Paint Table Sunday: Back from a break, reading a wargames magazine over lunch, new temptations and devil dogs

I haven't been painting for  around two months now, largely because the Old Bat has taken a turn for the worse with her Long Covid and Charlotte has been unwell too, so I have spent a lot of time running around after them, going to pick up prescriptions, take the Bat for blood tests, doing domestic stuff, gardening (ugh) and cooking with some work fitted around all that. Latterly it has been the Tour de France on TV as well. Really, however, I have just not felt like it. We had that very hot weather which made painting impossible and then it got very grey and dark and I really need good light to paint as I cannot manage it under artificial light at all. Mainly, however, I was in that situation where the figures I had started on my workbench (to use an inappropriately artisanal term which makes it sounds like I could actually make something) were really only just started. I find nothing more demotivating than having a load of figures which are a long, long way from being finished.

Today, however, I actually sat down and did an hour's painting. It was all base coat stuff and I was struggling with my eyesight again but I will try to do a bit every day; as I have done in the past. I have Lucid Eye Atlanteans, Crooked Dice V aliens and some of the new Wargames Atlantic Afghans on the go. Now, since I got the latter, Perry have announced their own plastic Afghans as well but I will just get those too. With Afghans you need as many different figures as possible. More interestingly, Wargames Atlantic have announced plastic mounted Afghans which I will need for my The Men Who Would be Kings force (as I have actually painted my British starter force). I suspect the Afghans will be quicker to paint than the others.

In the past, my far from eagerly awaited pieces, Reading Wargames Magazines Over Lunch, have described a succession of meals in London, usually in what would otherwise be non productive gaps in my work schedule between meetings. No such luxury these days, as I haven't been to London since 28th February, so it was a rather unexciting tuna salad (the only fish I eat, along with smoked salmon) in the garden as I am on yet another gentle fitness programme. 

A long time ago as photographed by Sophie...

This one is working quite well, mainly because I do not have the Old Bat bullying me into running which I can no longer do, due to bad knee and hip joints (caused by doing too much road running in my twenties and thirties). Instead, I spotted something on Facebook called the Conqueror Challenge where someone (in New Zealand, where there is little to do) organises set walk routes which you do virtually. So you choose your target walk (I chose the ninety mile Hadrian's Wall) and you go out and walk (or run or cycle) whenever you want and put the total down (I've worked out how to do this on my phone or, rather Charlotte did).  You pay £28 per challenge and then have a homepage you can plot your progress on. The Old Bat thinks that paying someone else so you can walk is insanity but it is working and I have been doing it for three months now. I completed Hadrian's Wall and am now doing the 280 mile Grand Canyon (as I have visited there). You can even see where you have got to, virtually, on Streetview. The Streetview views of the Canyon are not very interesting. It's a rocky canyon with a river at the bottom. That's it. Even Up North looks more interesting than that.

They even send you a very blingy medal when you finish so you do get something for your money. When I started, in June, I struggled to walk a mile and a half and was puffed and had chest pains but a month ago I walked six and a half miles home from Epsom hospital after my latest eye injection. You aren't allowed to drive after the injection and the Old Bat is still too ill to drive me, so the fact I could walk that far (in thirty four degree heat) shows how far I have come. No more breathlessness and no chest pains! I have to admit that accompanying wine and food for the Tour may have had a somewhat retrograde effect in the last two weeks, though, so I did another six and a half mile walk today.

Wargames Illustrated have been giving away a lot of Warlord Games figures. I can't bear to throw them away but I don't want most (any?) of them. There must be lots of wargamers with piles of these things. It's like accumulating Salute figures or free plastic rubbish from cereal packets in the sixties. The idea, of course, is that you look at your freebie and then go out and buy more. The opposite has been true of me, I am afraid. I looked at a set of Warlord Napoleonic cavalry and was so unimpressed by the poor sculpting and lack of crispness in moulding I vowed never to buy any Warlord plastics again. Victrix they are not. Anyway, last month the give away was a set of rules for Warlord's new French bread pizza naval wargame, Victory at Sea, which I have no interest in, having seen the ridiculous bases the models are on. Maybe it's not selling very well. Despite being interested in warships and having built many an Airfix ship model in the past I have no interest in naval wargaming. I just see an article in a wargames magazine on naval wargaming and my brain goes into power-saving mode. Yawn. So I didn't bother reading the rules showcase on the rules or another article about eighteenth century naval wargaming. I don't scan over the articles in Miniature Wargaming because the type is now so small I struggle to read it even with my reading glasses. I have to really want to read it to strain my eyes that much. Surely most wargamers are old like me and have eyesight that has deteriorated? Perhaps not. My father in law is 92 and doesn't use glasses for anything.

