C&C Accessories - Spurious Precision?

 I chanced upon an advert for some custom component racks for Command & Colors, and I realised that I'd always wanted some, so I ordered up the "Napoleonic Starter Set", which I shall describe in a moment.

 

The "Sleeve", with four counter racks in it, and the scenery-tile holder in the foreground 

It came quickly, from "Sally 4th", of Melmersby, North Yorkshire. I realised that it required rather more assembly than I had planned for; that's OK, of course, but I put it away until the weekend.

The Starter Set comprises laser-cut MDF components to make up four counter racks (2 for small counters, 2 for medium), a "sleeve" thingy which the racks slide into, and also a rack to hold scenery tiles.

Background: Though C&CN is my go-to Napoleonic game with miniatures, I've never played the actual boardgame very much - setting out and tidying away the block counters is a pain in the tonsils, to be honest, and, since I store the boxes upright, on their ends, I have had to improvise all sorts of little containers to keep the counters in, to avoid the sort of chaos on opening the lid which would be guaranteed to make me put the lid back on and put the game away unplayed. It's not been a great success - the game doesn't get used, so perhaps the introduction of some better organisation would make all the difference.

I did the component assembly while listening to the Manchester Utd game on the radio on Saturday. Straightforward enough - the tabs are accurate and everything lines up, and I used my standard "Tacky PVA" to stick everything together. All quite straightforward, though one of the parts is a Perspex lid for the "sleeve" unit, which is not glued, but is anchored by tabs which fit into the sides. First problem was that the tabs on the Perspex bit did not fit the holes - quite a lot of fiddling with needle files to improve the fit - eventually I got it together by forcing it in - crude but OK. A couple of days to let everything dry out, and this morning I set about transferring my counters to the new racks.

That was rather less satisfying than I had hoped. The storage cells on the racks hold 4 layers of 3 x 2 (for the small counters) and 4 layers of 2 x 2 (for the medium sized ones), and there really isn't any space. This is glued MDF, not exactly engineering standard, and the counters are really very tight. It's fiddly to get them in and out, and they really don't fit brilliantly. Why on earth they couldn't have allowed an extra mm each way I have no idea. Never mind, I got them stored away, and they definitely don't rattle, though the Perspex lid holds everything firmly anyway, so rattling is not a problem. If I had made these, I'd have made them just a tad bigger - there is some risk of damaging the counters getting them in and out.

I also realised that the Large counters need a Large rack unit, but I had enough space to fudge them into the racks I have. Everything goes back into the box nicely enough - I was concerned about the raw MDF wearing the surface of the playing board, so put in some kitchen roll to pack it a bit. The game boxes have gone back onto their shelves with no rattle at all.

So:

(1) is it well made? - yes - it's OK - the MDF is what you would expect; the Perspex lid is not well finished, which turned out to be less of a problem than I thought it might (brawn over brains every time). The design is clever, but making it all so tight is unnecessary and something of a nuisance.

(2) is it good value for money? - it's expensive - I think I paid £28 including P&P for the Starter Set. I was surprised, given the price, that it required so much assembly. It's nice to have racks specially proportioned to hold C&C counters, and to fit in the game boxes. The pay-off is whether it encourages me to use the board game more often.

(3) is it going to encourage me to play the board game more often, then? - probably not, I'm afraid - it's not very quick or simple to get the counters in or out. I'll see how I feel in a week or two...

Hooptedoodle #406 - Where Were You on 9/11?

 I guess we all have a fairly limited set of major world events in our lifetime - that's almost certainly a good thing. I can remember where I was when I heard of the assassination of JFK (involved in the preparations for a youth club dance, in a church hall in Liverpool - St Barnabas' church - my girl friend suddenly started weeping), I know where I was when the Berlin Wall came down (I was in my house, in Edinburgh, watching it on TV, waiting for the shooting to start), and today I've been thinking of my whereabouts on 9/11. It doesn't really matter of course, but somehow world events seem much longer ago when you think in terms of your own timeline.

