Hooptedoodle #182 - Coping with a Small Irregularity

In the course of every day, unexpected things happen, and the occasional emergency arises. It sounds irritatingly worthy to suggest that we should always expect the unexpected – I had years of management courses which took people’s money off them in exchange for advice like that; it differs in degree only from those other all-conquering life strategies, (1) always be right, and (2) win the Lottery every week.

Expecting the unexpected probably just comes down to application of commonsense, don’t do anything too risky, and be prepared to think on your feet. Know where the stop-cocks are for the water supply, have spare car-keys – stuff like that. Do not put the TV in the bath, do not use your food-processor on top of the Himalayas during a thunderstorm – user guides for just about anything you buy nowadays will be stuffed with sound-but-annoying advice of this sort, in 17 languages.

A real emergency, of course, puts everything else into perspective – my wife broke her shoulder recently (she has now completely recovered, I am delighted to say), and we had a couple of months when a great deal of what we regard as normal procedures and normal priorities just went out of the window, yet it all seemed quite logical and straightforward. Most of the time, you just find you know what to do if something goes wrong, but we do take a lot for granted, I think.

A couple of days ago we got a bit of a fright. My son has his “den” on the ground floor of our house – before the property was altered and extended, 10 years ago, this was one of the bedrooms of the original bungalow cottage which forms the oldest part of the house. My son is coming up 13, and he is, to be honest, a bit heavy-handed these days – he flies about the place at great speed, crashing into walls and skating across tiled areas – he opens doors with a karate chop technique which we have discussed at length in the past. Well, it would be unfair to point any fingers, but the lock on the den door finally collapsed two nights ago. Two I-told-you-so’s come to mind:

(1) I told him, many times, that he would eventually bust the lock

(2) More seriously, I told myself, also many times, that the lock didn’t feel too healthy, and I should do something about it before it broke

As with all I-told-you-so’s, repetition did not help – eventually we become deaf to them.

My son had been out all day with his mother, a day which included his swimming coaching session and a visit to a shopping centre, and his tea was being prepared when suddenly he was trapped in his room. The door handle turned, after a fashion, but the lock was unmoved, so to speak. The door-handle turns a square-section bar which fits into a square socket in a cam, which turns the thingme that pushes that wassname that pulls the how’s-your-father that unfastens the door. After we had assured him that we would have him out of there in no time, I removed the brass handle from the outside, took out the square bar and found the extent of the disaster – the alloy rotating cam into which the bar fits had disintegrated – shattered into fragments. There was nothing left to rotate or poke or fiddle with to get the door open.

So you stop, and you think for a moment – there is always a way, if you just think. I was, of course, thinking of solutions which stopped short of breaking windows, removing door frames, cutting through wood panels etc. No good. If we had planned to trap him forever in his room, we could not have done such a perfect job. Since the door was obviously not going to open, the first priority was to get my son out of there so that we could produce a permanent fix with less immediate panic. “Remove any threat to life” – very sound.

The window – he can climb out of the window! Well, the windows have security bolts, and there is no key for the bolts in that room. OK – if he unlatches the main window catch, the window will move about three-quarters of an inch, which would be enough to get a key through if I climb up a ladder and poke it through.

No good. The windows have expanded with the humidity, and are stuck fast, we would have to do a lot of damage to lever them open, even a bit.

We can slide the security bolt key under the door! – no – the floor is tiled, the door is a heavy, wooden panel door and the gap underneath it is tighter and neater than you would expect to see outside of an engineering facility. You could just about slide through a piece of paper bearing a message of hope.

OK – we can break the window if we have to – if we have to get him out, that is a possibility. Not really – this is double-glazed, toughened glass – anything short of a sledgehammer is not going to do much damage, and we really don’t want broken glass flying around the den.

Now I have a long-standing friendship with Ed, who is a joiner and (wait for it) locksmith! Ed has helped me out of a few holes in the past, and I have his phone number on the wall behind my desk. Excellent! The final, cruel, show-closing snag is that Ed had a serious fall from a fire-escape last year, broke his spine in a couple of places, and – last I heard – is recovering slowly (with titanium bolts inserted) and is unlikely to work again in the foreseeable future.

