Hooptedoodle #350 - Strategy for Catching a Bus

This morning I was half-listening to the radio, and there was a phone-in discussion going on about people's private rituals - things they do every day as part of their lives, in that strange cross-over area where planning and commonsense checks start to shade into superstition and even obsession.

There were a lot of predictable items - one guy plays football in his local Sunday league - he always bends down to touch the grass as he walks on to the pitch - this is because his team once had an unexpected win in some competition or other, and since then he has come to believe that if he fails to touch the grass as he walks on then things might work out badly. In other words:

(1) it's become something he does on a regular basis

(2) it might do some good - OK, maybe unlikely, but it does no harm, so the safe bet might be to carry on doing it.

We probably all have a few of these wrinkles, though we might choose to claim that there is some rather more straightforward explanation. I always carry my penknife and a couple of guitar picks in my left-hand trouser pocket. I know where to find them, I can tell straight away if I've forgotten to pick them up from the tray on the bedroom chest of drawers - it's OK - it's a habit, but it's conscious organisation. You bet.

I knew a fellow years ago who played soccer to a decent amateur standard, and he always used to wear his "lucky" vest under his team jersey. He would claim that he was not superstitious, but panic would arise if he found his mother had this vest in the wash on match-day. The vest, by the way, was a total wreck, he had been wearing it since school. It was a relic.

When I was a kid, my dad, when he closed the front door, would tug the lock 10 times to check it was locked. If anything interrupted this procedure, he would start again. One morning (to my ecstatic, though secret, delight) he broke the lock. He would have maintained that he was checking the lock was secure, to keep his family and his possessions safe. Other opinions did exist.

Anyway, to the point. I was reminded this morning of a little conundrum that bothered me for years - not because it was a problem, but because it seemed there was an obvious need for some sort of simple strategy and - though you would think that such things were capable of numerical analysis, I never really managed to think it through.

Let's go back to the 1980s. At this time I lived in Morningside, a suburban district on the south side of Edinburgh, and I worked for a financial institution, whose offices were bang in the business centre - near St Andrew Square.

Each working day I would set off from home on my walk to the bus stop. It was about a mile to the bus stop - for the last half mile of this walk I had a straight view down to the main road ahead, crossing at right angles, where the buses I needed would pass from right to left.

These days the Edinburgh buses are a different proposition altogether - they have computer displays at each stop, which show you which buses, for which routes, are coming, and when they will be there. Everything is monitored. In the 1980s, the best I could do was to have a copy of the timetable on the notice board in the kitchen - I knew the times by heart, of course.

The problem was this last half-mile, during which I could see the bus route in the distance.  Now - a quick ponder on the nature of bus travel:

Suppose the buses ran every 15 minutes at this time of the day - officially, there might be a bus from my stop at 7:30am, 7:45am etc. Now, the traffic was heavy on working days, and the buses did not run on time - this was not any kind of symmetrical distribution - since the drivers got into trouble if they were early (because passengers would miss the bus), the buses would tend to be late. If I left home at 7:05, say, and it took me 20 minutes to walk to the stop, I would arrive five minutes before the 7:30 was due. Thus I might catch the previous bus, if it were running late, I might even, on rare occasions, be in time for the bus before that one, if it was very late indeed. Failing this, I should be in time for the published 7:30, though it could really turn up at any time after 7:30. The safest approach was to just assume that there was an irregular stream of buses, and that their arrival was pretty much random.

Right. So about 10 minutes after leaving the house I would get to the point on my walk where I could now see the buses passing, in the distance, and I would be able to see them from that point on. If a bus passed, I might be able to hazard a guess what official time that bus was supposed to have arrived, but it was not a particularly useful thing to think about during the final ten minutes' trek to the stop.

When I was still half a mile from the stop, if a bus passed, up ahead, then I would just shrug it off - it wasn't a bus I should have been on, the behaviour of subsequent buses was not affected in any predictable way. As I got nearer and nearer to the bus stop, this started to get more pressing; if a bus passed when I was, say, a hundred yards short of the stop then that would be a bit irritating, since a quick dash would have enabled me to catch that one. So the passage of buses at the end of the road became more important as I got nearer to the stop. Obviously, if a dash of a hundred yards would help, I could do this dash at any point during the walk, but that's not the instinct. What the dash might protect me from was not so much the risk of being late (since I should have plenty of time to get to work, and since getting earlier to the stop would simply put me into an unknown (earlier) bit of the sequence) - what I was protecting myself from was the frustration of having missed a bus when it was within my power to do something about it. This last bit is important.