My wife and I were on holiday in Tuscany - in fact it was the last holiday we ever had on our own (our son was born a year later). On the actual day we had taken a local bus for a day trip to Siena. It was a very thundery, humid day, and Siena was absolutely packed with tourists, which I guess is not unexpected. The day was significant in that my wife received a call on her mobile phone from a headhunting agency, with an excellent job offer that she had almost given up on; she received the call just as we were going to enter the Duomo - that's the rather odd building in Siena that seems to be made out of liquorice allsorts. Overall our day out was a bit hot and a bit fatiguing, but we took the bus back to San Gimignano in a celebratory frame of mind, with plans for a suitable budget-busting meal in the evening. I have some photos from the day.

 When we got back to our hotel we turned on the TV, and saw the CNN pictures from New York. That put an end to any kind of fun evening we might have considered. Eventually we agreed to switch off the TV and catch up in the morning - really couldn't handle the flow of news that was coming in.

 

Il Duomo

Over the next few days we carried on with our holiday - a bit subdued, of course - and tried not to worry about whether there were going to be any flights home the next week. We visited Perugia, and there and in Assisi we spoke with a number of Americans who were very upset, understandably, and had absolutely no idea how or when they might be able to go home again. The heart seemed to have been kicked out of everything - and I still think of 9/11 as the day the world changed forever. At that time, I was working on some actuarial projects connected with Risk Management, and it was immediately obvious that many of the fundamental assumptions on which our thinking was based had suddenly gone out of the window. The comforting feeling that there was no-one crazy enough to destroy a civilian aeroplane while he was sitting on it was gone, and a whole pile of other bed-rock stuff had vanished. Start again. As I say - nothing would ever be the same again, in many ways.

Anyway, I don't wish to get into a lament about the awfulness of the event - that has been well considered and documented - though it is inevitable that this is the context in which our thoughts should be framed; I spent some time today thinking about my life and my surroundings on that historic day. I know for a fact that I was in Siena, and it rained, and my wife landed a new job. Personal stuff - it's far easier to think about personal stuff. 

Hooptedoodle #405a - More Care and Attention from Curry's

 In case anyone was troubled by my recent rant on the subject of our adventures as customers of Curry's, the well-known idiots, here is a little update. 

Brief resumé: a new laptop had been ordered for my son to take to university, but Curry's sent him a PlayStation 4 gaming machine instead. A complaint was made, the unwanted PS4 was collected from our house the following day (25th August), and we know from the tracking number on the receipt we were given that it arrived in Newark (Curry's online sales centre?) within a day.

Since then? Well, not much has happened really. We had a number of meaningless phone conversations and chat exchanges which refused to confirm that the returned item had been received or been checked, and there was no commitment to a refund, which "can take 2 or 3 weeks" - this being, presumably, someone else's fault. 

Yesterday there was an email which stated that a replacement item (which I sincerely hope is a laptop) is being dispatched, and will be delivered "by 24th August". Yesterday, of course, was the 8th September. [I hope you are not laughing, at the back there.]

Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen. One certainty is that my son does not have any chance at all of receiving his computer before he goes away on Saturday. There are all sorts of exciting possibilities over what else might happen.

At no point has anyone said that they are sorry, or that they will do their best to rectify their stupid mistake, or anything else, really, that we might wish to hear. I can only suggest that any UK resident reading this should take great pains to avoid ever doing business with these cretins - save yourself a lot of grief, and do not give them the benefit of any profit on any such deal. It's not very likely, but if you happen to work for Curry's, or have friends who work there, then you have my sympathy, and please tell your employers that they smell very bad, and their days are numbered. Times are getting harder - businesses which cannot cope will fade away to make room for those which can. Online sellers have made a considerable fortune out of lockdown trade - sympathy is not what it might be.

ECW: Guest Spot

 I received an email from Steve Cooney, prompted by my humble efforts to get a handle on the Battle of Kilsyth. Steve kindly sent me a couple of photos of some of his own 20mm ECW figures (he does this from time to time, just to remind me that his soldiers are rather nicer than mine!). These are Hinton Hunt castings, many of them extensively converted.

Thanks Steve - great stuff! 

