Hooptedoodle #413 - Storm Arwen, South East Scotland

 A Survivor's Tale

 

We were hit by the first named storm of the Winter last Friday night. My house hasn't been damaged, as far as I know, and we have no-one hurt here, but the farm has been badly affected - lots of trees down, a couple of buildings at the stables were blown over, and there are roofs off the big steading buildings along the lane at Auldhame. Electric power went off at 18:18, and came back on at about 21:30, but it appeared to have been restored only as an emergency service, on reduced voltage, which meant that we could boil a kettle very slowly, that traditional filament-type electric lights worked very dimly, modern energy-saving and LED bulbs didn't work at all, and that was about it. Microwave and most other things were not working, and our central heating was not interested at all at these voltages, so I lugged in some baskets of logs from the woodshed, to keep our stove going.

 

The phone service at Scottish Power, our electricity supplier, had been tweaked so that you could not speak to anyone (so you couldn't report anything, for example...) and gave pre-recorded messages which were heavy on heroism, and what a terrible time they were having, but said little that was useful or reliable.

 

Another thing which would not work at the low voltage was broadband, so the electricity company's advice to keep an eye on their website was especially irritating. Amazingly, I could get some kind of data service on my iPhone, but it came and went. By timing the boiling of a kettle, I estimated we must have been operating at something like 40% of the normal 240v.

 

We kept hearing in the recorded messages that Scottish Power's linesmen were making fantastic progress, and we were led to believe that everything would be restored by 8pm Saturday. The lads from the farm got the roads clear by Saturday night, so things were looking up. Then, Sunday morning, Tommy the Farmer appeared on my doorstep with a chainsaw (which was alarming) and announced that he had found a cable down "at the back of the Walled Garden", and if I was in touch with the supplier could I report it. I spent a few hours trying every known phone number, and just got the same recorded messages. However, one of the more obscure numbers gave the opportunity to leave a phone number of my own, so that someone could call me back. Eventually, about 2pm Sunday, a girl from Scottish Power's customer desk (which is in Birkenhead!) rang me, and I reported the break we'd found, of which they had no previous note. We were at least in the system now.

 

Monday morning some SP vans arrived and assessors looked at the damage, and promised that the linesmen would come to sort us out. I had to go into Edinburgh for an appointment that took up most of the day, and when I came home I found that the linesmen had, in fact, shown up, but for safety reasons had shut off the power completely, and would return as soon as possible to make a proper repair. Thus we were now completely in the dark, and even the kettle was no longer available. I understand about the need for safety, but this didn't really feel like progress.

 

About midday Tuesday the vans came back, and the boys got us reconnected at 16:10, disappearing immediately to get on with their backlog. I started going round the house, checking things, and everything seemed to be working except our central heating boiler, which is stubbornly showing a "C1" error code which suggests that, once again, the power cut has broken the fan. This happens occasionally - a problem of our set up here is that the service automatically attempts to reconnect in the event of a line fault, so that the electricity goes off in a series of flashes and stutters. It's the stuttering that does the damage.

 

Thinking we had maybe got off light, compared with the tales of disaster up and down the country, I phoned Worcester-Bosch and arranged for an engineer to come and sort us out on Thursday, and I was still speaking to their call centre when our electricity dropped out again!

 

I regret to say that I may have sworn when the place blacked out while I was still speaking to the very helpful young lady at WB, for which I apologised. She took it in good spirit - she said she spends her life speaking to people whose heating has broken down, so she isn't bothered!

 

Power was finally fixed permanently at 21:50 tonight, by which time I had gone to bed to listen to the Leeds game on my battery radio. OK - I got up, checked things were in order, proved that the boiler was still knackered, set the dishwasher going, tidied up a bit, etc etc... and I made myself a cup of coffee - first for a few days.

 

We just have to grit our teeth until Thursday. We can use electric radiators to keep the place habitable, the cooker works again, as does the microwave, we have light and TV and broadband. My wife plans to go to her gym each morning for a swim and to get a shower, and I'll use our electric shower upstairs, which is vastly inferior to the posh one downstairs but is good enough for me!