Of course, I could just leave earlier, but that doesn't really change the unpredictability, or I could run the entire mile, which is not ideal if you are wearing a suit and office shoes, and maybe a top-coat, and maybe carrying a case - especially if you are going to spend a bus-ride jammed onto the lower deck - standing room only.

In practice, every day I would jog the last quarter mile - I felt better that way. Then, if I just missed a bus, I would feel that I had tried. I never jogged any previous quarter mile on the way there, because at that distance it doesn't seem like the correct thing to do.

None of this was ever really a problem - I can't recall ever being late for work. What bugged me was the suspicion that deciding to jog, every day, at the point where panic was beginning to set in felt a bit like dumb behaviour. There is a mathematical problem in which a man cuts diagonally across a square field, and a bull in the field charges at him from one of the other corners - it always heads straight towards him. The problem is to identify an equation for the path of the bull, and identify the limiting conditions, but the important, inescapable truth is that the bull is so damned stupid that it fails to realise it can catch the man by taking a short cut - taking a straight line to head him off rather than always just running directly at him.

I always had a feeling that I should have had an advantage over the bull, but it didn't feel like it.

Vauban's Bits - Painted

The new paint tins have safely arrived, so I painted the new 3D-printed barracks building this afternoon. Pleased with it. When I have a few more bits and pieces ready, I'll try to put together a picture involving more substantial pieces of fort.

With the barracks sitting above the archway, from outside the fort

And from inside the fort - the building itself has a choice of two ground floors - with and without  the archway

The scale mismatch doesn't suit everyone, but this is my gaming scale system - 1/72 scale officer of engineers standing on the 1/100 scale buildings. I've got used to it, and there are some useful advantages

And this is the alternative configuration, with the archway not running under the barrack block

Vauban's Bits

Graham, of the Scotia Albion blog, very kindly sent me some 3D-printed bits to add to my store of equipment for my siege wargames. These have been specially scaled to fit with my old (and OOP) Terrain Warehouse Vauban fort, which has always been short of a few bits and pieces - the manufacturers gave up on this range before it was complete, and subsequently were bought over by another firm whose interests lay elsewhere.

He has sent me a selection of pieces, all very interesting and thought-provoking. The most obvious show-stopper is a fine gatehouse/barracks building - this comes with some extra pieces, to provide a few alternate configurations, so that it can be a barracks and not a gatehouse. The photos are of the gatehouse set-up.

I still have to clean up the printed pieces a bit, and I was hoping to get some paint on quickly, so I could knock everyone (someone? - anyone?...) dead with pictures of the finished kit, but alas, a number of my "scenery" paint pots have set solid. I went to my local hardware store to get in some fresh paint today - got a few of them replaced (I use Dulux colour-matching sample tins), but the base colour for the brown shades was out of stock, so my two tins of Rum Caramel (shades #1 and #2) should be available tomorrow or maybe Thursday. That's fine, but since that is the undercoat colour I can't do any painting until I get them. Watch this space.

Thanks again, Graham.

Battle of La Rothiere - 1st Feb 1814

Yesterday was a fighting day, up at Kinross. There were four of us involved - the Archduke was travelling from Westmorland, Baron Stryker was arriving from much closer at hand, in his campaigning sedan chair, I was coming from south of the Forth, and the day's events were scheduled to take place at the legendary Schloss Goya, where the Count did a magnificent job of preparing and planning the game, preparing a very fine luncheon and (whisper it) even serving up lemon cake with afternoon tea.

The battle was a big 'un, no disputing that fact, the scenario lifted from the commandsandcolors.net website. Here is the scenario diagram - we used my Ramekin variant of C&CN - 8 Victory Points for the win.