Kilsyth 1645: Battlefield Dry-Run

 Having spent a week or two deep in my books, sorting out the details of the Kilsyth battlefield, and a day of falling into ditches, plugging around the actual countryside, I've now assembled a tabletop version for the forthcoming game. From the sublime to the agricultural.

As mentioned previously, I've decided to turn the battlefield through 90 degrees, and start the action as the actual fighting started. It looks OK - the distances are about right - the next viewing will be in a couple of weeks, when there will be more soldiers and rather fewer dining chairs on show.

It's a very plain-looking field - rather a bleak piece of Scottish moorland. I had thoughts of adding streams to break up the ground a bit, but decided against it. The streams are all small, and they just disappear into the general idea that the ground is rough! The picture above shows the valley from the South - Montrose will be on the left side as we look at it, Baillie on the right. The hills and woods are unambiguous, the hills with rocks on top are impassable, the walled-off areas at Colzium Castle (left foreground) and Auchinvalley Farm (brown field, in centre of the table) are proper enclosures which may be defended; the other buildings are just scenery, with no cover or other function, to identify positions on the battlefield.

And now we are looking back the other way - Montrose will be on the right, in this view. Colzium Castle (far end) was the home of the Livingston family - strong Royalists, and Montrose's troops camped on their land the night before the battle. The castle was demolished in the 18th Century, and much of the estate is now under the modern reservoir.

My reference to a "dry run" is a sort of lame reference to constructing a battlefield with the reservoir removed. You can see how an idiot with too much caffeine might think this was amusing at 11pm.

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

Specially for WM and Stryker, here's a close up of Colzium Castle (aka Claypotts Castle, courtesy of Lilliput Lane)

 

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

Kilsyth 1645: Our Roving Reporter's Day Out

 Weather was reasonable today, so I packed some sandwiches and my camera and my walking boots, and drove off to Kilsyth. My intention was to get a better idea of the area of the battlefield to the north and east of the [modern] Banton Loch. Here's an annotated aerial view, courtesy of Google Maps and Paintshop Pro.

I've added the initial positions of the armies, as I understand them, a couple of extra place names, and the asterisks show the scope of my walk. North is at the top. A very quick resumé of the build-up to Kilsyth:

William Baillie's Covenanter army had been well beaten at Alford, and Montrose took the opportunity to head south, for the Lowlands. The Scottish government were terrified he was going to make for Edinburgh, but that city was plague-bound, and Montrose headed for Glasgow, via Stirling. Baillie followed, but was delayed by a number of issues, not least being the fact that he had to wait for someone to round up three Fife regiments which had decided to head for home. By the time the Covenant forces got onto our map, Montrose's troops had been camped on an elevated "meadow" in the Valley of the River Kelvin for a day or so, overlooking the road from Stirling to Glasgow, waiting to spring a nasty surprise on Baillie and friends.

[Please note that the village of Banton, the reservoir of Banton Loch and most of the roads apart from the Stirling road at the bottom did not exist until some time after 1645]

Baillie had the additional burden of having with him the chiefs of the Committee of Estaits (Argyll and others, whom Gardiner's history describes as having "a grasp of strategy proportional to their ignorance"). His scouts realised the Royalist army was waiting for them, so Baillie agreed with his "advisors" that his troops would  leave the road, taking up a position on Montrose's flank, concealed by some rough ground. Baillie knew that the Earl of Lanark was coming from the West with a reinforcement of 1500 men for him (described as "tenants of the Hamiltons"), and appears to have been prepared to wait in this position until Lanark arrived. What he did not know (though Montrose, it seems, did) was that Lanark was only about a day's march away.

The political whizz-kids were keen that Baillie should attack Montrose's flank straight away. Baillie was convinced that the rough, rising ground to his front made such an attack impossible, so his counter-proposal was that he should face his troops to their right, and march them in column up to high ground at Auchinrivoch, where they would be above Montrose's left rear. This was agreed, so off went his column, with (I think) Balcarres' cavalry in the front, followed by a converged unit of commanded shot commanded by a Major Haldane, then Robert Home's veteran regiment of Foot, and the rest strung out, with the unhappy boys from Fife at the rear.

