WSS: Webb's Foot

 

 

Webb's Foot. Yes, it is a very childish joke, but I've had good mileage out of this one; I've managed to exasperate most of my friends with it over the last week or two, and it's still quacking me up. Oh be still, my aching sides...

The final British battalion for this first phase of my WSS project has now been refurbished and is ready for the Duty Boxes. This has been a rather more challenging refurb job - the figures were from various sources - some were excellently painted, but in a style different from my own, and rather a long time ago; some were fairly roughly painted, and some were unpainted castings drafted in to fill gaps in command and provide grenadiers. Quite a bit of thought went into how to aim for a compromise style which would not clash with the rest of the armies!

Job done, anyway. These gentlemen are Webb's Regt of Foot, also known (for historic reasons) as the Queen's Regt.

A couple of units of Horse are being worked on as I write, and I have to do something about General Officers, and then that's it for now for the Brits. A group photo will be forthcoming, but not for a few weeks, I think. 

WSS: British Artillery Finished

 These chaps had been hanging around unpainted for a while, but my British Artillery is now complete (for Phase One, that is). I always find artillery slow and fiddly to paint up - lots of odd pieces of equipment and inconvenient poses - but I took a couple of late sessions over these and here they are. Last night, respecting the lateness of the hour, my painting music was an album of harp concertos performed by Marisa Robles, so I may always associate these fellows with some delicate and tinkly noises - maybe a little incongruous for the Ordnance Men? Suitable Artillery Music suggestions welcome...

The figures and the guns are by Irregular. I find their 20mm products useful, since they are about the only Marlburian range which will mix at all well with my Les Higgins armies, they provide a useful touch of variety, and often they are the only source of certain things. From a compatibility point of view, I wish their horses were just a little bigger, but a number of their horses will soon come into their own for mounting my French dragoons - at last the differential horse sizes will come in useful!

My new gunners are appropriately bright, shiny and toy-like - such are the rules for this project! I have to say that sometimes the Irregular chaps look a bit sketchy at the outset, but they invariably paint up well. Very useful, anyway. I can also use Lancer's artillery pieces and carts, which are very nice, but definitely not their 20mm figures.

Still on the bottle-tops are Webb's Regt of Foot, a refurb batch - they should be ready Saturday or Sunday; no particular hurry, I tell myself. Getting there. By Jove - getting there.

Hooptedoodle #412 - Personal Audio Time-Capsule

This is a very odd post, even by my standards. I have been sorting out some old archives of sound recordings - all manner of stuff, and I found two surviving examples of nature/wildlife recordings I made 20 years ago, which I have now put in a secure library until I think what to do with them.

I moved to my present address, which is on a farm on the South East coast of Scotland, in August 2000. At the time I was living on my own. I was commuting daily into Edinburgh, so during my first Winter here I only ever saw my house and garden in daylight at the weekends.

I was fascinated by the garden birds here. I had also acquired a good collection of the nature recordings of the Canadian, Dan Gibson, which were sold in airport gift shops in the USA under the general heading of Relaxation Tapes. I found them very therapeutic - this was a stressful time in my private life, and they helped me to sleep! 

 

I had a very good portable tape recorder, and decided I might try some nature recording here as a new hobby venture. I had good mics and everything, so I had a few sessions, which were very pleasing, but it became obvious very quickly that I was going to be frustrated by the number of low-flying microlights coming down the coast here from the airfield at East Fortune. Reluctantly, I shelved the project, and - of course - never went back to it. I have one surviving session which I listen to occasionally - about an hour, in 2 half-hour files, recorded one Sunday morning, 11th March 2001 - that's 20 years ago, and as it happens exactly 6 months before 9/11 (the Day the World Changed Forever).

 

The sun coming up - my garden photographed in March 2001. I note that my garage door was blue in those days (I had forgotten), and a number of mature trees and the electricity pole have disappeared since then. The recordings were made just off the left of the picture, next to the garage...

The recording was originally stereo analog, but I converted it to digital and made some mp3 transcriptions because the small file size is handy, and for nature sounds the quality is probably good enough. I listen to it from time to time because it's a lovely, relaxing thing to hear (at low volume, while reading, for example), and also because it's interesting for me to observe the definite changes in the ambient sounds over 20 years. If I tried it again now, the recording would be swamped by wood pigeons and collared doves - back in the day, there was much lively chatter from blackbirds, greenfinches, jackdaws and all the smaller chaps. Fabulous. Greenfinches have just about disappeared here now.