We each contributed some of the troops. Stryker lost the toss of a coin and thus had to partner me in command of the French. A quick squint at the situation, along with the events of actual history, suggested that we were about to receive a thrashing.

Some of the Russian troops in action were very scary indeed - the Guard Grenadiers are very powerful, and the most formidable of the lot were their Guard Heavy Cavalry, who are 6 blocks strong, get a bonus of +1 die in combat and may disregard 2 retreat flags. Oh, jolly good. I was very pleased to see they were well back in the rear of the Allied reserve at the start - I had visions of their casually touring the battlefield, mopping up our army. The rules also bestow upon the Russian infantry a most unsporting reluctance to run away when pressed, and the final outrage is the Mother Russia die before the battle starts - on the day, this provided an extra block of strength for two of the Russian infantry regiments, and also an extra block for both of their field batteries. This did not seem like good news - since I had no idea how an extra-large battery is allocated combat dice in C&CN, we had to agree an ad-hoc rule for the day to cover this. Whatever, the Russian artillery was a major nuisance throughout the day.

It seemed very odd that the Bavarians present were, of course, not on the French side. The French had some Guard Cavalry, and some Young Guard infantry, but it was decreed that, this being 1814, the quality of the French line infantry did not merit the usual +1 combat die for elan in melee.

We (the French) assumed that the Bavarians would be sent across the stream into our left flank, so we set up to give them a hot reception. In fact they didn't attack us at all, so that was an effective feint! The VP rules for this scenario are fairly complex, but include extra points for possession of the 4 villages of La Giberie, Petit-Mesnil, La Rothiere itself (with the church) and Dienville. We duly defended these four villages, but things did not go very well at the start, the Russians drove us out of La Rothiere and eliminated one of our two field batteries. Thereafter the theme of the day was fighting for the villages, and trying to stay clear of the big Russian batteries. There was a good deal of cavalry fighting as the day developed. We started rather poorly, but as time went on we started to wear down the Russian infantry, and we got the VP score to 7-each. At this point we only (only!) had to push one of our Young Guard units across the stream on our left flank, and attack a wood containing a much-weakened Bavarian regiment (and, preferably, take out Wrede at the same time). This was such a vivid prospect that we could actually see it happening, but it was vital that we won the initiative for the next turn.

We duly won that initiative, and in a state of some excitement we attacked tthe Bavarian-held wood, but the attack failed completely, and the response was conclusive. Around this time, the Russian Guard Grenadiers eliminated one more French unit, and during that same turn we were driven out of two more of the key villages, so that, instead of sneaking a victory 8-7 (which would have been a travesty, to be honest), we actually lost - within a single turn - by 9-4. Hmmm. From the jaws of you-know-what.

Not to worry - great game - historically correct result, and it was exciting throughout. Questions will certainly be asked about the performance of the French artillery, but we are confident that (authentically) Napoleon will just lie through his teeth about the outcome, and publish appropriate Fake News in his dispatches.

My appreciation and very best wishes to my colleagues, and especially to Count Goya for his tireless hospitality. Excellent day!

View from behind the French right at the start, with the River Aube (unfordable) in the foreground, the key villages all defended. You can just see the Bavarian-Austrian force threatening our left flank at the far end of the table, beyond the stream.

Looking along the Russian line, from their left

Russians advancing on their left - this attack didn't develop as much as we expected, but it kept us worried throughout. You can see the pesky "Mother Russia" super-size batteries on the ridge in the background.

The French are quickly driven out of La Rothiere, and one of the French batteries has been overrun and eliminated. That's General Gerard (white border) attempting to convince his men that they should try to take the place back.

This is just a more expansive view of the same moment, I think (apologies for duff photos)

Over on the Allied right, you can see the Bavarians pretending that they might cross the stream and do something, but they sat it out, while we kept a very warlike eye on them

A general view - you can see the gap in the middle, between the armies, caused by the lack of a French answer to the artillery problem. Russians marching forward relentlessly.

The French are running out of infantry at this stage

Time for some volunteers to win the day...

Here we go - Stryker's Young Guard battalion, about to cross the stream and set about those Bavarians - at least they are thinking about it

First of all, they had to cope with an attack from an Austrian hussar unit - we did pretty well - the YG refused to form square, and convinced the hussars that they should take a Retire and Reform option. Good - not immortal yet, but working on it.