The perfect trap. We reassured my son that we would have him out as soon as possible, and he happily settled down to enjoy the remainder of his DVD.

It was worth a shot – I rang Ed’s home. His wife told me that Ed had started doing some light jobs again, but that he was out in his van – I might get him on his mobile. It was now 6pm. I rang him on his mobile and – a rarity – actually got to speak to him. Normally in the past I have merely got to develop my relationship with his answering service.    

Suddenly things started going right – very like the old children’s story about the old woman who couldn’t get her pig to jump over a style until a whole string of other prerequisites fell into place. Ed agreed to come around straight away, and duly turned up within 25 minutes. I had spent the 25 minutes steeling myself for the mess and expense of what was obviously going to be a bit of a demolition job.

"Dog! Dog! Bite pig!"

Ed arrived, took out a single sheet of flexible silicone, wiggled it round the angle between the door and the frame, and bingo – the door opened. No fuss, no damage, no drama. I would not have believed it was possible. My son had to interrupt his DVD and get his meal after all, and I paid Ed for his time and the call-out, and subjected him to an embarrassing amount of thanks.

Next morning I went off to a wholesale hardware store in Edinburgh and bought nine (that’s NINE) lock inserts, same size and spec as the broken one – the locks are almost all the same type in our house, and they were all installed ten years ago. I am now going to work my way around the place systematically and replace any unit that is showing signs of wear or not turning properly. I have done two so far – I’ll work away at them. It’s fiddly and sometimes surprisingly mucky, but I’ll keep at it. I’ve also ordered some silicone sheet (in passing, I find it slightly alarming that you can purchase burglar’s kit on Amazon, but I have no complaints) and two types of lock lubricant.

Panic over – on a world scale, this was an insignificant event, and it was solved quickly and simply in the end, but just for a little while I couldn’t see what we were going to do. We watch disaster movies about earthquakes, we hear on the news about tidal waves and the chances of an asteroid hitting Philadelphia, but it comes to something when you suddenly can’t open one of your doors, and a member of your family is trapped. I, for one, have to learn to cope with the small stuff rather better.

My grandma would have told us, "Don't wait until it's raining before you fix the roof". She was a smart woman, my grandma - infuriating, but smart.

Summer Competition - extra clue

I've already received a few entries - some of them really excellent - but I fear that in my attempt not to make the thing too easy I have made it impossibly difficult, so it's only fair to provide a further clue, with apologies to everyone for my lack of brain.

The stretch of water in the background - this is not the actual site, but Operation Avalanche passed near here in Sept 1943. My apologies to anyone who was misled into assuming the Whitby reference must be Dracula.

So - where is the photograph taken, and what is the association of this particular place with Whitby?

Max Foy's Summer Prize Competition 2015

My new fortress (see previous post) will require some painting, and that got me thinking about the other buildings I have waiting to be painted, and that, in turn, got me thinking about having a bit of a chuck-out, which (and the marketing people despair of me) led me to thinking that someone might like the buildings I'm chucking out. Yes, that's right - I am offering to give away some junk I don't want any more - it's as exciting as that.

Nothing wrong with any of them, all but one are still in the original packets, and they are all good quality, resin, 15mm scale buildings. They were all bought in when I was collecting scenery for my ECW project, though a number will fit in well in European 18th and 19th Century theatres, and they have been carefully stored away. I'm getting rid of them because I have enough buildings now, and because these are really sort of 15mm/10mm scale, which are a tad small for my 20mm figures, even though I deliberately use underscale houses in my wargames.

First off, the prizes - these are all unpainted, and since a photograph of an unpainted resin building in a plastic bag is not very informative, I have substituted the manufacturers' pictures of painted examples where possible, which give a better idea - but please remember, the buildings I am giving away are unpainted. If you want to have a shot at the quiz but don't want the buildings, please say so, and you can be a Category B entry.

Some Hovels 15mm buildings:

1T5 - half-timbered house - there are two of these

2T5 - another half-timbered house - two of these as well

6E5 - European double-fronted Guildhall

9A5 - humped-back stone bridge

9M5 - A-frame peasant's hut - medieval

11M5 - a pair of A-frame hovels

Some JR Miniatures 15mm buildings:

#4106 - Prussian-style Eckhaus

#4012 - Austrian/Bavarian village gatehouse

And one from an unknown maker:

British/Northern European farmhouse/manor house

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All right, the Quiz. Here's a photograph which I took myself; it was taken in the early afternoon, on a rather hazy Summer's day in Europe, and I reckon we are facing approximately South-West.