I set up my mics at the bottom of the garden - there is a wood beyond the wall - and left them to get on with it. Since there seemed to be some fighting going on, for the second half hour I shifted the mics a little further from the wood - nearer to the farm lane, to tone it down a bit. It's a Sunday, but there was noticeably less motor traffic 20 years ago. You can hear occasional parties of ladies on horses trooping past on the concrete road - it takes about 5 minutes to walk here from the stables, so when you hear horses it will probably be 5 minutes past the hour, paying parties of riders setting off every hour from 10am onwards!

At least one microlight appears during the recording (must have been sparse traffic that day); my friend Ian, who is a flyer, tells me that the engines in microlights now sound different, though I don't know what the changes have been.

Also, during the recording there are occasional high-flying airliners passing over, heading from the south east - straight over our farm. These would be planes from Amsterdam and Frankfurt, headed for Canada and Seattle. The transatlantic flights from London used to go out over Ireland, and of course we never saw any return flights, since they came in on the Jet Stream, directly West to East, rather than on the Great Circle. It seems to me that we very rarely see passenger planes flying over here now. Are there less of them? Do they go a different way now? Am I just too stupid to notice? Whatever, it used to be a commonplace here to see vapour trails against the blue sky, coming over the Cheviots at 35,000 feet and straight over here - I seldom see them now. Maybe this is a pandemic thing.

 

Another photo - same day. This is Horace, my 1989 Land Rover 90, next to the gate onto the lane. Horace was a lot of fun, but it cost a fortune to keep him on the road! [An LR 90 was what they called Defenders before they were Defenders]

In case you are mad enough to want to listen to it, the recording - my personal Time Capsule! - is on Google Drive. If you click on this link, you should be allowed to open a folder which contains 2 half-hour files - a Sunday morning in my garden, 20 years ago, horses walking past and the lot. If you know your birds, see who was there! If you wish to download it that's OK, but please don't abuse the share rights!

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.

Wargames which Turned Weird - (1) The Surprise Railway

 This follows from an email exchange with a friend - we have got into a discussion of the strangest wargames we've been involved in. His suggestions have been generally more entertaining than mine; most of my own involved grandiose projects - often with multiple participants - sometimes organised by established clubs - for which the average budgerigar could have accurately predicted disaster. Games which could never end, games which were scuppered by the non-arrival of a key participant, one game which was stopped by a burst water pipe in the flat above. You know the kind of thing - all this must be small beer to you veterans.

One game I still remember with trembling was my first attempt at staging a proper miniatures battle. In a big rush (I was looking for a new hobby), I read Featherstone's War Games from cover to cover, plus various magazine articles, and decided that Airfix-based ACW would be just the thing. I had no modelling skills, no knowledge, no idea. I bought the First Bull Run volume from the Knight's Wargame Series, and pored over every word [when you have a minute, count the ways in which this was a very silly approach].

Whatever, I was too busy to do much thinking - I spent about six weeks daubing paint on hacked Airfix troops - boxes of the beggars. In the pub, I spoke of my new project to my downstairs neighbour, Ken, who was very enthusiastic about the idea and offered to help me to get started. He seemed to be coming from the right sort of direction, since he had a large model railway stored away in his cellar, and also had an enormous dining table in his apartment.

Since my own model railway scenery was stored away in a box in a cupboard in my parents' house, in a distant city, I let him persuade me that he would be just the man to host a trial battle - he had plenty of HO-scale trees and stuff, even exotica such as papier-maché hills. If I just brought along my armies and a working knowledge of some rules or other, he would set up the field, and would stock up on beer.

We had some discussion about a suitable scenario. It was obvious that Bull Run itself was well out of scope, but I found a scenario in a magazine which involved a fight around a railway depot. Ken was very excited by this; we scribbled out a rough map, with a little railway and all that, and we arranged that I would bring my soldiers, rulers and dice down to his flat on Friday evening, and Ken would have the battlefield set up, ready.

When I arrived, on the Friday, I was dumbfounded to find that he had totally ignored our sketch-map and constructed a complete loop of railway, with a station and a tunnel, and a couple of little (modern) trains which were going round and round. Have you ever had a moment when the Universe slips a little? My armies were obviously irrelevant in this setting; I realised that this nice man who had invited me to look at his etchings had an evil plan.

