Hooptedoodle #203 - Forth Road Bridge - Update

There is much traffic disruption in these parts, caused by the current closure of the Forth Road Bridge for repairs. Until sometime in January (estimated), the only way to drive between Edinburgh and Fife is:

(1) do a 50 mile detour via Kincardine, or

(2) be an emergency vehicle, or

(3) be a train

(4) .....and perhaps there is another way...?

[or if, like me, you can't get the YouTube clip to run, you should find it here]

Hooptedoodle #202 - When Technology Goes Bad

Hmmm - one for the laboratory

As a household, we at Chateau Foy seem to have a tendency to collect gizmos - I believe I have referred to this before. Visitors are sometimes surprised to find that, in common with hospitals and the lavatories in motorway service stations, we have hands-free soap dispensers. In two bathrooms and the kitchen there are battery-powered hand-soap machines. I admit that I greeted the arrival of these things with a weary snort, since I was not certain exactly which problem they were intended to solve, but some years later they are still going strong and I have grown to like them. Well, let's say I have found that the positive hygienic aspects of not having to handle a grubby old bar of soap outweigh the occasional hassle of having to address the problem of a flat battery or an empty refill bottle with wet hands. Most surprising of all, Dettol (the purveyors of these devices) have stuck with the original design, and have not taken the obvious step of changing the shape of the refill bottles every few months, which would require replacement of the whole thing - you may know of many other manufacturers of similar gizmology who have failed to rise above commercial temptation in this way - makers of plug-in air fragrancers have famously perfected the art of planned obsolescence, for example.

I almost digressed there - anyway, well and good: the electronic handwashers are OK - chalk another one up for the gizmos, and be grateful - remember that there are people in the Third World who are so poor that they have to wash their hands without the help of such leading-edge technology. No wonder there is so much disease around.

Alas, one of our machines has developed some kind of headache. I have never really thought about how these things work, but a simple experiment has revealed in the past that, while placing a hand under the spout will produce a measured splot of liquid soap, it does not work with, say, a wooden spoon, so anyone with wooden hands is going to be at an unfair disadvantage in our house. Thus I deduce that the device uses some kind of infra-red detecting diode as a switch - as I say, I have not really thought about it, though you may be impressed that I got as far as trying the wooden spoon.

The kitchen machine is misbehaving - there have been embarrassing puddles. At first we wiped them up and did not discuss the matter. However, I have now discovered that switching off the room light activates the soap dispenser - I realised this when I turned off the lights to leave the kitchen and I could hear the idiot soap pump working. So that explains the puddles, but it is an intriguing malfunction. I have been reading about the various adventures of quantum particles of late, so I must be careful not to read too much into this - maybe I should offer a prize for the most unlikely explanation? On the face of it, the dispenser appears to be confused - not only is it activated by detecting infra-red, it has also shifted its attention to the visible spectrum, though it is the removal of the supply of photons which fires it up. It will happily sit quietly in the dark or the light, and switching the light on is met by total indifference.

I am proud to report that I have resisted the temptation to test to see if it is affected by flashlights, or by placing a bucket over the device - though if I had more time I might have, of course.

I have a faintly disappointing suspicion that a fresh battery might cure the headache - I haven't tried it - where would be the fun in fixing it? No doubt we'll fix or replace the soap machine quite soon, because (interesting or not) in its present state it is not much help.

A picture of a defective security light

Infra-red detectors seem to be temperamental - our outside security light has worked pretty well for many years, I am pleased to say - its primary purpose is to switch on a friendly light at the end of the driveway when you step out of your car - our garden is a notably dark place at night, and it would be possible to fall over all sorts of things, or even to disappear forever, without this light. The fault with the security light is that it constantly errs on the side of over-enthusiasm - in addition to welcoming human motorists, it also welcomes small animals (of which there are many), flashes of lightning, bushes waving in the wind and any vague surge in the electricity supply anywhere in the house. That's all OK - we forgive it, because it does its main job reliably and usefully.

I am still in the middle of an open-ended campaign of hospital visiting (my mum appears a lot better in the last few days, I am delighted to note - thanks to all who got in touch - though I don't think she'll be home before Christmas), so don't really have the time to fiddle around with soap dispensers, and especially not with Blogger, but I'd be interested in any proper Professor Stink theories about the deranged soap machine, and would be thrilled to hear of your own favourite gizmo failure - the greater the resultant domestic catastrophe the better.

1809 Spaniards - A Quick Look in the Boxes

These boxes contain the 1809 section and the versatile "new" and irregular 
units which will fit with either date

Not much time for hobbies at present, but I took the opportunity to sort out my boxes of Spaniards a bit. The [Nationalist] Spanish army comes into 3 sections - (1) a specifically 1809 army, (2) an 1812 army (which includes a lot of infantry in British-style shakos, artillery in French-style uniforms and the Coraceros Españoles, none of which are suitable for the earlier OOB) and (3) a grouping of round-hatted "new" post-1808 regiments and irregulars who will fit in either line-up.