I'd like to know, please, where the photograph was taken - what are we looking at? - and what connection has the picture got with the town of Whitby, in North Yorkshire? I'll judge entries entirely subjectively and unfairly, as always, and will give points for accuracy (based on distance from true location). Bonus points will be given for the Whitby connection, and for humour and additional whizzo facts - an amusing entry which is wide of the mark might well score better than a dead-accurate entry which is, well, dead-boring. There is only one prize - my previous attempt to give a choice of prizes was far too complicated for my poor brain, so the Category A winner will get all of these buildings as a single parcel.

I'll keep the entries open until midnight at the end of 20th July - please send them as comments (which I shall not publish if they are entries) or as emails to the address in my Blogger profile. Only restriction is that I require you to be a regular follower of this blog. Best of luck if you are going to have a go!


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Late, late edit: there is an additional clue in the next post...

eBay Capture - Very Old Toys Dept

I used to have one of these, or at least I had one very similar. This is a fortress made from moulded plastic sheet, manufactured by Eberlein & Co, of Neumarkt, Germany. Eberlein were not a specialist toy maker, they were a plastics company, but they produced toy castles under the trade name Eco, and they produced them in the German style already established by Hausser and Elastolin. [In passing, I am interested to note that Neumarkt is in Bavaria, very close to Regensburg, where I visited two years ago - yes, I realise this is of no interest to anyone else...]

I bought one in the basement toy department of Jenners, in Princes Street, Edinburgh, sometime in the late 1970s. I had grandiose ideas about adding sieges to my stuttering repertoire of wargaming activities, but I think really I just fancied one. Jenners had a choice of different models - this was a smaller one, I think. I have to make two hefty admissions right here and now:

(1) The thing sat in a cupboard for years and years, and never came near to any wargames

(2) Eventually it disappeared, and I cannot for the life of me remember what happened to it. I imagine it went to a charity shop or similar, and I guess the reason I cannot remember the details is because I wasn't interested by that time. Oh well.

This one came from eBay, yesterday. The background to the purchase is the usual haphazard series of coincidences which result in such things. Two years ago, on holiday, I went in a shop in the Salzburg area which had a mighty stock of old Elastolin things, and I was entranced. Crazy prices, and not my thing at all, but pre-war SS marching bands, and all sorts of exotic vehicles and buildings which I found very attractive (in an academic, holiday-time sort of way). Since then I have occasionally had a squint on eBay to see what Elastolin things are on offer - the rule of thumb seems to be that if it is in any kind of decent condition then the price is horrifying. That's OK, I maintain the same sort of vague interest in secondhand Ferraris. Recently a post-war Elastolin castle appeared - it wasn't in especially good nick, it was expensive, and it would need to be collected from a long way away. I thought about it, and watched it as it was relisted twice for lower and lower price. Still wasn't worth it (to me), and I didn't really want anything so big, or so difficult to store.

While I was losing interest in it, there was suddenly this much cheaper Eco castle available, complete with box, and I bought it very quickly, for very little outlay, and it was even shipped here by courier for an extra £7. Well now. I'm really rather pleased with it. It will make a splendid medieval castle section for a Peninsular War fortified city, and it may have applications in the ECW, though I haven't really explored that yet. It's in very good condition, though a bit dusty. It came from a shop that deals in old toys rather than a specialist wargame or military model supplier, so the low price probably reflects the fact that people who want old toy castles really want nice hand-made wooden jobs, not semi-realistic plastic ones.

