Hooptedoodle #411 - the Thrill of Waiting for a Courier

 Continuing theme, I guess. This particular tale dates back to 20th October, and has a happy(ish) ending, but, for once, is almost a sympathy vote for couriers. Whatever else, it reminds me that I would hate to have such a job, and that we really should be grateful that such an overwhelming proportion of goods bought online arrives safely.

To set the context, I live on a farm in a very quiet area of Eastern Scotland. My postcode is shared with a few dozen other houses, over an area of about 1000 acres (no, really), so this is The Land Where Sat-Navs Struggle. The particular hamlet where I live, as the small number of readers who have visited me may be aware, is especially challenging, since the house numbers were allocated as the buildings became residences. Sometimes this means the date the house was built, sometimes it is the date it was converted to a house from something else. Thus, for example, a walk around the square of cottages which forms the heart of our little community will reveal that No. 17 (which was formerly a granary, I understand) is between Nos. 10 and 11. There are other examples of randomness, accumulated over 150 years or so; this is child's play to an experienced local postie, but for weary couriers from faraway, logical places like Edinburgh it must be very trying.

One (occasional) result is that the driver will fail to find the correct address altogether. Another (more common) is that parcels are delayed; a self-employed, gigging driver paid by number of deliveries will spend his time more profitably delivering several parcels to a sizeable village like Whitekirk than trying to find one house in the middle of nowhere on a farm. Frequently the parcel will be handed on to whichever poor chap has the following day's shift - in such cases, the official explanation in the courier firm's online log can make entertaining reading:

THE HOUSE WASNT THERE

THE ADDRESS IS WRONG

etc

Sometimes, alarmingly, it might say 

DELIVERED TO HOUSE WITH BROWN DOOR AND LEFT IN SHED

which is not so good if you live in a house with a white door.

By and large, things go surprisingly well. Drivers who have been here before are usually all right, but there seem to be a lot of new delivery drivers. Maybe that is where the UK's vanishing taxi drivers have gone.

A positive new development is that now you usually get a photo of the parcel sitting in the open door of the delivery address, which is a result of social-distancing measures introduced for Covid, but is also the first form of satisfactory evidence we've had (signatures are legally meaningless, apparently).

Righto - enough, already - back to the 20th October. I had ordered some fairly routine stuff from Amazon (shave gel, for a start...), and I received an email from DPD, the courier, announcing that they had my parcel and that Derek would deliver it between 10am and 10pm. Good lad, Derek - it was a dreadfully wet day.

I received a succession of meaningless updates during the day, all to the general effect that My Main Man Derek was on his way, and eventually, long after dark, I got one final email announcing that Derek had delivered my parcel, and was the delivery great or not so great?

Ah - it might have been great, Derek, but it was not here. Not having a parcel to celebrate with, I downloaded the delivery photo, and there it was...

 

My parcel, but not my  house, and not my legs

I messaged a couple of neighbours, but no-one knew anything. Eventually I put on my waterproof jacket and Tilley hat, found a flashlight with a good battery, and set off for a short walk.

Found it - I recognised the doormat, and there, sitting on it, getting very wet, was my parcel - it was correctly addressed to No. 13, but had been delivered to No. 3. It was very dark and wet, and the driver must have been very fed up. I knocked at No. 3 - no answer, so I took possession of my package and trotted home.

In subsequent conversation with the occupant of No. 3, who is a very pleasant young lady, she said

"I told him this was the wrong address - he must have just left it there."

Hmmm. Maybe he did. Alternatively, maybe she realised it was the wrong address after he'd gone, and just stuck it on the doormat in case he came back.

A small mystery, which is of no consequence, but consider the odds. An employed driver knowingly abandons a parcel at the wrong house? - maybe. Or my neighbour, interrupted while watching a TV movie (or whatever), assumes it is someone else's problem, and abandons the package to the elements, though she could have kept it for me, or let me know, or walked the 300 metres or whatever it is to deliver it?

It doesn't matter at all, but it amuses me that, in her heart, the neighbour knows that I know that she knows that I know that she didn't do very well. No hard feelings, and nothing further will be said, but I have a moral edge...

 

Les Higgins - Some Background Trivia [independent verification needed...?]