I pointed out - diplomatically - that this was not at all what I had in mind, but it got rather nasty very quickly. He was obviously as disappointed as I was. Storming out was easy, but he was my neighbour, and he snubbed me for the next two years every time our paths crossed. Fair enough - I snubbed him too. In fact we got into a sort of running contest to see who could get his snub in first. Snub Wars.

My wife and I moved away to another house about 4 years later, and some time after that I bumped into him at a friend's wedding. He was quite affable, and asked me was I still doing the "toy soldier thing"; I admitted that I was, and he said he would like to come to one of my games sometime. Gave me his business card. I flushed it down the toilet approximately 15 minutes later. 

I never go out with men who do model railways on a first date.

I still laugh about this. The wargaming context is almost incidental, I suppose, but it rates as one of my classic Tricky Moments - I was young and awkward enough to be upset by it. Nowadays I'm just awkward, so such things don't bother me. 

Anyone like to offer any horror stories?

Hooptedoodle #408 - Miles & Omar - Backgammon revisited

 

 

My yuppie backgammon set, from Jenner's, circa 1979. Some nice, turned wooden playing pieces would set it off handsomely, eh?

Yesterday I was sorting out some board games (not of the wargaming variety), which currently live on top of the big bookcase in our sitting room. You need a step-stool to see them at all, since the bookcase is nearly 7 feet high, so this was a serious undertaking. I found some amazing stuff up there, but decided to keep only a very few games: apart from some good sets of traditional dominoes, I'll hang on to my best chess set and board, an old set of Scrabble (essential), the base set of Carcassonne (much loved - with a couple of the expansion sets), De Bono's L-Game, a nice old set of Nine-Men's Morris (Merelles), and - last but not least - my Backgammon set, which I haven't seen for about 20 years, and haven't played for 30. 

I got to thinking about Backgammon, which I used to play a lot, and enjoy very much. It was a game which I knew of as a small child, but only because there was a board marked out on the back of a folding Draughts (Checkers) board I had. Sometime in the late 1970s I became friendly with a fellow named Miles, whom I got to know during my visits to the National Library of Scotland reading rooms, in George IV Bridge, Edinburgh. I used to spend a lot of time at the NLS at that time, because I was studying for professional exams, and if I removed myself from home distractions and babies and suchlike I had a better chance of getting some heavy studying done (though I seem to have read quite a bit of Napoleonic stuff during these same visits, which suggests my dedication was still a bit lacking).

Miles worked as an assistant at the NLS. When I got to know him better I found that he wasn't actually a librarian - he was pretty heavily qualified as an Art Historian, but he seemed to have got stuck in a temporary job in the Library for something like 10 years. They didn't pay him an awful lot, either; he and his wife rented a grim little flat up a tenement stair in Leith - a bit like downtown Beirut. I met him for a beer one evening, and went to his house for supper. Miles produced an ancient backgammon set, set it up, and during the next hour or two he taught me the rules and we played a few games. I loved it. A couple of weeks later, Miles made a return supper-&-backgammon trip to my place, but this time we played on my old folding board, and the game loses a lot like that. Ideally, a proper board should be boxed in, so you can throw the men around and they slide expertly into the corners, and the dice stay off the floor, and you should have a real wooden "bar" in the middle to place pieces on when they are out of play. The sound and the feel of the game are important, so my utility version wasn't nearly so good. Lesson learned.

Next time Miles visited me he promised to bring his old set with him. This had been his Greek grandfather's. His grandfather had taught him the game when Miles was at primary school (in London - the family owned a restaurant), and had given him his old set. The rules Miles taught me, by the way, were what his grandfather had played - I'll come back to this later.

Anyway, on his next visit, he didn't bring his old Greek set; instead, he presented me with a brand-new and rather posh boxed set - all leather and polished wood - which he had bought in the gift department of the old Jenner's store in Princes Street (long gone). I was suitably overwhelmed, but very pleased, and my new, yuppies' backgammon set, which had very little authentic class but was satisfyingly expensive, featured in our fortnightly games evenings for the next year or so. A couple of house customs grew up:

(1) you always knew which end contained the "home boards" - it was the end next to the wine bottle! 