The scale is around smallish-HO, which is perfect for me (I think the Elastolin castles are really designed for 40mm figures), and the factory paintwork is good and crisp and bright - the tops of the towers are a bit worn, presumably by being slid in and out of the box, but it is so good that I now have a very mild dilemma. Should I "improve" the paintwork? The red roofs are a bit too much of a Royal Mail shade for my taste, and the copper-painted tower on the church is as irritating as I found it in the 1970s. My general feeling is to give the model a good (careful) clean up, smarten up the roofs a bit and then dry-brush some of my house baseboard green colour around the edges so that it blends into the table nicely. my only doubt about this is caused by the fact that it is, in fact, in such good condition. If it had been shabby then it would be a no-brainer, same as for figures - repaint it. However, it is nearly perfect - if it were really old and really valuable, then the no-brainer choice would be to leave it exactly as it is. But it isn't - it's pretty old, and it's interesting to the oddball toy soldier collector like me, but it isn't Elastolin and it isn't valuable - if I were to choose to leave it alone, it would be entirely out of a sense of respect which might be inappropriate.

No. I think I'll do some painting on it.

I'm pretty sure that the plastic sheet is a lot heavier than I remember, so maybe it's not the same vintage as my previous one, and I see that the box is ticked against model #1493 rather than #1495, so there must have been two models of the same overall size, and I seem to recall that Jenners had bigger ones.

Anyway, it's here, and I'm still staring at it and grinning. I don't know how old it is - Eco still exist, though I don't think they do toys any more. If anyone knows any more about these, I'd be interested. I'll be in the courtyard, winding the working drawbridge up and down.


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Late edit: I was doing a bit of browsing about, and I came across this picture, which I use without any permission, which appears to show 3 further Eco castles, placed end to end, none of which is the one I have. I also checked out Eberlein's current website, which says they made toys for a period commencing 1966. I must say they look good, they don't have the cachet or the value (or the scale) of the Elastolins, but they seem a useful buy if you can find one.

Hooptedoodle #181 - Another Gizmo

"Father - oh, Father - please come and see - there is something strange in the garden - what can it be?"

"Calm yourselves, children, it is simply a wonderful new Gizmo that your mother has purchased for us."

"But it looks very odd - how does it work?"

"Well, you see, it is a WASPINATOR, a truly ingenious device. You stuff it with old plastic bags, pull tight the drawstring and you hang it in a tree, or some similar place. Then all the passing wasps which frequent our garden (and there are a great many, as we know) see the Waspinator hanging there, and they say to themselves, 'uh-oh, there is a wasps nest of some size here already, I must hasten away, and not think of building any rival nest close by, lest I offend the residents' - and then they buzz off and do not trouble us further...    but I detect that you are giggling - why do you behave thus?"

"Oh Father, it is hard to believe that such a device would work, or that the wasps would buy into the deception so completely. We suspect that the Waspinator may in fact have been supplied to us by the World of Bollocks Gizmo Company, who have disappointed us so often in the past."

"No, no, my children, I assure you that I, too, was very doubtful of the chances of success of such an unlikely-sounding idea, but - and you may blow me away with the proverbial feather - I am forced to admit that since this fine thing has been hanging in our tree we have seen very few wasps, and those which we have seen have scarpered pretty fast. Despite my prejudices, I may be forced to accept that it works. In any case, you should not be so small-minded in your view of the world - yes, I admit we have had some unsuccessful gizmos in the past, but did your mother not also purchase the very fine Fiskars dandelion removing tool?"

"Yes she did, but then she followed up by buying the Fiskars lawn-edging tool with rotating head, which failed dismally and quickly, since the main load-bearing cam was made of rather flimsy plastic. Also, we feel that two successful gizmo acquisitions in a single lifetime seems too high a proportion to believe."

"Well, you may scoff, but I am so impressed by the absence of wasps in our garden that I have saved up some more old plastic bags and stuffed the second one - yes, you get two Waspinators in a pack - and I propose to hang it in the front hedge as soon as Dod the Gardener has given it its annual short back and sides. I have no view on the long term effect on the local ecological systems, but in the short term it is looking good, so bring me another glass of the Australian Shiraz. Thank you."

Hooptedoodle #180 - Donkey Award - Performance Parenting

Yesterday I drove into the village, to visit the Post Office in order to mail a couple of parcels. Yesterday was Monday.

Monday morning is not recommended in our PO. Monday is Pension Day, and the place is filled with queuing seniors, complaining about how cold it is, or how hot it is, or how wet it is, or how expensive everything is now, or about the ridiculous time they have to spend queuing for their pension each week, listening to all this moaning.