 I have been collecting, painting and fighting with the little products of Les Higgins Miniatures for about 50 years. I am still a devout fan, although they do bring some frustrations to the serious collector and they are regarded as something of a niche, off-mainstream manufacturer now.

 

The ensign from set MP19, officers and NCOs for the Malburian period. They have an unsurpassed elegance, I think, but they are small for 20mm - these chaps are 1/76, which means they don't fit with plastics!

There is, as always, a nice little biography at Vintage20Mil, and I had some useful discussions with Clive Smithers about LHM and the successor firm, Phoenix Model Developments. I was aware that Les was primarily a sculptor, and part of his background was in the design and casting of pewter figures for use on sporting trophies and so on, though my knowledge is very sketchy and I had never seen examples.

A while ago, a friend sent me a link which I have now (at long last) got around to checking out. It seems that Les was also a keen archer, a member of the Northampton club. In 1957, around the time when he was producing his first "subscription series" drop-cast ECW 20mm figures, he was commissioned by the Countess Manvers* to make a 2-foot tall statue of Robin Hood, as an archery prize to be known as the Thoresby Trophy, competed for each year in the grounds of Thoresby Hall, Nottinghamshire, as an attraction to raise the profile of the estate at Thoresby Park.

 

The Thoresby Trophy for archery, sculpted by Les Higgins, and first competed for in 1958

My primary source here is a memoir about a gentleman named Peter Bond, which you may find here, in the annals of Northampton Archery Club. Apart from the pictures, the narrative mentions that Les and his wife, Pat, had a son, Gary, who also became a noted sculptor.

 

The Chairman's Trophy, also the property of Northampton Archery Club, which was sculpted by Les Higgins' son, Gary, who was a keen archer and member of the club

I publish this post with familiar caveats - I have no permission to use the club's material, so if any objection is raised I may pull this at short notice(!). Also, of course, my understanding of this may be complete bunkum, based around the coincidence of there being two sculptors from Northampton with the same name in the 1950s - I doubt it, but it's possible!

* The Countess Manvers (Marie-Louise Roosevelt Pierrepont, née Butterworth, 1889-1984) is quite an interesting character - she studied art extensively and had something of a reputation as an amateur  watercolourist. She moved to Thoresby in 1939. 

 

Countess Manvers at work in London in 1962

WSS: More Brits - The Earl of Orkney's Foot

 Another new unit ready for the Duty Boxes. This one very nicely painted for me by Count Goya, the famous international polymath and part-time owner of warships. This regiment contains a number of pre-owned figures which needed an amount of refurbishment, while the command and the grenadiers are all unused castings which required painting from scratch.

Normally I regard refurb work as the dirty end of my wargame projects, so I do it myself, but Goya is a top-class refurbisher in his own right, and he has done a lovely job here.

These chaps, then, are the Earl of Orkney's Foot, ready for service in 1703-4. As is customary with the British army at this time, one of the problems is who they are and what we might call them. This lot could also be the Royal Regiment, or (informally) they might be referred to as the Royal Scots, but definitely not the 1st Foot until nearly 50 years later (though it probably helps to identify which regiment we are talking about).

So why (I hear you asking, as I did myself) does a Royal regiment not wear dark blue facings, in proper Royal style? It seems that Royal regiments only had blue facings at this time if they were part of the English establishment, and in 1703 these fellows were definitely Scottish, so blue facings were not a consideration until after the Act of Union in 1707.

That's quite enough about that. 

The weather was better today, though we did go through a brief charade here during which the sun went behind a cloud each time I emerged from my front door. That's not a problem - I simply sighed patiently, and waited for it to come out again. You have to demonstrate that you are not distressed, and the weather gets bored quickly.

Figures, as ever, are Les Higgins 20mm, and the mounted officer (though not his horse) is from Irregular.

WSS: Some New Brits

 Four new units based and flagged yesterday.

First of all, some lovely paintwork by Lee; I am very pleased to welcome these two units:

 

1st Foot Guards

 

Schomberg's Horse

At a much more mundane standard, there are two refurbished units of my own:

Royal Regt of Ireland (Hamilton's Foot)

 

The Buffs (Charles Churchill's Foot)

It is a gloomy sort of day today. Too damp to go outside, and the light in the attic isn't really adequate for indoor shots. I tried a few flash photos, but the gloss varnish makes it hard to get any sense out of these. I am reminded that a light box is one of the numerous projects with which I have made no progress this year!