I've rearranged the figures in their boxes to try to make some sense of this - here's some pictures of the troops available for 1809 thus far (not very easy to make out the details, but they prove something exists).

Some of the 1809 infantry

I realise now that the irregular cavalry and the staff figures are still in the other
boxes - not to worry, they'll appear on a more formal occasion in the future. It
is unknown for staff figures to miss an official group photo...

The 1809-period light cavalry

More infantry - the unpainted MDF bases await the La Coroña boys, who are
on the painting bottletops (and likely to stay there until Real Life quietens down)
- quite a few flags missing thus far

This is most of the guerrilla infantry

The "new" units who can also take the field in 1809

The provisional 1809 Order of Battle (loosely based on the Battle of Ucles) is:

Vanguard Division

IR La Corona [2 Bns]*
IR Murcia [1]
IR Cantabria [1]
Converged Grenadier Bn**
1. Vols de Cataluña (light)
Bn de Campo Mayor (light)**
Provinciales de Jaen

1st Divn

IR La Reina [2 Bns]
IR Africa [2]
IR Burgos [2]
Converged Grenadier Bn
Vols de Valencia (light)**
Prov de Ciudad Real

2nd Divn

IR Ordenes Militares [2 Bns]
+3 "new" Light Bns
+5 "new" Line Bns

Reserve Divn

Guardias Reales [2 Bns]***
Guardias Walones [1]
Prov Granaderos de Andalucia**
IR Irlanda [1]
Granaderos del General**
Vols de Gerona (light)**
Prov de Cordoba

Cavalry 1

Line Regts of Principe**, España** & Montesa**
Dragones de Pavia**

Cavalry 2

Husares de Maria Luisa
Husares Españoles
Cazadores de Olivencia
Caz "Vols de España"
Gran a Cab de Fernando VII

4 Batteries of Foot Artillery (2 ready)

Pioneers & Engineers**

where * means "being painted at present"
** means "have the figures, awaiting painting"
*** means "waiting for figures"

There is also an irregular force available, of 10 small units of guerrilla infantry plus one of irregular cavalry.

There is also discussion of my purchasing a unit of lancers in round hats - may not happen.

Hooptedoodle #201 - Mrs Moore's Rice Pudding

Thirty-something years ago, in a small room off the cancer ward in a big Liverpool hospital, my grandmother – who had been unconscious for some days – was breathing her last, surrounded by her grieving family. There was a knock at the door, and a large Irish auxiliary nurse stuck her head in, wondering if Mrs Moore would care for some rice pudding.

My family has treasured this story for years, and somehow it captures something of my feelings about hospitals – they are filled with caring, earnest people – lovely, vocationally motivated people who strive to help the sick and the infirm – but somehow the sum of their efforts is hamstrung by lack of cohesion – they are defeated by the holes in the system.

This week my mother has been admitted to hospital in Edinburgh. I share this story not because I seek sympathy, nor to lay before you a personal tragedy; I have a sense of inevitable disaster – like a canoe at the top of a waterfall – however much frantic paddling we do, I fear we are going over. Mostly I am bewildered, rather than angry.

A little background – just sufficient for the journey. My mum is 90. When she was a small child she had polio. She recovered well, and she has enjoyed very robust health ever since. However, there can be a long-term issue with polio – the repairs which the body makes to the nervous system are astonishing, but they do not have the same warranty length as the original kit. Eight years ago she started to suffer progressive paralysis of her left leg and her hands. She lives on her own, and she now moves about her home with a Zimmer walker and she has a stair lift. She manages well – she enjoys her books and her memories and her Mozart CDs and (especially) her independence, and she has a daily 2-hour visit from a carer, plus whatever support the family can provide. It works, but it only just works – it would require only a small further deterioration in her mobility to render her situation untenable – a fact which is always at the front of my mind.

Last Sunday she had the second of two minor falls within a space of 10 days, but this time she hurt her knee – some kind of muscle sprain – and could not get up. She phoned me, and I went round there to find her sitting on the floor, in some pain but completely sensible and rational. I could not lift her without causing more pain and possibly further damage, so we rang the NHS 24 service. After an hour on the phone, explaining the situation to a series of listeners – starting from the beginning each time – we were sent an ambulance. The ambulance crew were wonderful – I can’t praise them highly enough.

The next step was a no-brainer – they could attempt to sit my mum back in her armchair, where she would be trapped and helpless until further notice, or they could take her to a hospital in Edinburgh, where her injuries could be checked out.

