The Return of Dan O'Herlihy

There's a battle coming up next week, and I have a few bits and pieces to sort out for my contribution to the spectacle. I have to paint up a couple of staff chappies, for a start. This evening's deliverable is Marshal Ney, gentlemen. His varnish is still wet and shiny, but here he is.

I do have an official Ney figure in the spares box - in fact I have a couple. I had intended to paint up Art Miniaturen's Marschall Ney, complete with bare head, waving sword and rearing horse, but I changed my mind. I also have the metal Waterloo Staff set from Waterloo 1815, but they are wildly dramatic - they are also, let it be said, some 25mm to the eyes [Massimo should drink less coffee]. The Perry Twins have now done the definitive charging Ney, albeit in a larger scale than I use, but Ney complete with bulging eyeballs, as seen in the rotunda painting, does not seem a very useful figure for me. So I've gone for a rather calmer Ney - it is an Art Miniaturen casting, right enough, but I think it's actually supposed to be Auguste Coulaincourt - I shall now forget all about that - this is Ney. I've given him a nice dashing white jabot, and he has the necessary red hair.

With a bit of luck he should have some staff by next week, and he should be a lot less shiny.

eBay - Definitely the End This Time

I recently posted a sad tale about an apparent hack of my PayPal account - I managed to take quick action on it, but it seems that not quite everything was sorted. I now find that I have been subjected to what is becoming a common scam - someone hacks into your PayPal account, inserts a fake address so that they can link to your eBay account, and then - as they have done in my case - sets up a fake listing for sale on your eBay account.

First I knew about it was when I started getting emails about an "unresolved issue" on eBay - someone wanted a refund because I had failed to deliver a set of security cameras which they had bought from me. Erm - security cameras? The listing was still active - it seems I had sold 1 out of 50 sets available. No money had reached me though PayPal. The purchase took place on 22nd May - the following day I got a request from eBay to change my password, and did so, though they sent me no details which might have put me on my guard. I changed my PayPal password as well (again), at the same time.

This morning I had a phone conversation with an eBay security man, based in the Philippines. He was very good and very reassuring - they were already aware of the problems with my account, and are in the process of cleaning everything up - the eBay listing has now been taken down, I have no need to worry about refunding anything - the purchaser (if there is one - that may be a scam too) will be reimbursed. The law enforcement authorities will be notified about the incident as appropriate. Was there anything else he could help me with?

Well, no - nothing else really. I will be closing my eBay account as soon as they let me back into it. That's enough - I've been muttering about this for ages - I think that God has now sent me a sign.

Watch your step. As it happens, I had kept a note of the full name and address which was hacked into my PayPal account, back in April. It is a guy named Nikolaj, who lives in London. Interestingly, the security cameras were supposedly for sale in London. OK - there's lots of people in London, but the man in the Philippines tells me the incidents are related. The security people were quite impressive, though I'd have been more impressed if they'd sorted the matter out before I reported it.

That's it for me - eBay now officially stinks - I have had good use out of it for 15 years, but for me its time is up. There are too many fifth-rate crooks hanging round the internet, trying to suck some blood out of the system.

Cheers, Nikolaj - I do have your full ID and address, and I do have friends in London. I shall fantasize about that for a bit. Incidents like this always (well, "always" is a bit strong - I'm very careful, and pretty savvy, and have had very few problems in the past) leave me feeling ashamed for being stupid. With hindsight, other than changing my passwords rather more frequently, I don't think I could have done much better.

Old Friends

I was dredging through my "Generals & Staff" spares box, looking for some suitable French ADC figures, and I found these fellows hiding in a corner.

They obviously came from eBay - Lord knows when - they look as though they were painted by the same collector and they have obviously seen some action. Minifigs S-Range figures - they do have a certain battered charm. I recalled that the Lone S-Ranger blog once tried to identify which of these chaps was which, according to the S-Range catalogue (which means VINTAGE20MIL these days, of course), so I checked that out and the results seemed inconclusive. I'm keen not just to go round the same loop again, so though I am casually interested to identify the figures, the main excuse for this post was to feature these three old friends, as a token of my respect. It looks as if they have been together for about 50 years - they are presently resting in my spares box, but no matter.

As far as I can make out, the candidate figures are:

NS 2s - French Marshal
NS 9s - Ney
NS 10s - Murat

though it does seem surprising that Minifigs didn't attempt a more spectacular uniform for Murat. I confess I have no idea; whatever, here they are.