As always, the figures are mostly Les Higgins/PMD. The mounted command figures are Irregular, but the remainder, and all the horses, are Higgins. More British troops in the pipeline, so I'll make an attempt at a decent group photo when they arrive. The lighting people have been warned.

WSS - The Attic Room

 After a few months off, to leave space for some heavy Real Life stuff and also to avoid some oppressive heat up there, I've got back to some soldier painting in the Attic Room.

 

Up in the roof - very quiet up here, except when it's stormy. Tea and biscuits and I'm up for it.

I'm working pretty slowly, restricting myself to sessions of about two and a half hours, but it's pleasing to be back at it. I'm sort of getting myself comfortable with what I hope will be a useful Winter of hobby work. I'm attempting to establish some kind of default routine, so that it feels as though I know what I'm doing!

 

Lots of bright lights, and during daylight hours I keep the blind shut for painting, since my poor old eyes don't like overhead light.

Some suitable radio programme on in the background (if there's no football on it's usually BBC Radio 3 these days, not least because they have minimal news coverage, and I may now have retired from listening to the news...), a flask of black tea and some Abernethy or Digestive biscuits and I'm very peaceful up there!

I have some excellent painting work going on elsewhere, contracted out to guys who paint much better than I do, which will appear here before long, but I've resumed some of my ongoing WSS refurb work. As ever, this refurb stuff is an industry with traditions all of its own. The original figures are never as good as I thought they were, I spend a lot of time fiddling around improving things that I had planned to leave alone, I keep being reminded that these are never going to look as good or as crisp as work on fresh castings would, but they will be fine when they are finished!

 

Not yet ready to be looked at - I'm currently half-way through the belting and leatherwork; these chaps will take a big step forward when they get their hats painted!

I'm currently working on a batch of pre-owned figures I bought from the Rye Soldier Shop before it was closed by Covid; the figures on the bottletops at present will, by the weekend, be The Buffs (Holland Regiment, Charles Churchill's Foot, whatever) and the [Royal] Irish Regt (Fred Hamilton's Foot). After that I have some more refurb work to do on some rather better figures, these acquired from the legendary Albannach last year - I am still pondering who they'll be after a wash and brush-up.

British army is shaping up - still some more Horse required, and I'm short of a couple of guns and most of the Staff, but definitely getting there. Next after that will be a belated assault on the French - there are hordes of them waiting to be painted! After that there should be some Dutch, the odd German principality and what not. However, at the moment, my immediate objective is to get settled into my Winter studio, and get used once again to painting regularly and in sensible amounts. Looking forward to it, actually.

Hooptedoodle #410 - Big Bang in Oman

 The kick off for this yarn is an incident we had here about a month ago on the farm. Some unusually well organised hooligans appear to have arranged an impressive firework display on the beach in the early evening. It lasted about 15 minutes, was very noisy, and scared the resident horses very badly, as you might expect. Apart from being inconsiderate, this is also very illegal. One horse in the stables was injured, fortunately not seriously, but it took a while for everything to calm down afterwards. There was a pile of rubbish left on the beach, but there was no sign of the perpetrators, only 20 minutes after it finished. [Bad strategy here - the farming family sent a couple of people down to the beach, whereas they would have done better to wait for the baddies coming up the lane from the car park, on their way out. I may even have heard the getaway cars, come to think of it. Note for next time.]

This incident has reminded me of my favourite-ever firework story, of which I am so fond that I was sure I must have trotted it out here before. I did a quick search on this blog, but couldn't find it, so - if I have told it before - any mismatches between this version and last time can be attributed to old codger's licence, which is a noble tradition. I also have to own up that one reason the story is a hit with me is because I am shamefully scared of all sorts of fireworks. I come from a long line of cowards.