Thus I did the smart thing, and went in the afternoon. The Post Office was pretty much deserted. I was vaguely aware that there was one person being served already, and I was next in the queue. As usual, I went into a sort of dream, half watching the TV screen in the corner, which shows ads for a local restaurant which closed last year, and promotes a foreign-currency exchange deal the Post Office was running a while ago – probably last year, in fact. You know the type of thing. I rely on public information services like this to keep me on the ball.

Then it was my turn, and the previous customer – a young woman with two very small children – came past me with a pushchair, conversing loudly with someone else whom I had obviously not seen, so I stood aside to allow her companion to pass. There was no companion. This lady was involved in a remarkably voluble conversation with her children, though she was not, in fact, looking at them. She had with her a little girl toddler – maybe 15 months (I’m not good at this stuff) – who clung to the handle of the pushchair, and an infant of just a few months in the chair itself. The little girl was muttering incoherent monosyllables, which had no apparent place in the conversation, and the younger child’s repertoire was probably limited to vomiting and crying, not much else.

One doesn’t like to gawp at the afflicted, so I got about my business, while the mother was engaging the kids with an explanation of how Mummy would have to go to the organic delicatessen, since their vegetables were so much nicer than Tesco’s, and they had soya milk. I could still hear her after the door closed behind her. I exchanged a quick glance with Amir, the postmaster, but Amir is a gentleman, and he merely rolled his eyes upwards very slightly. You would have to know Amir to detect it.

My business was simple and quick, and I left the Post Office to find that I was directly behind the mother and kids in the street. She had a triangular rucksack on her back – as many organic vegetable eaters seem to carry, I find – it may be an item of official issue, though it might also have to do with the need to cart around everything required to ensure their kids are protected from the toxic world of fluoridated water and environmentally-hostile detergents in which the rest of us have to struggle.

Since we are now into the holiday period, and our village is a seaside resort, I had parked my car about half a mile up the High Street, and I now found myself heading in the same direction as Mummy and the kiddies. She was deafening, and still she went on – and still her monologue seemed somehow to be directed at everyone around. I crossed the street to get away, and strode past them, but I could hear every word. I don’t like to find that I am irritated by things like this – it provides more unwelcome evidence that I am an antisocial old hermit – but I was definitely nettled. Maybe it is my upbringing, maybe it’s the generation I come from, maybe it’s something more instinctive and older than that, but there is a certain hectoring tone of female voice which just oppresses men, I think. It is probably designed specially, through years of research, using audio spectrometers and electrodes on volunteers’ scalps. It is found among schoolteachers, librarians, council employees, committee chairpersons and, frequently, young mothers with more education than they require for the job. As an aside, I might mention that, in her day, Mrs Thatcher on the radio could trigger the same response. I must hold several world standing-jump records from my attempts to switch her off before the third word came out. That, of course, was when I was in my jumping prime.

Back to the High Street…

“Oh look,” roared Mummy, “we are going near Daddy’s office, aren’t we? Daddy’s got such a lovely new office, hasn’t he?”

“Bubbubawama,” said the daughter.

“Yes, of course he has,” thought every passer-by within 100 yards.

By the time she reached the Golfer’s Rest, an inn, I was well ahead, but she was still in full flow.

“Oh, look at all the men standing outside the pub with their filthy cigarettes – how horrible – they will all become sick, won’t they?” This easily loud enough to carry to the little group outside the pub.

I couldn’t hear what the daughter said this time, but I’m sure it was profound.

Yes, yes - quite so, but could you do it quietly, please, and give us all a break?

I was delighted to reach my car, and drove home with the music turned away up – yesterday it was Ray Charles.

All right then. What is wrong with this picture? This young lady obviously has the very best of intentions, and we know it is important to speak to little children, since that is how they learn about the world. We may debate this particular Mummy’s views, but why would little children need to be taught that it is acceptable to address one’s opinions and life-values in a pompous, self-important manner so that everyone within sight can hear them? Just whose benefit is this little show for? The kids? The passers-by? Mummy herself?

I really don’t like to be a grumpy old sod, and I’d prefer not to pass unqualified judgements on people I don’t even know, but what is all this about?

Opinions, please, on a used £10 note to the usual box number at Chateau Foy.