Meanwhile, my own Young Guard battalion took back La Rothiere - they didn't keep it for long, but we were starting to win back a few VPs at this stage

The Russians still have a lot of troops, and many of them are fresh. Note that the village of La Rothiere (with church) is now occupied by the Russian Guard Grenadiers - no-one was in any great hurry to take them on, so there they stayed.

Stryker's YG chaps lasted hardly any longer than mine - having failed to shift the Bavarians out of the wood, they were surrounded and eliminated. The game was over shortly afterwards. I hope that Stryker will be able to put a more positive spin on his blog report on this game! L'Empereur is depending on him.

Hooptedoodle #349 - Donkey Award - Aviva

My mother (courtesy of my address) received a letter from Aviva Insurance last week. She has a whole-of-life assurance policy still in force - this policy was issued (I think as a contribution towards funeral costs) many years ago by Sun Life, whose business was absorbed by a succession of larger dinosaurs over the years, the current incumbent being Aviva.

The letter explained that this policy was to become free (i.e. no more premiums) since she is now 95, and that the cash-in surrender value would now be equal to the value on death. This is the same procedure we recently went through with Prudential - eventually these old "industrial" policies cost more to keep in force than they are worth to the insurer, so this is pretty much standard practice - except that the shut-off age is usually 90. My mother is currently paying £5.95 a month for this policy - at a rough estimate, she has paid about two-and-a-half times the death value in premiums over the years, but no matter - she is lucky to have lived this long.

I rang the customer help desk number given in the letter, and spoke to a very helpful chap who accepted that my mother was not well enough or aware enough to be able to write, nor speak on the phone, and that I had Power of Attorney (PoA) for her affairs (though I am not registered as such with Aviva). He also suggested that surrendering the policy now would be a smart move, since my mother's potential funeral costs are trivial compared to the cost of her care while she lives - and we agreed that I would send in my PoA documentation by registered mail, so that we may proceed with the surrender.

It cost me some £4.55 for a small parcel, to be signed for on receipt, and the PoA stuff went off to them with a covering letter and photocopies of the policy and their original letter. This morning the paperwork came back, with a letter (a standard letter with customer details inserted) which explains that the PoA material is not acceptable, for a whole pile of reasons - basically that the document must be either a signed approved copy or else the original.

Naturally one has to do these things correctly, but I'm well practised in this stuff - the Certificate of Registration I sent is a signed, approved copy and the PoA documents are originals - on the official OPG embossed paper. I believe it is completely legal - it has previously been accepted by HM Revenue and Customers, the State Pensions Department, two separate private pension funds of which my mother is a member, Bank of Scotland, Royal Bank of Scotland, Trustee Savings Bank, Santander, National Savings and Investment, Prudential, East Lothian Council, and all manner of traders and utility suppliers my mother previously had accounts with. These documents have toured the UK over the last 10 years, at some expense.

What, you may ask yourself, is special about Aviva?

My irate descriptions of the company this morning may have included some potentially unusual elements - I fear I rather offended the Contesse with my views. I shall phone them on Monday, after my blood pressure medication, and see what we should do next. I am reluctant to send the documents again. The policy, I must add, is only worth some hundreds of pounds, so, since it will eventually become payable when my mother passes away I am tempted to forget about surrendering the policy. I'll try to phone them on Monday - see how it goes.

I suspect there is nothing very special about Aviva. I think it is likely that some dogsbody in Legal Life Services (so it says) saw the unmissable opportunity to get out of doing something by throwing the carrot back into the customer's court and - maybe? - to spoil someone's day while they were at it. I shall shrug this off. If Monday doesn't go well then I'll just forget the surrender offer - I'll check that the premiums stop, you bet. I'll write myself a note about what has happened, and dig the policy out when my mum dies.

If there was ever any remote chance of my ever doing business again with Aviva (after the house insurance pantomime...) then I guess it just vanished.

Join the Queue

Some new figures in the painting queue this week - well, not new, exactly - some of them haven't been owned before, but they aren't new.