 

This afternoon I received a personal call from SP, asking were we all right and offering a £10 voucher for a hot meal. I'm proud to say I managed not to swear at that lady. I thanked her for the offer, in the spirit in which it is made, but pointed out that since we are going to have to write off some £150-worth of frozen and refrigerated food, and have had our lives put on hold for 4 days, the voucher is a little insulting if that's the extent of goodwill. I suggested that SP might put the £10 towards equipping a new telephone service which will allow customers to report problems.

 

I know there has been a lot of horrific damage elsewhere, and people have been injured and stranded, so it's important not to dramatise what's happened here. I am told that this is only the 6th time in recorded history that a red weather warning has been issued for East Lothian. They will have my full attention in future, I promise.

 

The farm has lost about 40 or 50 adult trees within about 200 yards of my house, some very big ones, and it will take a long while to get everything back to normal, but it could have been a lot worse. It is sobering that I didn't hear any trees coming down - couldn't hear anything for the noise of the wind. What infuriates me is that, if Tommy the Farmer had not found the broken cable on Sunday, then we would have continued to appear as a tick on some regional chart on SP's wall. As far as they were concerned, we were part of an area that had been sorted out, and they had fixed the phone system so that we were unable to contact them to correct that situation.

 

All the best to everyone affected by the bad weather.  Here are some photos - gratuitous violence:

 

 

At least we can get out - Saturday morning, the lads have cleared the lanes

 

Some of the damage at the Stables - the building right centre shifted about 20 feet and lost its roof, which blew into the hedge on the left

 

 

The cable which Tommy found - it is one of the 3 which bring the 3-phase supply to our hamlet - a spur from the main overhead feed. Behind you see the back wall of the "Walled Garden", which was built some time in the 1700s

 

 

It goes on to a transformer, and it was the power feeding back through this that gave us our accidental "reduced" service for a couple of days

 

An aerial photo of the area from a few years ago; on the left of the picture you can see the D-shaped Walled Garden, which once was a market garden with greenhouses, but is now pasture for the horses. This D-shaped field can be identified on Roy's military map of Scotland, 1747-55. The back wall is the one near us, close to the woods, and the cable is on this side of the wall. The tree which caused the extra damage is dark green, on the left edge of the photo. The place certainly doesn't look like this now, after the trees were flattened. The photo is facing almost due North

 

 

2 into 3 gives you about 100v, apparently...

 

Here's a view of the dark green tree from the aerial shot - not much of it left by Monday - Tommy has sawn up a lot of it to clear the gate

                                                                    Erm - sorry - not today it isn't...

 

More wrecked trees - all lined up, knocked down from the North East...

Another Old Wargaming Video - Southern Television

 This seems to me to be the sort of video that everyone with any interest in the subject will have seen, but it's new to me, and I thought it might be worth an airing here.

This was posted on Youtube by Caliver Books a couple of years ago. It looks like a clip from the early 1980s, and it features a brief potted history of (local) Southampton manufacturer Miniature Figurines, followed by a "how to play wargames" section featuring a very young Iain Dickie.

Pick the bits you like; I was impressed by the very weird opening sequence, of lead castings being melted, run backwards (which is satisfyingly surreal, and will be a big hit with all entropy fans), and by the presenter in the end section, Fred Dinenage, whom I vaguely remember as the host of kids' science programmes, including an explain-everything show entitled How?, which ran in various manifestations from 1966 to recent times. Also, of course, Dave Higgs working on 15mm figure masters with a soldering iron is pretty compulsive viewing.

The Bold Fred visits wargaming matters such as "why?" (which is a relative of "How?"), the role of dice in the game and the important issue of how wargamers' wives are likely to be hostile to their hobby.  

WSS: Half a Pint of Cavalry

 "They will say what men say now, Sire: that you have extended the limits of refurbishment."

Almost two years ago, I bought the 20mm part of Eric Knowles' WSS collection, which gave me a flying start into a new project, a new period.

For about 18 months I have been working away to refurbish as much of that collection as made sense; since I had also acquired a veritable mountain of good unpainted castings, and as the number of finished units becomes sufficient to have a game, the pressures have changed. The last refurb job I did (last week) was enjoyable, and I'm pleased with the results, but if I'm honest I have to admit that it might have been easier and probably better to start again with fresh castings.

