Hooptedoodle #169 – Weather Here, Wish You Were Beautiful

Loch Lomond - bonny, bonny banks etc - as featured in tourist brochures

We took a crafty, early Easter break, as soon as my son broke up from school, and thus managed to rent a holiday lodge at a fraction of the normal price, right on the shore of Loch Lomond. That’s where I’ve been this last week.

The lodge was brand new, and in fact was better than anything of the sort I have stayed in before, so that was very good, except that some of the advertised facilities hadn’t arrived yet. It was obvious that the site managers are working very hard to get ready for the full season, and there was a lot of work going on – laying tarmac, landscaping, all that – and a fair amount of noise. In fact, as we were based at Inveruglas, on the Western shore of the loch, it was a bit noisy generally, since the main road and the railway take up most of the land at the water’s edge, and there is a lot more traffic than you would think. We had intended to get some decent hillwalking in, but it rained fairly solidly for the whole time we were there, and the need to start off any outing by playing chicken along the nightmarish A82 proved a major disincentive.

We did manage one proper walk, and it was a short one, but pretty harrowing from the weather point of view – we walked up Glen Sloy to have a look at the hydroelectric dam, and it actually snowed while we were up there. We told jolly tales of Captain Scott’s lads, to amuse ourselves and take our minds off the cold.

Foy the Younger and Elder during the assault on Glen Sloy.
The hydroelectric dam in the background dates from 1946,
and apparently the resultant artificial Loch Sloy behind
it has drowned the traditional lands of the McFarlanes.
All disgruntled McFarlanes please form an orderly queue to
register complaints. This was April Fool's Day - the snow
appears to have stopped briefly at this point - we were
pretty much soaked through, though.

We drove to Inveraray on Tuesday, and visited the famous Jail (an interesting, if overpriced visit), and we had an absolutely splendid lunch in the George in Inveraray, which apparently was awarded the accolade Best Pub in Scotland in 2011, and is still pretty damn good now. Great traditional atmosphere, log fires, fantastic food – high spot of the holiday, I reckon.

Because of the weather we saw very little in the wildlife department, but yesterday while I was getting dressed I could just make out (through the murk) an enormous bird of prey sitting on the grass, not far from my window.  Since it had to be an eagle, at the very least, I rushed off in a state of high excitement to find my spectacles and my camera, and came back to find that it hadn’t flown away (as I had thought it would), since it was, in fact, a large stone.

Got home at lunchtime today, to find that Hermes (the courier – definitely not the deity) had left a parcel safely tucked behind a plant pot on my front doorstep. It had been there since 31^st March, sitting in a puddle, and the wrapping had gradually disintegrated. As luck would have it, it was my shipment of Spanish cavalry from Hagen, not a book I have been expecting from Spain, and the figures themselves were completely unharmed by their experience - another stroke of good fortune to cherish.

The cavalry are excellent – more will be heard of these once I have sorted out some plans for painting them. They will become the Dragoons of Pavia, plus 3 units of Line Cavalry that I can’t remember off the top of my head, but I have them written down somewhere.

Now we have to finish unpacking and put our boots somewhere to dry.

Oh yes - I seem to have wriggled past the 300K hits landmark, so thanks again to everyone who reads, or has read, this blog!

Late Edit: Taken by the Contesse - Inveraray Jail uses some effective techniques with
recorded voices and scenes set in the courtroom and the prisons depicting real events.
Your bloggist could not resist the temptation to join the other dummies in the public
gallery at a Victorian trial of a man who burned down a barn filled with animals.
He was found guilty, of course, as he was again 30 minutes later.

Hooptedoodle #168 - Donkey Award - World of Bins

Whatever the question was, this new chart is almost certainly the
answer - I promise to post a photo of our proud new row of bins
when the grey one arrives; we may cut down a few trees to make room

We live in a house built on a farm in a very rural area. In our kitchen there are three waste receptacles - to conform with the local council regulations. We have a plastic tub into which goes all recyclable waste paper, another to take recyclable plastic, metal and glass, and a bog-standard (large) flip-top bin to take everything else. That is the indoor bit of this industry; outside we have corresponding wheelie-type bins - a green bin for general waste, one with a red top for the plastics etc, and one with a blue top for the paper. Existing regime is that the green one is emptied every Thursday, and the other two are emptied (by a different truck) every second Thursday (I hope you're taking notes here).

A new development is that we have now been supplied with another bin (a brown one) to take all garden waste - prunings, dead leaves, grass cuttings and similar. The brown bin collections will start in April, we were told, so - as you can imagine - we have been waiting in a state of some excitement to see how this will work.

Well, it gets more complicated. It seems we will also be supplied with yet another bin (a grey one) which is for food waste, which will henceforth be banned from the green bin. This is a serious business, too - I expect to see officials with armbands checking the contents of our bins for compliance - they may even be required to taste the food waste, just to be sure. I hope so.

Since it would be unreasonable to expect householders to wander down the garden to the new grey bin every time they have a used tea-bag, we will also be supplied with a matching indoor (grey) food waste container so we don't run any risk of contaminating the household rubbish. We are lucky to have a decent-sized kitchen and a large garden, to house all this splendour, and our domestic arrangements allow us a bit of time to devote to the complexities of the new arrangements. For new arrangements is what we shall have. Our local authority - whom I have avoided naming, not that it matters - have decided that our bin collections will now all be fortnightly, and staggered in such a way that there is no easy way to remember what the blazes we are supposed to be leaving out in any particular week. Like me, you may have doubts about the overall improvement in our quality of life, despite the hefty municipal investment in PVC and our proud new row of bins.