It's quite a pull up the hill (I did it today); it might have been a fair plan, but they didn't make it. Well, Balcarres' Horse might have, but the commanded shot and Home's regiment spotted some Highlanders occupying an area of enclosures at Auchinvalley, and headed west to attack them.

Thus the Battle of Kilsyth becomes, in effect, an encounter-type action. Montrose's army was rushing to its left flank, to face an attack coming from that direction, and Baillie was forced by the actions of his subordinates to form into an improvised battle line on rough ground, well short of (and lower than) the position he had intended. The subsequent progress of the day is for another post, or maybe for a game, so I'll return to the story of my scouting trip now.

I parked in Banton, near the Swan pub, at the crossroads, with the intention of walking up towards Auchinrivoch and Auchinvalley, to get some photos of how the land lies. Before I started, I spoke to a couple of residents, who were interested to know what this strange chap with hill boots and a stupid hat was doing in their village on a quiet Bank Holiday. I asked to check my directions for Auchinvalley - no-one had heard of it. They knew of Auchinrivoch - there is a farm there - but otherwise all places are known by who lives there. They wanted to know was it the Hendersons' place. Obviously I had no idea - and I certainly don't know who lived there in 1645. However, they were very kind, and got me on my way, and it isn't a very obvious track! 

 

The village of Banton is modern. It was built when coal and mineral mining were introduced to the valley in the late 18th Century. Most of it, today, consists of post-war bungalows. Peaceful, though.

 

This is the Swan, the village pub and restaurant, at the main crossroads, which has been taken over by a community venture, and looks pretty good (I didn't partake).

 

The oldest building I spotted was the one on the left, which was built in 1811 and rebuilt in 1845 (create your own story here).

 

I'm now on my way out of the village, heading north towards the next village up the hill, High Banton.

 

A lot of water here - it comes down into the valley from the Kilsyth hills, so everywhere there are burns (streams) and drains to keep the fields workable. Banton Loch was built as a cistern to maintain the level of the Forth & Clyde Canal.

 

 

I'm instructed to turn left up a gravel path, just after the little Baptist Chapel - ah - here we go...

 

 

...up the hill towards Auchinrivoch...

 

...to the left I can see towards Auchinvalley, where the Highlanders were spotted in the enclosures. I suspect that Baillie's men may have been heading parallel to the modern path, but down in the dip a bit.

 

 

At the top there is a little crossroad - to the right is Easter Auchenrivoch - do they have an Air B'n'B?

 

Straight ahead is Wester Auchenrivoch...

 

 

...we're higher up now, so a general view south across the valley can be seen...

 

...and, going left at the crossroads, the gravel path drops steeply towards Auchinvalley, which does exist after all

 

From this position you can see down into the valley (where they now have Banton Loch). I reckon that Montrose's initial position was on this side of the Loch, to the right.

 

 

I'm heading north here, on my circumnavigation of Auchinvalley, and I'm probably off the fighting area, but you can see the bigger hills in the Kilsyths in the distance. If Montrose had been defeated in his original position, his highlanders would have disappeared over those hills like melting snow.

 

Righto - now we are getting somewhere. This is just North West of the steading at Auchinvalley, and I reckon the main fighting ground would be beyond that little rise, in the wooded area. I was reminded that 1645 is a long time ago, and really there is not much to see. The valley has been farmed for centuries, the field boundaries, with their drystane dykes and the lines of trees, are later than 17th Century, and I suspect there is a lot more woodland than there was then. Robert, who lives at Auchinvalley, told me that the occupant of Auchinvalley House before it was modernised was a historian. He also told me that when he was a kid he found a cannonball in a neighbouring field, which he presented to the local primary school. That's interesting in view of the general acceptance that Baillie didn't get to use his guns, and Montrose didn't have any.

 

 

I was on the lookout for traces of the old enclosures - I didn't really find anything. It's rough ground, boggy in places, and the walls are more recent - though the stones must have been around for a long while!

 

The best I could achieve was a feel for what the terrain must have been like. Heck of an untidy place to have a battle!