I'll maybe get them a gig in the Guard Division, now that I have one.

***** Late Edit *****

With thanks to Goya, here's an example of post-S-Range "Intermediate" Minifigs celebrity figure - this is Nansouty, who was FNCX5, apparently (and probably still is in the current range, but without a saddle).

And here is a uniform for Murat which appears consistent with the right hand fellow in my original photos...

My thanks to Goya and Alan and everyone who contributed!

*********************

A Tale of Two Flags

Yesterday was a flagging day, which means I was involved in attaching a flag to a new unit. I keep stocks of my home-printed flags, and fitting them is not complicated, but it does require some care, because it is very easy to mess it up. And I do mean a mess. Water-based glues and ink-jet printed flags are a potent mixture, especially if you have fingers like elephants' feet.

Thus my stock of flags includes enough extra copies to allow for the odd failure.

Since I had the flagging kit out anyway, and since I have now (at long last) produced a correct flag for the Régiment de Prusse (4eme Étranger), I thought I might as well invest in a little drop of creeping elegance, and replace the flag for that unit. A tale of yesteryear beckons...

The fact that I have a Napoleonic army at all has a lot to do with the OOB for the Battle of Salamanca, which has always been a central inspiration. I'm not sure exactly when, but maybe 10 years ago I was tempted by mention of the Regt de Prusse in that OOB - admittedly only a residue of 80-odd men by 1812 (in Brennier's [Taupin's] 6th Divn), but that was enough of an excuse to encourage me to paint up a battalion of something (anything?) to provide a little variety among the otherwise relentless blue and white of the Armée de Portugal.

At this time NapoleoN Miniaturas had released their pack of "Allied Infantry", which basically represented Confederation troops in Spain during the 1808 period. These chaps are in moderately scruffy campaign dress, with covered shakos and rolled overalls. I painted them in the dark green of the Foreign regiments - the Prussians had red facings, silver lace and rank insignia. They also had, I had read, a non-standard flag - it was 162cm square instead of the normal 80cm for a French 1804 flag - and it had a spearpoint finial instead of an eagle. This was all faithfully reproduced in my little battalion.

A couple of asides here.

NapoleoN Miniaturas are sadly missed nowadays, but their figures are an odd mixture, ranging in quality from the exquisite to the downright agricultural. This is probably not unconnected with the fact that they had two master-makers, one of whom was a very talented sculptor and one of whom was the owner. Interestingly, a close parallel might be argued to have existed at Falcata, around the same time, and maybe even Les Higgins (much earlier). Whatever, the Allied Infantry set was not one of NapoleoN's best. In particular, there was an officer on foot, marching, wearing a bicorn with an oilskin cover - I've seen the same JM Bueno plate as the sculptor obviously had, but the hat is so blatantly made of a folded newspaper that I omitted this particular officer from the unit.

As originally recruited, with big flag. Both the photos in this post look a bit washed-out - the reds are proper reds in real life. The figures are from the NapoleoN "Allied Infantry" set, with the mounted and foot officers from Kennington - the foot officer at the end of the 2nd rank was drafted in to replace the man with the newspaper hat.

The authentically oversized flag I produced looked - well, daft. I've always been a bit touchy about it. If anyone were ever to comment on it, I had even memorised the references in Dempsey's Napoleon's Mercenaries so I could justify it! This is an area where I am a tad fussy. Stupid really, since my French army includes Les Higgins figures sporting 1806-style queues but wearing square-lapelled Bardin-type habits, not to mention Garrisons with high gaiters and the same late-model coat. Many of my British infantry strut happily around the Peninsula, wearing their Waterloo shakos. My armies are full of howlers, inconsistencies and known inaccuracies. I gloss over them all, but I do like the flags to be reasonable.

The infamous Bueno drawing of Confederation troops in Spain, featuring the officer in the newspaper hat

One trend in wargame armies which I have not approved of over the last couple of decades has been caricaturisation (if there is such a word). Beautifully- painted 28mm figures with grotesque faces, huge hands, outsize heads, giant muskets - OK - that's all down to the sculptors; there has also been a move to crazily-oversized flags. The French flag of 1804, let us remember, was 80cm square. If your French army has lovely flags which are 6 feet square in scale then that is your taste and your choice - no problem - but to me that looks daft. Thus my big Regt de Prusse flag, authentic or not, has troubled me.

With replacement (regulation) flag. Of course, it may be incorrect now. Hmmm. Must give the flag a little curl. Flags which look like hatchets are not cool.

