A Gentleman's War

I've been very much enjoying Howard Whitehouse's new book for my bedtime reading. Entertainingly written, and the game looks like fun - and also looks like it's versatile enough to cover a few periods with minor tweaking.

One small concern - has anyone played the game? - does anyone understand the card play? - even a bit? There must be something obvious I'm missing; that section seems to provide a lot of detail, but I seem to have missed the overall system. Sat-nav approach to wargames rules. I'll read it again...

The Miracle of St George - contd.

Further to yesterday's post, I got an interesting suggestion from the Duc de Gobin, the noted historian, engineer, velocipedist, wing-walker and collector of small invertebrates. The Duc suggested that my "cross on the window" experience might be the work of the dreaded Slug of St George.

Naturally, one is obliged to approach such matters with a certain laddish sang froid, to avoid giving an impression of ridiculous intemperance, but this morning's new development is....

THE CROSS HAS REAPPEARED

Now then - it's not a new cross, it's exactly the same one - it's just come back after a day of not being there. Right.

What have we got here? - if it's a person that's done this, what are the implications?...

* Well, the roof out there is steep and slippy and quite high up. Quite apart from what they might mean by such a sign, I'm not sure I'd wish to meet someone who could do this.
* The Army have recently been conducting training exercises on the beach behind my house, which involved twin-engined helicopters and suchlike at 3am. I've not been marked as a target, surely?

Let's assume that it's just a minor freak of nature, then....

OK. First off, apologies for the duff photograph - it was more easily visible on Saturday night - snag with night photography of windows is that the reflections of what is inside the window would probably be more scary than what is outside. The photo should be judged in context - no-one complains that the imprint on the Turin Shroud, for example, is a little underexposed. For supernatural evidence, crap photography is essential.

It is very obvious that what we have here are two slug tracks across my window, and they only show up when there is condensation on the outside - viz Saturday night and this morning. So that's a bit of a relief, except that...

* just why did a slug choose to make a sign he doesn't understand on my window? Who told him to do it?
* since I've never knowingly had slug-tracks on my windows in the 19 years I've been living here, why did I get two in one night?
* how long do you reckon it would take to train a slug to do this?

All in all, I don't think I've heard the last of this. I shall take care to keep a 1st edition copy of A.B. Mayne's Essentials of School Algebra under my pillow for a while.

Fighting with Friends

Yesterday I attended a wargame in the company of Stryker and Goya, at Stryker's house. We played an excellent Napoleonic game based on the Battle of Ligny, using Stryker's Muskets & Marshals rules.

I'll attempt to put together a proper mini-report later in the week, once I've sorted out my photos. By that time, with luck, Stryker himself will have done a blog post, featuring his own (much better) pictures. For the moment, suffice to say that a very good time was had by all, history was not overturned, and Stryker's cleverly-crafted scenario worked really well. Once again, many thanks to our host for his kind hospitality and a sumptuous luncheon - a lot of work, and much appreciated.

Completely separate from the main story, a couple of odd things happened to me yesterday.

Stock photo

(1) On a bright, clear morning, at about 08:30 on my way north, I suddenly drove into a bank of dense fog in the middle of the Queensferry Crossing, the new road bridge over the Firth of Forth. Not a problem, but definitely a strange feeling to suddenly be driving along with nothing visible further away than about 15 feet - the barriers and the bridge superstructure just vanished. Only lasted about 30 seconds, but I'm very glad there was only light traffic. From then on my trip was, as before, clear and sunny.

(2) Rather more spooky. While I was getting ready to go to bed, around midnight, I raised the roller blind on the skylight in the attic bedroom, and was surprised to find that someone had scrawled a cross on the window. It was completely dark outside, but the room light showed up the marking very clearly. It was on the outside, and it looked as though someone had drawn a very rough St George's cross with their finger, right across the window - it seemed to be a light grey colour. At first I thought someone was playing a joke on me - it was a definite cross - but since it was on the outside that's not possible. There's only the roof out there.

The vertical stroke was pretty firm - quite straight, about 1cm wide and bang in the centre, top to bottom. The horizontal was more uneven and wiggled a bit, but it still went right across. I was going to check out what it was, but the weather wasn't great, so opening the skylight was not a good idea. I should have taken a photo, but my camera was still packed away from the Ligny trip, so I decided that I would open up the window in the morning and have a good look.

Came the morning, of course, and it had gone. Not a trace. I had a moment of doubt whether I'd seen it at all, but I am certain that it had been definite enough to give me something of a shock the previous night. I am half crazed, of course, but not normally given to imagining visitations.