 

This whole area must have been crowded with Montrose's men, racing up from their original position (above where the lake is now) to meet the attack from their flank.

 

 

 

My last photo is looking up the hill from Baillie's view - you can just see the roofs of Auchinvalley peeping over the top. There must have been some dreadful fighting around here, and it's a fair old puff up to the hill!

 

Kilsyth 1645: Wargame Homework - Facts and Legends

 I am preparing for a Zoom wargame, to take place in a little over 2 weeks - I shall host it and I'll be the umpire, which is a situation I enjoy very much, though the experience of the remote generals is heavily dependant on the technology and the picture-quality at their end!

I once had a solo game which was (sort of) based on the Battle of Kilsyth, which in reality took place on 15th August 1645. The game was interesting and a great deal of fun, and I've had a hankering to try it again, with some changes based on things which I've read subsequently, and on aspects of that first attempt which I'd do slightly differently now.

Kilsyth? Well, you may know a great deal about the battle, maybe not. It took place in Lanarkshire, not far from Glasgow, during one of the Scottish bits of the ECW. It featured the Covenanter army, in which I am very interested, and (of course) James Graham, the Marquis of Montrose. Montrose is a fascinating character - to this day there is still an active society to preserve and enhance his legend; in its way, this is a warning sign - the central personality can get in the way of any kind of impartial study. Trying to get some facts about the campaigns of the Marquis is not unlike trying to find some factual history about Robin Hood. The ghost of Walt Disney never seems far away.

I'm having a great time preparing for my Zoom game - I have a lot of books here, most of them excellent, and there is some good stuff online, but there are some surprises for the amateur student. First of all, we have the first-hand narrative of the General in command of the Covenant troops, William Baillie, which - since he was badly beaten - is bound to be something of an exercise in self-justification, but overall it's not a terrible account. We also have the version of the tale which comes from George Wishart, who was Montrose's personal chaplain, and later his biographer - this is adulatory throughout. This theme goes through all the subsequent secondary works. 

Dame CV Wedgwood (Montrose - 1952) and Nigel Tranter (Montrose: The Captain-General - 1973) are both historical novels, really, written in homage to the handsome, brilliant, tragic hero. The good guys are perfect - brave, and breathtakingly wise and just - and the bad guys are - well, ugly, and evil. Boo. Tranter has Montrose and his chums speaking like the lads from a GA Henty novel, and there is much reference to keen eyes, and frowns upon noble brows.

Vol.2 of SR Gardiner's marvellous History of the Great Civil War is heavily pro-Royalist (which was seen as a patriotic position to take, it goes without saying). Again, the references to Montrose and his short career emphasise that he is a heroic character who can do little wrong, and the sizes of the forces involved are tweaked throughout to polish the legend - Gardiner's numbers for Kilsyth look very unlikely. His estimate of 6000 Foot for the Covenant forces seems far too high, and the statement that all but 100 of them were killed is preposterous.

John Buchan (Montrose - 1928) admits in his foreword that the book is really about his fascination with the central character - it is not primarily a historical record, it is the splendid tale of Montrose's adventures. I have no problem with this - it's an excellent read, but it's as well to be aware of where it is coming from.

And so on. The big discord comes with the modern works of Stuart Reid, of which I am a big fan. Reid is a thorough, nuts and bolts military historian, but he, also, seems a bit partial. Stuart gives the impression of having been irritated by the traditional representation of Montrose as a god-like martyr, and strives to present the flaws as well - maybe he pushes too hard the other way - but this is a good starting place from which to construct my game.

A couple of trivia facts - you may disagree with them - if you do, then it's OK - I'm sure you are right.

* Montrose's campaigns of 1644-45, though regarded as part of the Civil War, were not primarily driven by support for King Charles. Charles eventually saw some advantages for his failing war effort in Montrose's success, but this was opportunist rather than planned. The main drivers were clan-based rivalries of great age - the MacDonalds, the Ogilvies, the Gordons and various others vs the Campbells and the Hamiltons and their allies. The Covenant (and, no doubt, the Presbyterian vs Catholic struggles) gave a context, but this was fundamentally older stuff 

* It is interesting to observe that in my reading of the last week or so I have seen both sides described as "rebels".  Royalists considered that Montrose was fighting against the Covenant "rebels", who were allied with the English Parliamentarian "rebels", but a more logical view is that Montrose was leading a rebellion against the armies of the Scottish Parliament. However you view this, the Campbells vs The Rest thing is always there.