(2) we didn't use the Doubling Cube. Ever. Miles told me that his grandfather said that it was just a device to make sure the player with the most money won in the end, so it was ignored. Miles and I used to play a-penny-a-point, using his grandfather's scoring system (which, again, I shall come back to).

Then Miles suddenly got a job more in keeping with his qualifications, and moved away to That London to work for The Royal Collections, where his first involvement was the cataloguing of historical drawings and engravings at Windsor Castle. My (first) wife was a little shocked by Miles' new status and evident salary; she classified each of my friends as either "vulgar" or "creepy" (I don't know if anyone made it into both categories - she set very high standards for everyone - apart from herself, for some reason...), and I guess that Miles was probably a creep, since he was a very courteous chap.

So that was my Backgammon career on hold. I missed my friend and our games, but I moved on (as one does). 

One day a few years later my wife came across my trusty Jenners Backgammon Set (probably on top of another bookcase), and brought it to my attention, which astonished me. Normally my hobbies were beneath contempt, but Backgammon was somehow associated with Omar Sharif, which was very interesting indeed. I must explain that my first wife had a thing about Omar from earliest puberty (no - hers, not his - don't be silly). Omar, you had better believe, was neither vulgar nor creepy; she had seen Doctor Zhivago a number of times, and on each occasion she required some days to recover her equilibrium - she had very little idea of the storyline, however, despite all that study. I digress...

Anyway, possibly because of some imagined link with Omar, I was encouraged to find someone to play with, and eventually I talked a work-colleague, Edward, into coming around for a game. I had to teach him my house rules, but we got on very well, and a new fortnightly series started.

Tragically, it didn't get very far. It was my turn to go to Edward's house, out in the suburbs, when I got a message the day before our meeting that his wife had died very suddenly (in fact she had committed suicide, I am still horrified to recall) and that was definitely the end of backgammon until further notice - the clock is still running, awaiting my return. You can see this would be a bit of a trauma. [The poor lady's demise had nothing to do with her husband's new interest in backgammon, as far as I know.]

Back to this week. 

I dug out my old set - cleaned it up (still looks good), and did a bit of online reading to refresh my knowledge of the rules. Hmmm. It seems this is more complicated than I had remembered.

OK - I bumped into the Doubling Cube very early - it states that this is an option, but playing without it is regarded as like riding your bicycle with stabilisers fitted. That's all right - in my book, coolness is not essential. If Miles' version of the game has a long tradition in the village squares and coffee houses of Greece then that has a nobility of its own. I then had a look at scoring systems, and I didn't find Miles' granddad's system anywhere, though I did read that there are a lot of local variations in traditional rules.

Which, at long last, brings me to the point. My compliments to anyone who has got this far (apart from Frobisher, who certainly will not have put up with all those adjectives and stuff). If anyone has any experience of Backgammon (and if you haven't, may I say that I believe it is well worth checking out?), I'd like to run Miles' granddad's scoring system past you. Have you seen it before? It worked well for me for some years, should I be nervous about admitting to this? Are there any ancient Greeks in the house?

The system is:

* The loser of a game pays the winner 1 penny (or whatever) for each of his men (pieces) which is in his own (the loser's) Home Board at the end of the game, 2p for each man which is in his own Outer Board, 3p for each man in his opponent's (the winner's) Outer Board, and 4p for each which is either in his opponent's Home Board or on the Bar.

* This basic total is paid over as it is if the loser has commenced "bearing off" his men before the game ends.

* If the loser has not yet borne off any of his men, the result is a Gammon, which means that he must pay twice the total.

* It can get worse: if the loser has not yet borne off any men, and any of his men are in his opponent's (the winner's) Home Board or on the Bar, the result is a Backgammon, and he pays three times the total.

I think this system does affect the strategy a little, since players will try to minimise the cost of a defeat. If you are interested in the rules of Backgammon, you'll find them here.

Hooptedoodle #407 - JFK in Popular Culture?

 Unusually quick and pointless post today. Among the stuff which we inherited from my late mother-in-law's house after it was sold were some bin liners (trash can liners) made by Brabantia, a Dutch-owned company which specialises in household products of decent quality. I realise that this is a very well-worn and childish joke, but I like it, since I am a very well-worn and childish person. 