There was quite an interesting article on how wargames manufacturers are coping with the Chinese Virus but I was surprised, given Baccus employ seven staff, to discover, according to the article, that Warlord employ 103 people. One thing that occurred to me, regarding all the lockdown stuff, was how many rules writers were producing new solo versions of their games. I think I wouldn't buy a set now if it didn't have some solo rules as, realistically, I am not going to be able to organise my own games for multiple players. None of my close friends are interested in wargaming (possibly because most of them are women). I am still too nervous about the Chinese Virus, seeing what it has done to the Old Bat, to venture over to the Shed, despite Eric's kind invitations. Will things return to normal and solo players be forgotten again or will the Chinese keep churning out deadly viruses every year in their bat infested labs until they have achieved the crushing economic dominance they are seeking in their, no doubt, forty year plan?

Starlux 54mm (cicra 1970)

I always look at the figure reviews in magazines and in the August issue I discovered that the new Plastic Soldier Company 15mm ancients figures are made of that new plastic resin which gives them bendy spears, No thanks. I had enough of that with my Airfix figures. Presumably, if they used hard plastic the spears would all break off, which demonstrates, once more, how inferior 15 mm is as a scale for model soldiers because the material you make them from seriously distorts the look of the figures (metal ones have fat spear syndrome, of course). Also, in the review section were the new Victrix French Imperial Guard lancers, How lovely are these? I would love a box of them! My father bought me a Starlux, painted 54 mm figure of a Dutch lancer (sorry, it's a better uniform than the Polish ones) when we went to Paris when I was small (I still have it).

 But I saw an early painted example (above) of the Vixtrix models which just made me realise that I can't paint Napoleonics any more. Does unattainable quality painting of this level actually put people off from buying? It did me.  I couldn't even begin to approach this level of painting. Just trying would stress me out. Thinking about the stress I have experienced here in Chez Sick over the last months I realise that one of the reasons I haven't been painting is that I often find painting figures stressful, not relaxing, when things don't go the way I want them too.

The theme of much of the magazine was command and control which writers all seem to think isn't considered very much in wargames magazines but actually seems to come up quite regularly. This is of great import to the gamer (rather than painter, like me) end of the hobby who love to bang on about it all the time. I remember many tedious discussions about it when I went to Guildford Wargames Club (an old school sort of club) which I no longer go to, partly because of the stress of driving down the A3 on a Monday night in an eighty mile an hour traffic jam. I didn't read any of these command and control articles as they are probably designed for all those people who used to write orders on paper or have courier models to deliver orders. They tend to not care if their wargames table are covered in counters (which I hate). 

There was one article I actually bought the magazine for. I recently picked up Dragon Rampant, as it was reduced, and this article by Daniel Mersey, the rules' author, included all the statistics for the Copplestone Barbarica range of 18mm fantasy figures. Well, the name Barbarica is fairly recent, they weren't called that when they first came out (18mm Fantasy was the catchy name Mr Copplestone devised) and I bought a lot of them. Having been rude about 15/18mm figures in my last (and this) post I am quite excited now about organising some armies for these rules, as they require small forces. I painted some of these about nine years ago (above) and have some others underway (if I can still manage to paint them!). They are very small.

Now, of course, I shouldn't buy any more figures but I did buy into the Kickstarter for Hot and Dangerous figures which are, essentially, 28mm models of attractive ladies in historical uniforms (what can be their appeal?). They are reasonably historical and not too pin-up like, compared with some I have seen, perhaps because, they have a lady designer. They are a Polish firm, I believe. Certainly some will go on eBay but I just hope I can paint them to the standard they deserve.

A major temptation are the Perry brothers announcement of plastic Franco-Prussian War figures. Will this mean metal ones as well? I bought some Franco Prussian figures from Eagles of Empire some time ago but they were, perhaps, a little too idiosyncratic in style for me.

However, this week Eagle of Empires announced a new range of First Schleswig War figures. Now some years ago Matt Golding, of Waterloo to Mons, started to produce his own range of (25mm) figures for this but the range went into limbo, so I might be very interested in these, depending on what the figures look like. Early examples look good.