* Montrose himself was a signatory to the Covenant, and fought against King Charles in the Bishops Wars of 1639 and 1640. His change of allegiance had a great deal to do with the fact that his personal standing in Scotland was leapfrogged by the rise of the Marquis of Argyll (Archibald Campbell) - there was ambition and a personal feud in here as well. When Montrose first went to join with the King, Charles was neither interested nor welcoming.

OK - this is rambling on a bit. I now have a decent grasp of the OOBs I'm going to use for my tabletop Kilsyth. These are, I hope, based on fact, but they are also drawn up to give a decent game. The next point of interest is the battlefield itself. There is a good overall description in the Battlefields Trust's section on Kilsyth, but there are a few big holes in our knowledge. Much of what the BT sets out is the reasons we know surprisingly little.

Again, Stuart Reid is a useful source, but there are many things which are not clear. Partly because the battlefield has never been properly examined, and partly because some of it has now been altered by coal and ironstone workings, and by the creation of a man-made lake, Banton Loch, which covers at least part of the centre of the fight. We know where the battle took place (roughly), and there are some definite identifiers in Baillie's account, for example, but there are still arguments about exactly where the armies were, and maybe even about which way they were facing. None of this is a problem, by the way, I will happily set out a battle on my table!

Here a few random photos of the Kilsyth battlefield - not mine, by the way.

I confess to something of a blind spot when it comes to looking at battlefields. I can read a map, I think, and I can understand a toy battle laid out on a table, but place me on the ground and I will struggle; for a start, I am very poor at judging distances! This was brought home to me very forcibly when I spent a day on a guided tour of Eggmühl, a few years ago. I had a great time, but spent the day nodding rather dumbly and trying to relate what I was seeing to the map! 

Having said which, I did get a lot of valuable understanding in preparation for another wargame, a few years ago, when I walked the full width of Marston Moor (in the pouring rain). I may use this approach again - if there's a suitable day next week, I live about 80 minutes' drive from Kilsyth. I could go and have a look at it. Rain is not essential.

Hmmm.

You will hear more of Kilsyth before long. This has just been a little explanation about why I am so busy (and enjoying myself very thoroughly) during the homework phase!

Hooptedoodle #405 - I Can't Believe that Curry's Have ****ed Us Up Again

 Yet another Hooptedoodle - I am working on the homework bit of a forthcoming Zoom wargame - really enjoying it - but there's nothing to see yet, so this evening my post is just a short, fairly routine rant.

I'm not particularly looking for helpful suggestions - I just want to share the hate a bit.

My youngest son has been accepted for the university course he wanted, which of course is very good news, but the way these things are organised means that we have a fantastic amount to do in a very short time. I'm sure many of you will be well aware of all this business. We've been arranging for accommodation, new clothes, new bank account - all that - and one thing which is required is a new laptop. OK, fine.

He ordered one yesterday online from Curry's. Sometimes I can't believe that we forget so quickly, and buy stuff from Curry's despite all the grief they have given us over the years; however, here we are again, and it is definitely not my place to advise my son on where he should buy his PC. Anyway, Curry's are likely to stay in business long enough to support the guarantee, the price was reasonably competitive, and they were sending it out by courier the following day.

What can possibly go wrong?

Well, around 4pm today the courier delivered what turned out to be a PS4 - not the £1200 laptop that was ordered. The general stress levels around here are pretty high anyway, so there has been an amount of shouting and swearing - all very regrettable.

Well, it is annoying, but I'm sure it can be sorted out easily enough. In a civilised world, it is obvious that Curry's will hold up their corporate hand, and send another van, to deliver the correct item and take away the wrong one. Customer service - decency - you know the kind of thing.