1809 Spaniards - A Run Out at Last - (2) Whitewash

Yesterday we went for a walk up in the Lammermuirs, taking advantage of a (mostly) dry afternoon, so the Battle of Not-Really-Espinosa took place in the evening.

I had done some reading on Really-Espinosa, and the first thing to note is that it was a much bigger battle than the CCN scenario, on terrain that wasn't quite the same either. The second thing is that the historical action lasted two days, the French spending one day struggling against determined resistance from the Spanish left wing, then rather quickly mopping up the rest of the army on day 2.

The miniature Battle-of-Somewhere-Else turned out to be a rather more one-sided affair. I used the scenario's initial deployment, as shown in the previous post, and I learned quite a bit more about the use of an unsupported Spanish army under these rules. I have to say that the French were a bit lucky with the cards, but the Spaniards had some fundamental problems which they were always going to struggle to work around:

(1) In this game, Spanish troops suffer double retreats (triple retreats for militia), and their lack of skill in manoeuvre is reflected in a combat penalty if they fire on the move or if they move into melee. They fight well enough if they stay put and defend.

(2) The double retreats are a killer - the units have to stand close together to provide support to reduce the number of individual retreats, but if anyone is forced to fall back, and if they do not have space to do so, then disorder and loss of morale cause a further loss of bases (runaways and troops losing motivation, rather than straight casualties).

(3) In this battle, General Blake had placed his right close-packed because of the restricted space, with an unfordable river behind them, and his left contained a large proportion of pretty shaky militia. Naturally, I will blame the scenario for this...

Straight away, the 1er Voluntarios de Cataluna (lights) demonstrate the Spanish problem;
a bit unlucky to get two retreat flags from artillery fire, they have enough friends
behind them to ignore one flag, but the other requires a retreat of two hexes, and those
same friends prevent their retiring, so they must lose two of their three bases. This is the
unit on the end of the right flank, alas.

The French had pretty good cards throughout. Ignoring history, Marshal Victor
gets his left wing moving up fast.

Due to a miscalculation, General Ruffin gets rather ahead of the advance
with the 2/69e, but they get bonus dice because of the Force March card, and
eliminate the unfortunate 1VdC.

Ruffin (Rod, is that you?) did very well - his boys took heavy casualties, and were
pushed back off the ridge, but the Spanish right had now called up its reserves to
repair the line.

Now, of course, the rest of Ruffin's men arrived, and the Spanish right flank
was looking very precarious indeed.

Quite quickly, the fresh French troops cleared the Vols de Guadalajara and the
Regto de Murcia off the high ground (and, presumably, into the river), and the
Spanish right suddenly consisted of the Walloon Guards and a couple of very nervous
batteries

Blake, the Spanish CinC, pulled back the remains of his flank, and created a
new defensive position outside the town of Not-Espinosa, while the
French caught their breath.

Here is Blake himself, reorganising things - very cool under fire...

...though his efforts were not helped when one battalion of the Regto de la
Reina panicked and retreated into a position which masked their own guns!

Blake planned to keep up as much fire as he could from this new position, and bring
some reinforcements, by pulling in his unengaged left wing 

So, over on the other flank, the Italians under Lapisse suddenly found their
enemy marching across their front, and thus advanced to attack, as it says
in the manual. This view is from behind the Italians, with the Spanish troops
moving right to left in the background.

One of the few minor Spanish successes of the day came when the 1er Voluntarios
de Aragon gave a battalion of Italian light infantry a good seeing to in a melee, and pushed
them back, thus securing the new Spanish left flank

So, seen from behind the French right, Blake had a new line established, comprising
the troops withdrawn from his left.

The bad news, of course, was that many of the troops in this new front were militia, and
they really couldn't stand a firefight. The white counters on the right edge of the photo reveal
that the French had won 8-0 on Victory Points, which is a bit of a hammering, really. I didn't work
out the actual casualty figures, but the French losses were relatively light and the  Spanish losses,
I would guess, would be mostly runaways and troops lost through the double retreat rule.
Mental note - never mind what the scenario says, give the boys room to fall back in
future. You can see that all the Spaniards have left at this point are the remains of the
artillery in front of the town and - in the distance - a crumbling line of militia on their left.