So - no photo, no evidence, no clues really. I really wish I'd taken a picture. I can only guess that recent wet weather has resulted in a snail or a slug taking a couple of strolls across our roof window, and last night's rain subsequently washed it away. But it was very clear, and looked almost deliberate.

I'm not going to lose much sleep over this, but the nervously imaginative might react badly to a sign appearing on their window at night. If something grisly happens to me, I promise to let you know. If it's grisly enough, you might read about it elsewhere.

Hmmm....

On a visit to Edinburgh this week, I noticed this. On the 200th anniversary of the publication of Sir Walter Scott's novel Waverley (which was a couple of years ago, I think), the management of Edinburgh main railway station put up a selection of quotes from Scott around the station concourse - the station, you understand, was (and maybe still is) known as Edinburgh Waverley.

I know a number of Old Wally's quotations, but hadn't come upon this one before. It got me thinking - you don't think it's a message of some sort to self-indulgent bloggists, do you? Apparently it is from The Pirate, of which I have no knowledge.

I confess I am not a big fan - when my grandmother died, I was given a stack of her old books, which included a lot of Scott. I was very pleased to receive these, but was very disappointed with the stories. I guess they have not dated well, and I am also aware that many of them were published in serialised form in periodicals, which

(a) does something odd to the flow of the story (a cliff-edge every 30 pages), and

(b) encouraged Sir Walter to keep the story going forever, to maximise his income.

This is going to be a sacriligious thing to admit, but I gave up very quickly. If ever a man had the gift of taking an exciting story outline and turning it into a lengthy grind, it was Scott. If you are passionately fond of his stuff then you have my respect and admiration. You must drink a lot of whisky.

Hooptedoodle #345 - Nothing New on the Planet

Humbug!

Hooptedoodle #344a - That Russian Girl

I decided I would find out once and for all about the picture on the wall of my mother's room. I took a couple of photos of it, and spent a little while playing around with Google Images.

Found it. It is a portrait painted in St Petersburg by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun in about 1791, the subject being Elisaveta Alexandrovna, Baroness Stroganova, who was about 12 at the time.

When she was 16 Baroness Stroganova married Count Nikolai Demidov, who was appointed as a Russian diplomat in Paris, during the time of Napoleon I. They were big Napoleon fans, apparently, but the political situation meant that they had to return to Russia. The Demidovs had two children, but eventually separated because, it seems, he was too boring. Elisaveta moved back to Paris, where she died in 1818.

Here's another portrait of her, in about 1804, in Paris, by Robert Lefèvre, at a time when presumably she was still the wife of a Russian diplomat.

She is buried in the cemetery of Père Lachaise, in Paris - as am I, of course.

Sorry about this - I realise nobody could care less, though it is a nice little picture. This post is really a celebration only of Google and Wikipedia, so it is without any merit at all, other than commemoration of my finally finding out what that damned picture from Paris Match was, after only 40-something years. This is not any kind of relative of my mother's of course, though she has probably eaten Beef Stroganoff at some time in her life. That's as close as it gets. There is no point my telling my mum what I found out, because she will have no idea what I'm talking about, so it stops there.

I did get a bit distracted during my (brief) researches - Ancien Régime portraiture is not normally my thing, but Vigée Le Brun is definitely worth a read - she's certainly more interesting than Mme Demidova

Hooptedoodle #344 - Martin's Dad

My personal context for this post is just a regulation-issue, time-of-life thing. I visit my elderly mother in her nursing home each week - always at an odd time and on a random day, so that I can't be accused of being late, or of having missed a visit. No problems with this - obviously I am happy to visit my mum. She enjoys my visits, though she doesn't remember them, but it is taking me longer and longer to recover from them. She is increasingly confused, often distressed by her chaotic interpretation of the real world and her own memories, and has become (I regret to say) surprisingly vitriolic and actually quite racist in her views. She is regularly unpleasant to her carers, which of course they handle with cheerful, professional indifference, though it causes me much agony on their behalf.

Stock photo - the elderly resident is the one on the right

From my own point of view, each visit helps to convince me a little more that extreme old age has no upside - it seems like a very mean trick indeed. In my heart I know this cannot be true, but the evidence is overwhelming. I make these regular visits to an old lady who is no longer anyone I remember; she is mostly angry, or upset, or depressed - she thinks that the staff are trying to steal her belongings, she doesn't like the other residents, because they are old and stupid, and so on. Each time I leave I feel oddly privileged to be free to walk out of the place, and I take the long route home through the lovely countryside. My wife has come to dread the days I visit my mother, because I always come home very gloomy.