In the days when I was musically more active, I was involved in a jazz festival in the Middle East (this, I reckon, was October 1998), flying from Amsterdam to Bahrain by Gulf Air business class (I only ever flew in anything other than steerage class if someone else was paying - normally, my seat on an aircraft was equipped with oars). I found I was sitting next to a rather scruffy-looking English chap on the plane, who I assumed must be another musician; however it transpired that he was a technician working for a British company who specialised in putting on what he described as "high end" firework displays. It seems that fireworks are very popular in the Emirates and thereabouts, and he was on his way to do some estimating for some mighty forthcoming show.

He told me some entertaining tales of life in his industry - he had set off big bangers all over the known world, and some of the sums of money involved were very scary indeed; let us not get into the politics, but the cost of one of these shows would have fed or educated an awful lot of people for a long time.

He told me about one very special show in Muscat which had gone badly, some years earlier. He was (disappointingly) pleased that his company had not been involved; it was a Dutch organisation, who were sued into oblivion as a result.

The event was (I think) connected with the National Day, and many hundreds of invited guests of the Sultan of Oman and his family were there. Royalty, heads of state, film stars, the Stinking Rich and all sorts of international gangsters - the place was dripping with jewellery, there were $1000 dresses all over. The heart of the event was a 2 hour concert dinner, featuring the Vienna Philharmonic, Andrea Bocelli and so on and so on. Fireworks were to be tastefully added to the entertainment throughout, building to a blockbuster finale, complete with full orchestra. There were 3 articulated wagon-loads of fireworks, and the technology was all state of the art for that time - lighting, orchestral cues and the firing of the pyrotechnics were all driven by MIDI, which is where we were at in those days.

Everything started around 7pm in a huge garden setting, built specially for the occasion. There were some introductory speeches, and then the orchestra began with some very gentle Strauss, while champagne and the first appetisers were brought out. The requisite, subdued floral-effect fireworks were started up, and, because of some (mooted) electrical fault, the entire 3 trucks-worth of fireworks all went off in a single, sustained barrage lasting about a minute.

No-one was hurt, fortunately, though some may have been temporarily deaf for a day or two. There was a general state of shock, as you would expect, with people sitting, concussed, in their soot-stained finery. I had a wonderful moment wondering how they must have spent the rest of the evening, but apparently some contingency plan snapped into action, everyone was hustled away to waiting transports, and the site was cleared very quickly. There may have been a few beheadings - legend does not relate - but there was certainly a complete news embargo. This, of course, was in the days before social media would have made such a thing impossible.

That's the end of the story, really. I failed to find any evidence of this Big Bang online - maybe it never happened, though the guy's stories were generally very good and seemed plausible - I can't think why he would make it up. Form your own judgement. Quite why I should be quietly pleased by the idea of so many rich people being frightened at such extreme cost is something I'll have to think about, but there we are.

If you have been upset by this story, please phone our usual number for counselling. Whatever you do, please take care with those sparklers in the UK on November 5th.

 

Hooptedoodle #409 - Uncle Scrooge Saves the Planet (again)

 

A few days ago, I received a letter from my supplier of domestic LPG. It told me that, since wholesale prices for gas have increased by 30.8% (hmmm; accurate = scientific), they are going to have to put a major hike on the price of delivered gas, but they can assure me that the price will be reduced again as soon as possible (click here).

Fair enough - not unexpected. I am embarrassed that it should have required the possibility of financial cost, but this has encouraged me to get on with something I failed to do last winter, which is to check the on/off times for our heating system. It turns out that on weekdays it was coming on at 05:30, which dates from the time when my wife had to get up extra early to deliver our son to the school bus, and switching off in the evening at 00:30 - this because the same son used to sit up late playing video games, and liked sauna-like temperatures while he was doing it. Since he is now gone to college, I reprogrammed the timer, and it will now come on at 07:00 and turn off at 22:30, with a sensible off-period during the day.

I estimate I have reduced the "switched on" time for heating by about 34%. Of course, the whole system is subject to thermostatic valves, and we will certainly continue to wash, but I am confident that I have just about cancelled out the expected increase in my gas bills by the simple expedient of being stingy. Excellent, and I am positively glowing with pride at the benefits for the environment.

I realise that a similar approach to offsetting an electricity hike will require dirtier clothes, cold food and more sitting in the dark, but so far so good.