Yesterday I replaced it. It no longer looks daft, I think - of course, it may be incorrect. I'll have to worry about that for a while now...

If I change it back then I promise I won't mention the fact.

***** Late Edit *****

By special request, for Liverpool Dave, here's another dodgy photo of one of my Confederation battalions. This time these are Badeners (alas the Baden infantry in Spain did not wear the fabby helmet) - the newspaper hat is in evidence on the left end of the second row. 

*******************

French Refurb - 1/47e arrives

Another finished battalion for the French Refurb project - this time very kindly painted by Lee, for which my sincere thanks and appreciation.

Castings are appropriate Old School Les Higgins, for the most part, with some more modern support. I was more than a little disappointed to find, when they emerged from the stripper, that some of the fusiliers were in fact re-cast copies, but Lee coped with all that. The grenadiers and the drummer are Schilling miniatures, and the colonel, predictably, is by Art Miniaturen. The eagle bearer is an old NapoleoN casting. All a bit of a mish-mash, really, but very welcome. The first battalion of the 47eme Ligne, these chaps will form part of Ferey's Division of the Armee de Portugal, early 1812.

Thanks, Lee.

Second Topic

This morning I re-acquainted myself with a very nostalgic aroma. I sharpened half a dozen old "Beryl" pencils. Wow - the smell of freshly sharpened pencils - instantly transported back to ancient classrooms, old workplace scenarios, even my old sketchbook when I was a kid. Reminds me - do they still have the Cumberland Pencil Museum in Keswick? Haven't been there in years, but it used to be a fun place to visit.

Third Topic

Purely my worthless opinion, of course, but since Mr Trump's forthcoming visit to the UK is in any case not a widely popular event, why does he feel it is appropriate to express his views on our current political situation? Notwithstanding the compulsion to put in a plug for a couple of his pals, would it not be classier and more polite if he just kept his fat lip buttoned?

Hooptedoodle #335 - Me and the Bird Man...

Another Hooptedoodle - three on the bounce is normally a sign of something or other. On this occasion, it's because life is a little upside-down at the moment with my son's school exams - not a great deal of upheaval for me, since the Contesse is doing the organising and transport, but I have had a few days on my own at home. I've taken the opportunity to make decent progress with prepping more soldiers for the French Refurb, but I am reluctant to post yet more photos of bare-metal Les Higgins figures and the pervading mess. I could, of course, just keep quiet for a few days, but that could set a very dangerous precedent.

Yesterday I was reading about an incident I saw - or at which I was present, I suppose - when I was a small boy. On Whit Monday, May 21st 1956, I was taken by "Uncle" Duggie - a family friend - to the air show at Speke. Duggie was a Liverpool police officer, he was ex-RAF (he had been a middleweight boxing champion in the RAF) and he had more brass neck than you would believe, so he was an ideal man for taking you around - he seemed to know just about everybody, and he was quite happy to walk into areas which were supposed to be off-limits to the public.

Valentin demonstrating some of his later wings, suspended from a scaffold. If anyone thinks this looks like a bad idea, please put up your hand. [This set-up was a pose for photos, one of which subsequently appeared on the cover of his book]

It was a lovely, hot day. The place was packed. One big attraction was the scheduled appearance of the French Bird Man, Leo Valentin, who was to fly with strapped-on wings for our entertainment. Not much happened in those days - not like this. The events of that day, I learn, were also remembered by other, eventually more famous Liverpool kids than me - George Harrison and Paul McCartney were there (at that time they both lived in the new council housing estate at Speke, close to the airport), as was Clive Barker, the sci-fi writer and film-maker. Of course they were. There were 100,000 people there - anyone who could get there was bound to have been there - a big family holiday-out for the whole city. I was a very timid child, and was very worried about the Bird Man, and some of the planes were a tad noisy, and I didn't care for big crowds - so it wasn't such a perfect day for me, maybe!

Liverpool airport is at Speke, which then was outside the south end of the city. I remember being parched with thirst - no-one carried water in those days, for some reason, and queuing for a cup of industrial tea didn't seem such a great idea. I also remember that it was very hard to see much. If you were a small person, it wasn't a straightforward matter to see the sky between the adults. Valentin's flight was delayed - when he eventually made an attempt it was in a period when the crowd had started to wander around the airfield, and the events, which certainly did not last long, almost appeared incidental - many of those present must actually have been unaware of it. Valentin's approach run (with a new, larger style of wing, ferried up in a DC3) was pretty much unnoticeable (we couldn't hear the commentator anyway), his exit from the plane went wrong, he damaged one of his wings in the doorway, and I got a very brief glimpse (between adults) of Valentin, wrapped in his parachute, falling to the ground, maybe a mile away. There was a bit of a collective gasp, but a great many people around me never noticed.