At the top of this post is the new master schedule, which we shall have to keep in a prominent place, since I do not fancy our chances of ever memorizing it. Our lives will be pretty much driven by our waste management activities in future, which is probably how it should be. I shall say nothing at all about the double-whammy of ratepayers being saddled with both extra cost and extra hassle; my lips are sealed on the subject of just how much benefit to the environment and the state of the planet is likely - I need more information on the carbon footprint of the manufacture of plastic dustbins; it would be overly carping to observe here that as far as I can see the stuff that goes to the local landfill site still looks pretty much as it did some years ago, so I shall swerve that one as well.

I'm sure that armies of jobsworths all over the UK are already running such regimes - it is simply that we have joined this enlightened group rather late in the day. I'm also sure that someone will be delighted to tell me that it is all the fault of the Eurocrats in Brussels. If so, I have a message for you...

Bollocks.

Spanish Grenadiers - Who's for the Chop?

This is a plea for suggestions.

Not granaderos like this...

...but like this

I've been putting this off for a while. My boxes of 1809 Spaniards contain plentiful figures for 4 battalions of grenadiers - mostly nice Falcata chaps. I'm nervous about the painting of all the embroidered bags on the hats, but they should be spectacular when done, since your typical battalion would be the converged grenadiers of the regiments in a brigade, so mixed facings and even assorted uniforms are the order of the day. Splendid.

Fly in the ointment is that two of these planned grenadier battalions are actually to be grenadiers not of the Line but of Provinciales, and - as I now know - they wore a rather simpler form of headgear - smaller and without the fancy flamme. As far as I know, there is no suitable figure on the market. Hmmm.

Conversion time. The command figures aren't a problem - officers can wear bicorns or even the full grenadier busby (for flash), drummers similarly. For the actual granaderos I think that fitting the ubiquitous NapoleoN Miniatures Spanish line fusiliers with new heads should be a straightforward job - my immediate challenge is, which heads to use?

You ever see a hat like the one in the lower picture?

All suggestions for a suitable donor - any period, any nation - will be most welcome. I can, of course get busy grinding down all sorts of things, but the less grinding the better (to quote Descartes), and the more easily it can be repeated (as he may also have said). I've looked at various possibilities, including British Crimean guardsmen - I'd greatly prefer a metal head, and I'd prefer a full head rather than a hat graft.

Oh yes - the figures are 20mm (or 1/72). Any ideas?

New Napoleonic Spanish Cavalry - Size Comparison

At the request of Mr L Gunner, here's a quick comparison. My new Foy Figures men are made to 1/72, so are a tad larger than Hinton Hunt (which are not). As enthusiasts for plastic will testify, "1/72" is not an exact global standard either, but these fellows will all serve happily alongside each other in my army, so as far as I'm concerned they are near-enough compatible.

L to R: NapoleoN, Foy/Hagen, Hinton Hunt x 2, Falcata x 2

Hinton Hunt horses a bit shorter in the wheelbase, but that's normal

Links to the Hagen shop are in the previous post.

Spanish Cavalry 1806-09 - figures now available

I now have samples from my first figure commission - and I'm very pleased with them. These are available from Foy Figures at Hagen - the initial sets are properly illustrated there - we have a set of 3 mounted troopers and one of 3 command figures (officer, standard and trumpeter), and each of these sets is available with a choice of walking or trotting horses. Lovely sculpts from Massimo.

I have done no cleaning up on this chap - this is the officer, just to give an idea. All the horses are made so that reins may be added with wire (if you wish), and the troopers have separate muskets, which have to be glued in place. The figures may be painted as dragoons (yellow uniforms) or line cavalry (dark blue), and I believe they fill a conspicuous gap in the available 20mm (or 1/72) metal ranges for Napoleonic Spanish collectors.

I hope you like them as much as I do!

Hooptedoodle #167 - More Buses for the Non-Collection

The original scope for this ad hoc collection was that they had to be real buses, with some relevance to my childhood years on Merseyside. In the wider interests of personal nostalgia, the range has increased a little, I guess, but I am still fighting off any suspicion that I may have become a bus enthusiast.

Here are three more - two which arrived this morning and one which I received a while ago, but never got around to photographing.

Another Crosville, this one a little later than the previous photos, but still 1960s -
Route H16, Elizabeth Rd, Huyton to Liverpool Pier Head. This picture is
dedicated to the bold Mr Front, whose dad used to drive Crosvilles out of their
West Kirby depot.

Eastern Scottish service bus from Edinburgh to my present home village, 1970s
period. Route 124 survives to this day, but the buses, of course, don't look like proper
buses. In those days, on the rare occasions I journeyed to North Berwick I'd have
used the train.

This is a real nostalgia feast for me. Edinburgh Corporation service 16, Oxgangs
to Silverknowes; for many years, I travelled to work on this route every day
- South Morningside School to St Andrew Square. I remember that at one time
I read the whole of Loraine Petre's book about the 1813 campaign on my bus
journeys. Tricky unfolding the maps on the bus, I recall.

Hooptedoodle #166 - More Garden Birds

Tough guy - the robin will take seeds from the ground, but prefers his food to wriggle a bit

The gantry that holds up our bird feeders surprised us by collapsing in the gales the other night. When the investigation team moved in, we found very quickly that the structure is brilliantly designed so that the tubular steel fills up with rainwater and rusts through quicker than you would believe. All structural engineers working on the design of bridges or large buildings, please take note.

The replacement stand is expected in a day or so - of rather better quality (or at least we hope so - certainly it is more expensive). In the meantime our feathered pals in the garden are coping well enough. Here's a couple of photos taken by Mme la Contesse this morning - everybody looking bright and chirpy, in readiness for Spring (which does not start on 1st March here in South-East Scotland, whatever they may tell you).

Handsome cock Chaffinch, with his Spring plumage starting to show on his head

Coal Tit - we can't tell the males and females apart, but presumably the Coal Tits can