Some times on this: she fell at 11:30am, the ambulance showed up at about 15:30, she arrived in the Accident & Emergency department at around 16:30; she was examined and sent for an X-Ray, and was eventually admitted to an Orthopaedic Trauma ward at around 23:00. That’s a long day when you’re 90. This is not a complicated case – in emergency terms, she was not a high priority, but it is very obvious that the process consists mostly of hand-offs – by the end of the day I had described the incident and her medical situation to about 7 sets of people – each of whom appeared to be starting again from the beginning. Everyone is waiting – waiting for a porter, waiting for an X-Ray to come back, waiting for a doctor to be available.

The A&E doctor explained that the intention would be to check the extent of my mum’s injuries, get her leg rested and better, and set about fitting her with some kind of leg brace, which would be a big help in avoiding further falls at home.

All good. By the next morning, upstairs in Orthopaedics, her temperature was up a bit, and she appeared to be confused. The charge nurse spoke of a suspected urinary infection, which they would treat with antibiotics, and she checked with me for any known allergies.

On each of the next two days (which brings us to yesterday) Mum was even more confused and more agitated – yesterday she was having actual hallucinations. I have yet to see the same member of staff twice – each day I was told that a urine test had been sent away, and it would take two days for the results to come back. Apparently this is another urine test each day – so we are in full Groundhog Day mode. No antibiotics have been prescribed – the latest suggestion was that they might start them last night, but they’ve been saying that for a couple of days.

We are back to Mrs Moore’s rice pudding. The ward is full of friendly nurses who are kind and enthusiastic, who look after the physical needs of the patients and offer them cups of tea (even the unconscious ones), and measure vitals signs and scribble things on charts. Nobody knows anything.

More worryingly, the very junior doctors I have been able to speak to don’t know anything either. They cannot answer any question which is not covered by the particular page of notes they have open in front of them, they are evasive and – in one instance – incorrectly informed. They are waiting for some other department or some remote authority to do something, to make a decision. They don’t make decisions themselves – decisions might involve blame.

So my mother, who hurt herself, painfully but not too seriously, 4 days ago, is now becoming very ill with something which was not a problem when she was admitted. She will certainly not be getting home any time soon, and I have a very bad feeling that she has just become another faceless dementia victim, who will be expected to die and free up a hospital bed. That, I believe, is the correct procedure. It will be nobody’s fault, and no-one will know how it could have happened, and the latest urine test results will arrive back on the charge nurse’s desk two days later.

If no antibiotics have started by this evening I am seriously going to rattle someone’s teeth. Who is in charge of killing off the elderly patients in these places? – that might be the person to speak to.

1809 Spaniards - Regimiento de Ordenes Militares

Regto de Ordenes Militares - the flags are in the pipeline (or maybe the pipes are
in the flagline - I forget)

More painting - a further two battalions are ready, apart from the flags, which will be following along shortly in a catch-up session. Ordenes Militares in 1809 were the 31st Line regt of the Spanish army - they were quite a recent addition - the regiment was raised as late as 1793 in the Madrid area.

The command figures have been waiting for a couple of weeks for the rest of the boys to arrive, so here they are together at last - the colonel with the huge nose is in evidence in the back row. There is another two-battalion regiment nearing completion - in the next week or so, I hope.

Things are really shaping up nicely now - to meet my original planned OOB (based upon a subset of the forces at Ucles in 1809), I am now just short of another 3 battalions of light infantry, 3 of grenadiers, 2 of foot guards, 4 regiments of medium cavalry (dragoons and line cavalry), 1 (possibly 2) more foot battery(ies) and a small force of sappers and workmen. I have all the figures I need. I also need maybe another 4 or 5 brigade commanders and odd personalities, and I am discussing the possible purchase of a converted unit of lancers in top hats.

When added to the section of the "1812" army which is suitable for both periods (basically the volunteer and other "new" regiments raised after 1808 - mostly in round hats - and the irregulars), the 1809 army is going to be very hefty indeed. Maybe even big enough to outnumber the French by a sufficient margin to stand a chance of beating them.

I'll post a proper set of OOBs for the 2 armies, once I've worked it out more completely, and once I think of a good way to present them.

Other topics...

(1) Following on from my previous post, I regret to report that there was a big shooting party on the farm here yesterday morning - the timing possibly influenced by the dodgy weather outlook for the coming weeks. Algernon the pheasant has not been seen since, and yesterday afternoon there was a new cock pheasant in our garden, so I fear the worst.

Late edit ---- Algernon has been seen today, hiding from the gales in our front garden, so rumours of his demise were incorrect. There is a dead hen pheasant outside our French window, though - the Forensic Dept have been called - a spokesman [me] said that fowl play is suspected [see what I did there?].