This, I hasten to say, is not a whinge - it's a situation shared by a great many of my friends and contemporaries, so I have to shape up and get on with it. Apart from vague stuff like duty, I wouldn't want it any other way. It's the very least I can do for my old mum. I try not to think about how long I have until it's my turn to be visited, but it's inevitable that aspect of it should bother me a little as well.

 


Along these lines, I've recently been exchanging occasional supportive emails with my friend Martin, whose father, Ben, is becoming "a bit difficult" (to use Martin's phrase). Martin, by the way, is happy that I should post this story here. [All the names, of course, are changed!] 


Martin's mother died suddenly a few years ago - she was, I am told, a lovely but rather mousey little lady, who never had a great deal to say for herself. Martin has been surprised by the extent to which his dad, who always made all the decisions and was very outspoken ("never suffered fools gladly") has shrunk into himself since he was widowed. They rarely heard from him, they were concerned that he chose to spend all his time on his own. They bought him a big TV a couple of Christmases ago, and after a month he put it back in its box and stored it in the garage. Martin suggested that his dad might join an evening class, or do some voluntary work at the local hospital, or renew his interest in photography, but he got very short answers. He got an old friend of Ben's to arrange to take him down to the pub occasionally - that didn't go well - they fell out after a couple of weeks, and Ben came close to starting a fight at the bowling club. Ben phoned up Martin a couple of times at about 3am, to tell him that there was a car parked in the street outside his house, and it shouldn't be there. Ben's street, apparently, is full of cars from end to end. Martin told his dad not to worry about it, so his dad phoned the police instead.

Round about the same time, Martin got a quiet heads-up from the family doctor that his father didn't seem very well, might not be eating or looking after himself properly, and refused to answer the door if anyone called. Martin's wife, Angie, is a treasure - she's energetic and kind-hearted and all the things which Martin claims he is not. She suggested that they should take Ben with them on their Saturday groceries-run to Sainsbury's. It would get him out of the house (they could pretend that they needed him to help them), and it would give an opportunity to make sure he was buying some decent food for his own larder.

To Martin's astonishment, his dad was delighted to go to Sainsbury's with them. It all went very well - maybe, ominously, too well, Martin thought.

The only problem initially was that the old man found the shop too noisy - too many kids, too many people. So after he'd put his own shopping in their trolley he liked to go and stand outside in the car park. On the drive home he would tell them at great length of all the examples of dangerous or antisocial parking he had observed. Martin was not invigorated by the subject matter, but old Ben was more animated than they had seen him for years, so they decided that even a rather weird interest was better than none.

By the third Saturday there was trouble. Sainsbury's had received quite a few complaints. Ben had printed a little supply of notices, and he spent his visit putting them under customers' windscreen-wipers, explaining that they had used the disabled spaces without displaying the requisite Blue Badge, or had parked in the mother-and-child spaces when they patently did not have a child with them, or had parked carelessly, protruding over the painted white lines or (more subjectively) thoughtlessly close to the next vehicle. Some customers thought initially that Sainsbury's themselves had issued these notices, but the supermarket staff had observed Ben at work. Tactfully, they mentioned to Martin and Angie that they'd have to ask for this to stop, and immediately.

By the following week, Ben was driving to Sainsbury's in his own car on Saturday - purportedly to do his weekly shopping. Martin and Angie's pleasure at this news was short-lived. He wasn't shopping. He hung around all afternoon in the car park, harassing the customers and telling them off for parking badly, or driving too quickly, or not controlling their children, or (apparently) speaking too loud. 

The manager at the local Sainsbury's had become quite a good friend of Martin's by this time, and he went to visit him, to discuss what they could do. They hatched a cunning plan.

The next Saturday, Ben arrived at Sainsbury's on his weekly mission. You are allowed 2 hours in the car park, maximum (this to prevent local workers and residents jamming up the place), and after 2 hours Sainsbury's clamped Ben's car and issued him with a parking ticket, for repeatedly breaking this rule, and parking in "an inconsiderate and antisocial manner". Ben was mortified - ashamed. He agreed with Sainsbury's that they would destroy the ticket if he promised never to hassle their customers again.

That, of course, does nothing to address Martin's other, related problems, but he is quite pleased with that outcome. He says you have to celebrate what little successes you have, as they come along.

Who's that in the car park, dear?