This will, inevitably, get us back to the eternal debate about whether Kennedy was correct when he said "Ich bin ein Berliner", after peeking over the Wall. My understanding is that, if he had just said "Ich bin Berliner", he would have said "I am [spiritually, empathetically] [a person] from Berlin", which is what I believe he meant.

It is argued that what he actually said, of course, is that he was a small doughnut which famously is a local speciality in Berlin. Obviously that is not what he intended, so the joke is short-lived enough, but people have to show off their imagined superiority, and have debated it ever since. I imagine that actual Germans would not think it was particularly contentious, and probably not awfully funny. It may even be that he could have said either - I don't really know, and stopped caring years ago.

It does occur to me, though, that if he had been visiting a different city, he would probably not have been advised to claim that he was a Frankfurter or a Hamburger.

Kilsyth 1645: The Game

 Wednesday evening - the days were accomplished; I was host, umpire and General Factotum (gopher) for the Battle of Kilsyth, in the company of my two guest generals, Dave and Dave - all by courtesy of Zoom Video Communications Inc, of San Jose, California, suppliers of state-of-the-art digital enabling systems to the World, and Lothian Broadband, of Haddington, Scotland, purveyors of brave-but-faintly-agricultural rural broadband services to the socially isolated.

There are two sub-themes here which should be identified now, and then we shall speak no more of them. 

(1) The first is that the Broadband Thing did get in the way a bit. We had a number of hangs, and one complete system collapse. During Turn 2, the broadband dropped out completely. This was not one of our familiar local temporary hiccups, which restore themselves fairly quickly after the odd freeze and Dalek impression - this was a full dropping of the Zoom session, such that I had to reboot our hub, start the meeting all over again, and phone my guests to apologise. We lived to fight on - as I suggested at the time, we must be due some bonus points for effort and stamina, and I am grateful to the Daves for their splendid resilience and good humour. Apart from the occasional smell of fertilizer, one other downside of the countryside is that some aspects of the infrastructure would be rejected as unreasonable elsewhere. It is interesting that our big dropout last night was around the time that Lothian Broadband's other customers must all have been hooking up to online coverage of the Champions' League football.

(2) Unlikely dice rolls. It has to be said that, after the Zoom restart, General Baillie had the most phenomenal series of bad breaks I've ever witnessed. Not only were his own rolls very poor, but his opponent, Montrose, also produced a series of spectacularly successful melee results, and the whole thing suggests that a properly audited investigation is necessary. In fact, since I was rolling all the dice, had no particular bias and used the same dice for both sides, I think we'll get through the VAR checks. There was occasional muttering about "Catholic dice", but all in good spirit...

 

General Baillie's personal chaplain, the Rev Dr I M Jolly of Letham, attempting to identify and banish the presence of Catholic Dice - all in vain...

We used the Ramekin modifications to my Commands & Colors-based ECW rules. We also used the Chaunce (event) cards from my base game, to add a little extra colour, but these cards were to be cued by tied (i.e. drawn) Initiative/Activation rolls, and there weren't any (the game only lasted about 8 turns) - so this was a bit of a non-event (so to speak), but in any case the worst powder explosion or unmapped swamp imaginable would have been trivial compared with the broadband risks, so let's not worry about it.

Here's our game map, with the brief explanatory notes I sent to the Daves beforehand:

 FT are Foot, TR are "Trotter" cavalry, HI are Highland levies. MG (confusingly) is Medium Artillery. 

 Background Story:

 

Montrose (red) was originally set up in an approximate line of battle stretching from around D7 and then upwards, off the table, waiting for the Dumb Covenanters to march along the road from Stirling (the road is just off the left edge of the table, and parallel to it). The initial rebel line up was (probably) Highlanders on the left, Irish in the centre, regular Foot on the right, with Horse covering the rear of the flanks.

Baillie (blue) realised there was a trap, so sent his army on a march along the bottom edge of the map, from the left, using dead ground as much as possible, heading to the high ground beyond the mill at Auchinrivoch, which would place him above and behind Montrose's left flank. If Montrose withdrew, or even just sat there, Baillie was happy to sit and wait for a reinforcement  commanded by the Earl of Lanark, which was coming from the west.

However, two things went wrong for Baillie:

(1) it seems that Montrose became aware of the flanking move, and moved his army to face to their left - their positions on the table reflect how quickly the units could move, and where they were starting from.