A strange atmosphere fell over the place. It was one of those "nothing to see here, move along please" moments - the organisers obviously had to allow a slight gap for emergency reaction, but the show must go on. It was only when I got home (via the 82 bus) that I realised what had happened. I had simply assumed that Valentin wasn't flying today. In fact his emergency chute had failed, and he'd fallen 9000 feet into a cornfield, at Halewood. He was, of course, as dead as a door-nail. For some reason the local paper made a big fuss about the fact that his watch was still working. Someone missed an advertising opportunity there. Here's a nice little, rather homespun, video clip, to which I link with humble thanks and no permission.

Valentin had been a war hero, and was given a fancy military funeral in France - none of this reached the UK press. As far as I was concerned, he was really just another example of a common phenomenon of the times - you queued for hours to see something, and then nothing happened. Well, not for me - obviously things must have been a bit intense for him.

I believe this is the actual Beverley, at actual Speke, on the actual day [actually]. I am not on board - not bloody likely.

At some point in the afternoon Uncle Duggie got us past a rope barrier to look at a Blackburn Beverley and chat with its pilot - a friend of his from the RAF. Although the official record of the show says that the Beverley was a "no-show", I can confirm that it was very much there, and it did perform a fly-past later, with Duggie's pal at the controls. Duggie had managed to negotiate a look inside the thing, and asked me did I want to have a look around it - not flying in it, you understand, just having a peek, which wasn't allowed either. Since my timidity would not allow me to do anything which was not permitted, and since claustrophobia was another problem to add to my aforementioned list, I declined. I am ashamed to say that I turned down the opportunity to look around a newly-commissioned RAF Beverley, in 1956. Sorry, gentlemen. Sometimes I wonder how I ever survived this big, tough world. Sometimes I think that if I had a time machine I would go back and give myself a kick up the backside.

When there was no airshow, the spectator gallery on the roof at Speke was quite a popular attraction. I went a couple of times - it was very windy up there, and there weren't many planes to look at, I can tell you. What a miserable beggar I was!

Speke airport is now known as Liverpool John Lennon Airport. It always strikes me as ironic that Lennon himself only had a very brief involvement with the airport as a youth, when he was (I think) fired from temporary employment as a gopher in the cafe, for having a generally unhelpful attitude and making a deliberately unsavoury job of the sandwiches. That's how you go about getting an airport named after you. Charles de Gaulle had to work a bit harder for his airport, maybe.   

Hooptedoodle #334 - Local Research to Get One's Teeth Into

High-profile local advertising - Barker & Dobson advert on the Liverpool Overhead Railway, mid 1950s. B&D's factory was just a few miles up the hill, in Everton

I was born in Liverpool, as I keep mentioning here (possibly as some form of excuse?), and grew up supporting Liverpool Football Club. The other big club in the city, Everton, also has a long and proud tradition. Since as a kid I spent some years forbidden to travel to away matches, I often used to go with similarly paroled friends to Goodison Park, to watch Everton when Liverpool were playing in far off places.

Nowadays, in the age of hate and trolling, the Liverpool vs Everton thing can be as unpleasant as you might expect - families banned from intermarrying etc - but in my youth things were a bit less frenzied, and I grew up with a soft spot for Everton which I might be well advised to keep quiet about now.

Everton FC - 1909

Everton, as you may or may not know, have been known as "The Toffees" since what my dad's cousin Harold Shaw used to refer to as "time immoral". Like all such traditions that we absorb in early childhood, I never questioned it or wondered about its background.

A bit of cod [personal] history. There were an astonishing number of sweet factories in Liverpool. Now I think about it, this is obviously because, as the headquarters of Tate & Lyle, Liverpool was the place through which most of the cane sugar from the Caribbean arrived in Britain. If it hadn't been for post-war rationing, we'd all have had no teeth.

Another fact which has only dawned on me gradually is that many of the makers of sweets I was familiar with as a kid were Liverpool-based. This is not just because they were local firms who had a grip on the market - a number of them were nationally famous, and they just happened to have their factories in the city.