Also, I have to face up to the fact that under the couch in the attic room I have 3 large boxes of painted candidates for refurbishment, and I haven't really looked at them for about 9 months. Something has changed in the priorities; also, some of these remaining ex-Eric figures are pretty battered, and some of them have uniforms which do not fit with my project. Thus I've decided to draw a line, starting with the cavalry. As from yesterday, I have ice-cream tubs full of Eric's old figures, soaking the old bases off.

 

Massed footbath

I also have some ready de-based figures soaking in the Clean Spirit jar, let's get them back to bare metal and check the castings are nice and clean. Once the ice-cream-tub footbath has done its work, I'll remove the rest of the figures from their bases and put them in the Clean Spirit.

 

Half a pint of cavalry

I have no shortage of soldiers to paint, so there's no point in hanging on to the scruffier end of Eric's painted armies if I'm not going to do anything useful with them.

This also calls to mind the possibility that some of my early restoration work for the WSS was not quite up to the standard I would be aiming for now. That's OK - I'm not worried about that - my earliest refurbs used the very best of Eric's troops, so I'm happy with them.

If I'm going to re-use old figures, let's make it sensible and productive!

Suppe und Blitzen - A Memorable Away Day

 This week I was very kindly invited to take part in another of Stryker's splendid Muskets & Marshals games, so I trundled Up North for a festival of Hinton Hunt wonders from Ian's collection.

My ally for the day was The Archduke, who had travelled rather further than I, and it was only proper that he should command the Austro-Russian force on our left, while I took charge of the Prussians on the right. The scenario set us the task of attacking Stryker's brave Frenchmen. The game was without any historical prototype, and our working title was The 3rd Battle of the Hut.  

I shall not attempt a full report here, since Stryker will certainly do an excellent job of that in his official Bulletin, and in any case his photos are always far better than mine. Let it suffice to say that the Allies won by a margin (which would have been larger if I had managed to avoid sacrificing most of the Prussian cavalry), that the hospitality and the rations were as excellent as usual, and a most enjoyable trip leaves me only the pleasant task of thanking Stryker and his good lady wife for their kindness and generosity.

I include a few of my own pictures, to give just a flavour of the action.

 

General view at the outset. from behind the Allies' left flank

 

The Prussians get rolling on the right flank, including an exciting flanking move by the light cavalry, over the top of the ridge on the extreme right; below you see the Archduke's more stately approach, though his cavalry attacked very effectively on our left

 

Apologies for including this shot, but there was no way I was going to miss it out! Here you see the debacle of the French Carabiniers à Cheval, who suffered badly from a (rather lucky) volley of canister shot...

 

My Prussian light cavalry had now outflanked the entire French army, but found themselves faced by the Guard Horse Grenadiers - it did not go well! 

 

 

Here the Russian Hussars set about some French line Chasseurs à Cheval - I must say that the Archduke's cavalry was more effective than mine throughout!

 

 

A general view from Allied left, as the Archduke's infantry moves into action towards the farm, and his cavalry is doing excellent work on the flank

 

 

Not only did I reduce the margin of our victory by losing cavalry, but a couple of general officers fell too - this is Gneisenau, but we also lost Blücher shortly afterwards. I'm confident that a brisk rubdown with gin and rhubarb will get them both back into action. Below you see the Austro-Russian lads looping around the French right flank, while their infantry attacks the farm

 

 

This is the bit of the French army we were at pains to avoid - a battalion of converged line grenadiers, backed up by two columns of the Old Guard

 

 

Situation late in the action, with the Prussians running out of steam on the Allied right, and the French reserve going on the offensive in the centre

 

Turn 8 is ended, the game is over and it is time for a totting-up of Victory Points. Points were gained for taking the farm and the ridge position, as well as for eliminating enemy units. The game was tremendous fun, though I am left to ponder the stats - the Archduke didn't lose a single unit - not even a skirmish group; my principal role was obviously to keep the French in with a chance!

Oh yes - Suppe und Blitzen is a reference to one of the visual entertainments of the day, as Stryker took on the task of blitzing the butternut soup with a formidable electric machine, displaying great courage and skill. I was deeply impressed by this - I would certainly have managed to decorate the kitchen with the soup.

 

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!