(2) for some reason, the small Commanded Shot unit (under Maj Haldane), which was to lead the Foot units to Auchinrivoch, and Home's (veteran) regt of Foot saw highlanders on the other side of the little valley, apparently looking a bit disordered, and deduced that Montrose's chaps were retreating over the mountains (north); thus both units stopped marching up to the mill, and turned to attack directly. Baillie failed to correct this, and was obliged to throw in as much as he could to make the best of this premature attack. Game on.

One can only hope that Major Haldane got a severe talking to afterwards - assuming they could find a suitable part of him to talk to.

 The OOB is:

Government Troops (Lt.Gen William Baillie) - total approx 4300 men

Foot

Maj.Gen Sir James Holbourne
Marquis of Argyll's Regt
Earl of Crawford-Lindsay's Regt
Col Robert Home's Regt (veteran)
Earl of Lauderdale's Regt
John Kennedy's Provisional Regt (remnants of the Regts of The Earls of
Cassilis, Glencairn & Loudon)
Maj John Haldane's [combined] battalion of Commanded Shot

Fife Brigade (Maj.Gen John Leslie [Adjutant])
Col James Arnot of Fernie's Regt (raw)
Col John Henderson of Fordell's Regt (raw)
Sir Thomas Morton of Cambo's Regt (raw)

Horse

Maj.Gen Earl of Balcarres
Earl of Balcarres' Regt
Harie Barclay's Regt (Lt.Col Mungo Murray)

Artillery

1 medium gun

Royalist [Rebel] Army (James Graham, Marquis of Montrose) - total approx 4800 men

Foot

Col James Farquharson of Inverey
Strathbogie Regt
Graham of Inchbrackie's Regt

Alasdair Mac Colla McDonnell
Col Thomas Laghtnan's Regt (veteran)
Col Manus O'Cahan's Regt (veteran)
Col James McDonnell's Regt (veteran)

Western Clans 1 (MacLean of Treshnish) (raw)
Western Clans 2 (MacDonald of Glengarry) (raw)
Western Clans 3 (MacDonald of Clanranald) (raw)
Western Clans 4 (raw)

Horse

Viscount Aboyne
Viscount Aboyne's Regt
Earl of Airlie's Regt

Col Nathaniel Gordon
The Gordon Horse

(unless otherwise stated, all troops are "Trained")

Oh yes - 7 Victory Points for the win.

 

Initial view of the battlefield of Kilsyth from the Southern end; on the right is the Government (Covenanter) army under General Baillie - at this end are the levies of new units raised in Fife (yellow counter means Raw), under the army Adjutant, John Leslie; beyond them are the Foot, under Baillie and Gen Holbourne, and at the far end are the Horse, under the Earl of Balcarres, who are (boringly) doing what they were asked to do, and heading for the high ground beyond the windmill. On the left is Montrose's (pro-Royalist) Rebel force, with highland levies to the fore, at this end they have the "regular" Foot regiments of Strathbogie and Inchbrackie, in the centre are Mac Colla's extremely scary Irish brigade, and the Horse are wherever they can be squeezed in. Montrose's force is hastily shifting to face its left flank, so is not at its most organised

 

And the set-up from the North end - you can see Balcarres with the Government Horse at this end, on the left side, and in the centre of the Government line you can see the small unit of Commanded Shot, under Maj Haldane, and the ex-Irish service regulars of Robert Home, both of which saw the Highlanders across the little valley, assumed the Rebels were withdrawing, and promptly abandoned Baillie's orders to head for the high ground, and took a short cut to attack. You may be able to see some red counters here, which identify Veteran units.

 

Balcarres' brigade of Covenanter horse, which stuck to the script and advanced up to the mill at Auchinrivoch - brave chaps, but they didn't know what the dice had in store for them

 

From behind Baillie's centre, here you can see Haldane's musketeers and Home's Regt heading off in the wrong direction. Why? Interesting - the musketeers were given the task of leading the flanking manoeuvre by Baillie, and possibly felt that a direct attack was what they had been ordered to carry out. Home's boys were old hands from Ulster, and certainly would have viewed the highlanders opposite as beneath contempt, and probably a soft opponent...

After Baillie initially took the high ground at Auchinrivoch, Montrose sent forward some of his Horse to clear away the Commanded Shot from one of the hills. At the windmill, Holbourne has Lauderdale's Foot.