Some real Old School French chaps in here - HH Guard Engineers and Line Artillery, and some Alberken Guard Artillery. The Engineers still had the original mould flash under the paint, so I'll try to improve on that this time round

This is a random bunch of old figures which have been fermenting in the Clean Spirit jar for about 10 weeks. Since there were still traces of gloss black and gloss red which refused to shift, they finished up with a few hours in the Domestos - that did it. Like me, you might wonder why I bothered with the 10 weeks in the Clean Spirit, but it's the principle of the thing, really.

10 packs of OOP Falcata Spanish cavalry - once again, I have killed off one of the world's endangered species - I believe they are now officially extinct. This should be enough for 4 regiments, with luck. Put them next to the White Rhino

Probably more interestingly, I also have a little shipment of the much-missed Falcata Spanish Napoleonic heavy cavalry - now rarer than hens' teeth. My mysterious friend and advisor, Count Goya, was recently in Spain. Goya's adventures can only be guessed from occasional glimpses and hints - tantalising, really. Sunset verandahs in Mandalay, a half-seen shadow in a village on the Adriatic, whispers of the Spice Routes, blood and sand...

Anyway, he spotted some OOP Falcata figures in Spain, and very kindly brought me back a pack. I, of course, was much less calm about the matter, and promptly lit up the Internet in my searches to see if there were any more. I am pleased to say that I seem to have managed to snaffle the world's final stocks of the Spanish cavalry.

To save a little on postage, since shipping rates from Spain are famously extravagant, I arranged with my friend Jack the Hat that he would collect the goods for me next time he visited Barcelona (he has an apartment there), and the deed was done last week. I think I have enough for 4 units of line cavalry. They can go in the Spanish box, and I'll get to them.

Jack the Hat, cunningly disguised (without  hat), does the messages

To give an idea of Count Goya's exotic lifestyle, he even has his own food manufactured and supplied when he is on his travels

Hooptedoodle #348 - ...you know, maybe it is funny, after all...

This morning the plan was to visit my old mum, in the care home in the village. Sometimes this can be kind of heavy going, but the visits mean a lot to her (though she forgets about them almost immediately), and I do feel better afterwards.

This is not a great time, for a lot of reasons - I drove off to the home in my van, trying to find something on the radio which was not about the latest political excitement here in the UK - not easy. Apparently Adrian Mole and his football hooligan sidekick have pulled a brilliant fast one by sending some foreign chaps a letter written in disappearing ink (or something). Wow - what a corker. I can feel patriotic pride flooding though my old veins. What a bunch of self-serving tossers.

When everything turns to rat droppings, Schadenfreude is probably all we have left. Ultimately, I'm past caring what happens - bring it on, but I do have a list of key individuals who I hope get their just desserts after the public enquiry. In such a context, trying to engage my mother in conversation is something of a light relief.

She can only stand my visits for about 30 to 40 minutes (people who know me may understand this), then she starts to get anxious, so when the time appeared to be right I said cheerio and see-you-soon, and left, to get some groceries at Tesco's on the way home. There's a strict regime at the home, whereby visitors have to sign in and out. This all makes good sense, and I was told that, if there's a serious fire, the signatures in the visitors' book will make it easier to reconcile the body count. That's probably more security information than I had thought I needed, but it also bothers me a little - what happens if the book is consumed in the flames? Never mind - if I'm dead, I won't care.

I  signed out (11:45, if it matters), and as I opened the front door to leave there were two fellows standing outside - plumbers, come to service the heating. I held the door open for them, exchanged "good morning"s, and the older of the two said:

"Does someone on the staff know you're going out?"

"It's OK," I told him, "I've signed the book".

So that was all right, then, but I was a bit shaken. As I went to retrieve my van, I was actually laughing out loud. Hysteria? - quite probably, but there is a certain black humour in the thought that one day I may be trapped in the home forever because the plumbers aren't convinced I'm a visitor. Not even Adrian Mole is above such judgements, eventually, I guess. Thank you, God.

Maybe I should take a break from watching my Twilight Zone box set.

Here's a trailer from one of my favourite movies, which is getting more poignant every day.