(2) You may have seen in the UK news that the Forth Road Bridge, which connects Edinburgh with Fife (and therefore with the major cities of Perth, Dundee, Aberdeen, Inverness etc) is closed for emergency structural repairs until after the New Year. Since the bridge carries some 70,000 vehicles a day, this is a major disruption; it carries a great deal of commuter traffic, so at the moment I'm not sure how things are going to work out. The first stage of the disaster involved closing one carriageway, which resulted in 2 to 3 hour delays in traffic queues. Now the bridge is completely closed, which means the Fife/Edinburgh traffic will have to detour via Kincardine Bridge (20 miles upstream) or people will have to get the train. [From a completely selfish point of view, I was also struck yesterday by the thought that Amazon's main Scottish depot and warehouse is at Glenrothes, which is on the north side of the Forth, which could be a major problem for my Christmas shopping...].

If you were unaware of this local problem with our bridge, I am confident you would have read of little else if the bloody thing had collapsed during the rush hour.

The good news is that the bridge boys are on the way with the gaffer tape supplies...

Hooptedoodle #200 - Algernon the Kingpin

This last week has mostly been a thing of threads and patches, dominated by a few moments of panic involving my aged mother (which turned out to be less serious than they might, but which consumed a lot of time, nervous energy and diesel oil). One relative bright spot has been the spectacle provided by our local wildlife, greatly excited by the Contesse's decision to keep the bird feeders stocked.

We have a long-standing tradition that our garden really belongs to the cock pheasant of the moment. Around this time of year there is a lot of fighting, though I'm not sure why. These standing champions are great characters - many of them have had names - the earliest I knew was Percy (circa 2000), then there were The Curate, a fine lunatic named Reg (short for Road Reg, because of his habit of attacking passing vehicles), Daft Baldy and many others. The current incumbent is Algernon - pictured at the top of this post.

One thing they all have in common is that they are very unlikely still to be around come the Spring, since there are numerous shooting parties here on the farm around Christmas (which, of course, lest we become too emotional, is the reason the pheasants are here in the first place). The brighter, the more splendid the specimen, the greater his chance of ending the day of the shoot slung over someone's shoulder, on a string.

In the meantime, there is much activity directed towards establishing seniority. The Contesse's pictures show moments from two simultaneous battles from last week. They look clumsy and ridiculous, but these boys mean business - great handfuls of feathers were blowing about after the fighting. The last of the pictures here has not exactly frozen the detail of the action, but you can make out one of the losers retreating in a vertical direction, to reconsider his tactics. They fly with no grace at all - lots of noise - like a demented bag of carrots.

We also had a further two incidents which were too quick to be photographed, alas. A roe deer came into the garden from the wood behind our house, decided our garden gate was too formidable an obstacle to jump and headed back the way he had come - leaving me floundering in his wake, trying to reach a camera. We also had a lightning visit from a sparrowhawk, which failed to catch a Blue Tit on the nut feeder, and which also failed to notice that a male Greater Spotted Woodpecker was sharing the feeder with the tit. One peck from the GSW and the sparrowhawk thought better of the whole idea - these guys are unbelievably fast, but I wouldn't back one against Old Woodie. The hawks seem to regard our feeders as a sort of buffet for their benefit, but they lack the finesse, not to mention intelligence, to take full advantage.

On a more peaceful note, here is a pleasing picture of a plump Song Thrush, with his beak all muddy from rooting around under the bark chips, looking for biddies. Not for him the peanut feeder - Thrushie likes his grub when it's still moving.

1809 Spaniards - Regimiento de Cantabria

Flag still be be provided - otherwise complete

The dreaded Real Life has rather impacted this last week, but I did manage to finish off another battalion. Cantabria contributed just a single battalion to the Vanguard Division of the Spanish Army at the battle of Ucles (which army is the basis of my target OOB). The real unit was the 21st line regiment of the Spanish army - originally raised as the Tercio de Guipuzcoa (please don't ask me to pronounce that), they were renamed the Regimiento de Cantabria in 1715.

Since I had no idea where (or what) Cantabria is (or might have been) I did a little reading, and I learn that it is a province in the north of Spain, the chief city of which is Santander. Confusingly, I also learn that Guipuzcoa is the Spanish spelling of a Basque province, the capital of which seems to be, erm, Santander - is this just an older name for the same place?

The unit consists mostly of NapoleoN castings, but the drummer is
rather a pleasing little Falcata figure

Currently I have a further 4 Spanish line battalions in various stages of completion - these should be finished in the next week or two - I'll have a proper flag printing session when they are all ready.

Quick question, while I think of it: I took delivery of some pots of Vallejo paint this week, and two of them are metallics, which I am surprised to see require alcohol for thinning and brush cleaning - yes, that's alcohol. I am not proposing to bring the Martell VSOP into service - what is the official brew for this? - meths? - isopropyl? I have both of these - anything else would require me to sign the poisons book at the pharmacist, I think. Is there an official artists' alcohol product?