As Mac Colla brings up his Irish brigade behind (red counters for danger...), a vigorous cavalry battle kicks off at Auchinrivoch. Here the Gordon Horse and Airlie's Regt (on this side, under Viscount Aboyne), take on Balcarres with all of Baillie's Horse.

 

Meanwhile, over on Montrose's right, the boys from Inchbrackie head off on their own, looking for adventure, with Farquharson of Inverey having the time of his life. The Inchbrackies had their eye on Baillie's only gun, reputed to be "The Prince Robert", captured by the Covenanters at Marston Moor

Baillie put the bulk of his Foot into a nice, tidy line, facing the Highlanders. At this end are one of the (raw) Fife units (yellow counter), but beyond that the foot are all experienced boys with service in England. [Note the presence of Baillie's Tree - recurrent private joke and Leitmotif]

 

Meanwhile, Murray's Horse and the Earl of Balcarres himself had both been disposed of by the Rebel cavalry, and the VP score was suddenly 3-0

 

 

From the Rebel right flank, we see the Inchbrackies closing in on the Government artillery in the foreground; in the middle distance, we can see that the Highlanders (yellow counters) have restricted their activities to swearing at Baillie's defensive line (in Gaelic), while at the far end the Irish Foot, the Strathbogie Regt and the Horse are chipping away at the Government forces, thanks to outrageous dice rolls [and I said I wouldn't mention them]. If you look carefully you can see the personal standards of Mac Colla and Montrose in the distance. If you can't see them, no matter

 

Below you see the last illustration of evil dice at work (C&C nerds will be interested in this). The unit in the dead centre of the picture is Home's Foot, who had a choice of attacking Airlie's Horse or the Strathbogie Foot in melee. They chose to attack the Horse, at which point Dave Montrose chose to carry out a Retire & Reform manoeuvre with the Horse (the photo was taken after the horse retired, which is why my narrative is probably making no sense), which gives their Foot opponents an unopposed strike in the melee, as the cavalry withdraw 2 hexes, though the effectiveness of the strike is potentially reduced, since "crossed-sabres" and "flag" results do not count in this case. In the event, Home's boys rolled 3 sabres and 1 infantry symbol, scoring zero hits on their opponents. If they had chosen to fight the Strathbogies instead, this roll would have scored 4 hits, more than enough to wipe them out. OK, they didn't, and the dice would probably have been different anyway, but this sets the tone of what was going on! 

 

 

By this time, the Inchbrackies had captured the Goverment's cannon, and now engaged the (raw) boys of Col James Arnot of Fernie, and eliminated them

 

 

Now the Earl of Airlie's regiment of Rebel Horse finished off the Earl of Balcarres' Horse, who went to join their leader in the boneyard. This was Turn 8 (I think) - the Rebels had now eliminated the Commanded Shot, both regiments of Horse, the Earl of Balcarres, the single cannon, the unhappy Fife boys from Fernie and the Earl of Lauderdale's Foot. That's 7-0, folks. Game over.

 

 

A close-up of Robert Home's Regt of Foot, facing up to the Strathbogie Regt. They survived the defeat unscathed.

 

 

The Gordon Horse, with Nat Gordon advising them from the rear. One of the stand-out units on the Rebel side

 

Baillie, who knows that his plan was correct, is right in the foreground (Base #94), with his line of good infantry, still glaring at the distant Highlanders as the rest of his army heads back to Stirling in disorder. He will subsequently write two justificatory letters (which I have here), neither of which, for some reason, says anything about dice

My compliments and thanks to my collaborators, for their company and for braving the realities of Rural Broadband. Thank you gentlemen, very much. Simply because I feel that Chance will even itself out in the end, I am more than tempted to stage this game again.  On the other hand, how would it be if the generals swapped sides, and the luck moved over to the Government side? Hmmm.

Better think this through.

If anyone thinks there is a shortfall here on the background and the campaign leading up to this battle, please look back a few posts on this blog and there is plenty. If you've read through this far, my thanks and my compliments to you as well!

Here's something to think on: the dice had a mind of their own, however, it is worth noting that, with the sides quite evenly matched, the result and the narrative are surprisingly close to history, though in the real battle the Highlanders were more active. Once again, Hmmm...