Ah. Not so fast. They will send a van - tomorrow, in fact - to collect the PS4. There is no way we are getting to keep that. Then they will process the return through their magic systems, and - assuming everything is OK - he should get a refund in maybe 3 to 4 weeks. At that point, assuming the laptop is still in stock, we can start considering a replacement order. Not before. I realise that they always overstate the elapsed time, to avoid anybody getting their hopes up, but it looks pretty certain that he will have no laptop when he goes away to Glasgow on 11th September. Very little chance, I would say. Nothing can be done about it, they have their procedures, which are built upon a couple of core values: all staff are stupid and incompetent, and all customers are dishonest. Yes, I can understand that. Where did the customer service bit go? Why do we have to be rewarded for buying an expensive piece of kit from them by being subjected to a lot of graceless inconvenience?

 Of course, I have no idea, but I wouldn't expect to understand clever stuff like this.

If it were my choice, I would get my refund, and when it arrived I would have already bought a laptop from someone else - someone who isn't a disaster. However, for reasons which are more complicated then you might expect, it looks as though we are going to be forced to live through every moment of this nightmare. I am sure a replacement will arrive eventually, and I'm equally sure that my wife will have a 2-way drive to Glasgow to deliver the stupid thing. How wonderful.

So there you have it, ladies and others: I hope that Curry's get themselves organised quickly, but it's very obvious that they could not care less. Me? I care very much; I hope they go bust in the nastiest, messiest way possible - but not for a year or two... 

Remember the name.

Hooptedoodle #404 - More Adverts from DumbFeed

 I was amused to find another example of OTT locally-targeted advertising - this time in the Edinburgh News website.

Some algorithm somewhere obviously worked out where I live, and that my age suggests I am just bursting to go on a cut-price luxury cruise, and it concocted - for my personal excitement - this tempting glimpse of how I may sail away from North Berwick in style. Just keep a steady supply of booze coming to my cabin, please, Steward. Oh - and cheese Quavers.

Grand! In fact this is just ox-droppings.

In the real world, as everyone who has ever been here knows, North Berwick harbour looks like this [and for a short video, click here], and you will note a total lack of cruise liners - nice, but no cruises, apart from the little motor boat around the Bass Rock.

Sorry about the music on the video, by the way - I guess it was very cheap, though.

Hooptedoodle #403 - Radio Tarifa

 This morning I have a lot to do, so I was having a look through my CDs to find some invigorating music to get me going. Ah! - Radio Tarifa - just the job... 

I was a big fan of these guys - still am, I guess, though they no longer exist. I am always a little nervous of World Music as a heading - so much of it can be meaningless if you weren't brought up in the culture and the musical traditions of the country you are listening to, though it's often very refreshing, and sometimes eerily familiar.

Radio Tarifa were something of an enigma - founded by two Spanish students of medieval music and North African music, they teamed up with a Flamenco singer, and became very successful in 1993. The band is named after a fictitious radio station they dreamed up, in Southern Spain, and the music, they reckoned, is the sort of stuff you would pick up late at night on such a station. The emphasis is Mediterranean, rather than Spanish, so there's all sorts in there - Flamenco, Jewish, Algerian and Moroccan music, and what I would regard almost as "Turkish Wedding" music, a rich mixture - always energetic, always brilliantly performed. They specialised in exotic and ancient instruments, and, though much of the material was traditional, they wrote a lot themselves, "in the style of" this multi-cultural genre they had created. I have seen a couple of live shows on video, and was confused to see that the band, on tour, was enormous - though nominally a 3-piece, they had many guest players. A real riot.

Their aim was to explore the music of the Mediterranean area as it was before the current nations were so well defined - when the Moors were still in Spain - maybe 15th Century is some kind of watershed; though this sounds a bit academic, the music is often festive and exciting. Heartily recommended by me, for what that is worth. The band took an extended break in 2006, which became permanent, alas, when the main singer died in 2012.

The track in the video clip is from, I think, their 3rd album, Cruzando el Rio, which dates from 2001. Of course, you may find it irritating, but it's great music for washing the recycling, I can tell you!