of people flash their headlights at me at night. Must check that, I keep saying to myself.

One of the reasons I behave like this, I am beginning to suspect, is fear. A primitive, superstitious fear of something which is cleverer than I am, and which - unlike me - is getting cleverer every day. The new buggy is the first one I have owned which will automatically switch on lights or wipers when it thinks you need them. It's quite fun, actually - feels like something of a luxury - but my initial reaction, before I became accustomed to the idea and forgot about it, was to wonder what particular problem this was solving. It is not difficult to switch on your own lights, as I recall, though on occasions you might forget to do so. Is the sensor which now makes the decision on my behalf just one more thing to go wrong? What if I get used to having my lights look after themselves and one day drive a vehicle which doesn't do this? Ultimately, am I more or less of a potential danger on the road? Hmmm.

I'm still a bit dubious about cleverness for its own sake. I embrace the ancient urban legends about an automatic emergency brake which, allegedly, was fitted to Mercedes' E-Class, and would occasionally decide arbitrarily that someone was having an emergency when in fact he was driving at 110 kph along the autobahn, chatting to his wife about the neighbours' new gazebo. And then there was the nameless experimental audio system which was designed to turn up the volume when it sensed that the background noise in the car had increased, which - again, reputedly - in some of its early versions became dangerously confused when passengers began to shout to make themselves heard above the music, and cranked the level even higher...

Yesterday my car played a joke on me. I believe it has recognised my basic insecurity. As I was driving home from visiting my mother, enjoying a rare moment of fine weather, it suddenly began making a chiming noise at me - very like the noise you might sometimes hear at an old-fashioned railway crossing when the gates are closed. No warning lights, no apparent problems, just this noise - and, since these things are built by clever people, you just know that this is not likely to be good news. Has the oil pressure zeroed? Has something awful happened to the hydraulics? Has the lambda probe (or some other dread gizmo) gone faulty, and the engine is about to shut down to protect itself? How much is this going to cost? Does the warranty cover labour charges? Is there, in fact, a train coming?

I got home without incident, though with further intermittent chimes, and was sitting in the car, worrying about it, when my wife arrived. She knew instantly what the problem was - her Volkswagen does the same thing. The car had sensed the parcel I had placed on the passenger seat, and when I went around corners it complained that this passenger it had identified was not wearing a seat-belt.

So that's all right then - but it might have given me some visual clue, you would think. The point is made - I shall show more respect in future. It is watching me.

What?