I got involved over the last couple of weeks in a pleasant exchange of email reminiscences about vintage sweets. I did a bit of gentle research to find out what happened to such-and-such a maker, and mostly I learned that the history of  the UK sweet industry is pretty alarming - a lot of hostile takeovers - and very complicated. I also learned something, at long last, about why Everton FC are the Toffees.

I've always been familiar with Everton Mints, which were a hard, black-and-white, humbug-like boiled sweet with a toffee centre, manufactured by Barker & Dobson, whose factory was in Everton. B&D, founded in 1834, were big and successful - they made chocolates and posh biscuits and all sorts - in fact their gift tins still change hands for decent prices in eBay. It's possible I always assumed that the football club's nickname had something to do with B&D.

B&D factory - Everton, 1960s

The height of sophistication - B&D ad from the 1920s - apparently the lovely lady has a weakness for "Viking" chocolates [made with raw fish?]. As the copy line states, "Nowadays it's Barker & Dobson's chocolate". Don't laugh, somebody probably got a bonus for that one.

...and, of course, since toffee was trendy, they would work to cater for the latest advances in home entertainment. Here we see a tin commemorating how Mr & Mrs Cavity and their children would sit around the steam radio, enjoying light entertainment and chewing ferociously. [A sub-plot of selection boxes of toffee was that I always finished up with the walnut toffee, or the mint one, both of which were grim.]

...and, as time passed, B&D were always there, at the cutting edge. Now we have the Gummy family enjoying TV, slurping away on toffees "and other specialities". Mr Gummy, as you see, smokes his pipe while eating toffee, which is pretty disgusting really.

Anyway, it didn't. A lady named Molly Bushell (1748-1818) started making toffee containing ginger on an open-air stove behind her cottage in Everton, sometime around 1770, and she became quite successful. At this time, Everton village was something of a tourist attraction, with splendid views of the river from the slopes of Everton Hill. As the business grew, Molly was helped by her daughter, and also by a cousin, Sarah Cooper. In later life, she appears to have fallen out with Mrs Cooper, who opened a rival shop in Browside (also Everton). Much later, the remaining interests of these cottage businesses were taken over by the firm of Noblett's, who from 1876 or so took over the manufacture and marketing of Everton Toffee. Everton FC came into being in 1878, and the sale of toffees at the games quickly became a tradition, vendors offering "Mother Noblett's Toffee" inside the ground.

Sarah Cooper's toffee shop in Browside - note Everton reserves training in the sloping field opposite

Mother Noblett's Toffee advert - Liverpool Echo

Noblett's Toffee Shop - they had a shop in London Rd, and this one at 30 Old Haymarket. According to my Gore's Directory for 1900, the shop to the left of "Leonard Noblett, confectioner" is (or had been) John & T Edwards, wholesale grocers; on the other corner of Albion Place is Lipton's, the famous tea importers and blenders. I would guess this photo must be approximately contemporary with the 1909 football team picture. Old Haymarket was pretty much laid waste to make room for the entrance to the new Mersey Road Tunnel, which was started in 1925.

Tavener-Routledge were another famous Liverpool sweet maker - their fruit drops were much loved. They too have disappeared. So - where did they go?

The other lot - Liverpool players Ian Callaghan, Phil Thompson, Terry McDermott and John Toshack check out the lollipops during a state visit to Taverner's factory in Edge Lane - 1970s

Very complicated - a succession of local dinosaurs ate each other until big national dinosaurs came on the scene and ate everybody in sight. Barker & Dobson at various times owned the rights to Vicks (cough sweets?) and Victory V lozenges (which were addictive, since the recipe contained chloroform - no, really - which had to be changed, of course). B&D were subsequently bought by a Blackpool firm named Tangerine (not another football reference?), and later the whole lot was bought out by Bassett's.

When I was at university, I shared digs for a while with a guy who was addicted to these things. He used to get through a pack in an evening, which made him a dangerous man to be near. He lived to become a chemistry professor, but frankly it's a wonder he never exploded.

You can still buy Everton Mints - these days they are branded as Bassett's, but I don't think this is quite the same Bassett's who used to make Liquorice Allsorts and jelly babies in my youth. Bassett's now is just one of a series of long-established brands acquired by the Cadbury group. They are most certainly not in Everton!

Only thing I don't understand now is that there seems to have been a brand of toffee called "Molly Bushell's" marketed in Australia in fairly recent times. If this is nonsense, and something I misunderstood, then apologies - it won't be the first time. 

Just a coincidence? Was Molly transported to Oz for damaging people's teeth? Any ideas?