Good news is that North Star have put their 1864 range back up on their website so I will order some more Danes to finish my first unit.

Two rants this week. One wargames related and one not.

Now, last time I derided the people who hijack new products launches with demands for information on forthcoming pet projects or different scales. This time I have recently seen examples of ridiculously inappropriate ranges in plastic. Some time ago Victrix launched a page on the internet where people could make requests as to what they would like the firm to do next. As ever, some of the answers amazed me. Now I see Victrix as what I would call a rank and file supplier. You buy lots of boxes of core troops in plastic from them and then fill out the more unusual items with metals. Making plastic figures is expensive so you need to be on to a sure seller to make money hence, no doubt, their focus on Napoleonics and Ancients/Dark Ages. Some of the suggestions are very sensible such as Biblical or Bronze Age figures where, rather like the Dark Ages, the number of different troop types needed is quite limited. It didn't take long for the first request for Dynastic Chinese to come in, then Renaissance Poles, fourteenth century Koreans, War of 1812, Bannockburn period, Spanish Civil War etc. Then there was a suggestion for Ancient civilians. And how much diversity will plastic enable you to do on these? Think, man, think. Then there were the people who said 'I know such and such a company already make them in plastic but yours would be better' (ACW and WW2). Then, of course, you had people suggesting plastic forts and dice. One woman suggested female figures including such future best sellers as RAF female supply pilots. Really? A plastic sprue of these? Calm down dear.  Wargames Atlantic, who are even more a rank and file supplier, have also just launched a similar poll to equally inappropriate answers.

This is how I see all dogs.

Speaking of which, one of Wargames Atlantic's recent sets was of Dark Age Irish, which would be quite useful for Vikings in Ireland type games. However they include no less than six warhounds in the set. I have noticed a plethora of doggy models coming out recently. Were war dogs really that common? I  have to confess (and I know some of my readers really like them) that I hate dogs. Not just dislike but hate the stinking, filthy, barking, biting, disease carrying, aggressive carnivores. I cannot for the life of me understand how people can bear to have them in their homes. It's just medieval! Would you keep a sheep or a pig in your house? Ugh! No doubt this is all made worse by recent encounters on my walks by these bounding, yapping creatures jumping up at me when I am trying to walk, quietly. "Oh he is just being friendly' cry the owners, who are totally unable to keep them under control. No he isn't. He is a dog. He is seeing if he wants to eat me. Last year more than 3000 people in Britain needed surgery after dog attacks, Another 5000 had to go to hospital but didn't need surgery. Imagine if wargamers were injuring this many people. Wargaming would soon be banned as inciting violence. Before Lockdown, my lovely former girlfriend K suggested she drive over to see me. That would be splendid, I thought. "Oh I'll be bringing our dog. He is very friendly!" Sorry K, you can't come, I replied. When someone says friendly dog I just have visions of them licking your face. Just disgusting! You make friends with people, not dogs. Grr! I shall now see how many friends on Facebook I lose.

Today's music is Rick Wakeman's new album (as it is Rick Wakeman you can no doubt still call it an album) The Red Planet. This is very much in his The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Criminal Record  (my favourite) mode, although perhaps there is a little too much guitar for me.  The first non classical record I bought (or rather John Palmer at school bought it for me as he worked in Our Price in Kingston and got a staff discount) was Wakeman's White Rock which I then spent ages seeking out on CD as it wasn't released in the UK until comparatively recently, so I had to buy a Japanese import at great expense.

Today's wallpaper is William-Adolphe Bougereau's Biblis (1884). During his lifetime (1825-1905) Bougereau was considered one of the world's greatest painters but he fell out of favour at the beginning of the twentieth century, along with most other classicist painters, and was not really rediscovered until the nineteen eighties. Biblis (or Byblis), the legendary daughter of Miletus of Crete, is here depicted in despair, as her twin brother had just fled her amorous advances. Naughty!

Paint Table Sunday: Warriors of Rohan

I'm carrying on with my three projects at a time approach, so my current work is some Savage Core Jaguar Tribe and Atlanteans and some Star Wars Battle Droids.  The Jaguar tribe are coming along and I did a bit on them today but they have fiddly shields to do so they will not be done this week, I think.

Yesterday I finished twelve warriors of Rohan from the Fields of Pelennor boxed set. I had to find the shields which were in the box and was depressed at how many figures there are still to paint, considering I did army of the dead and orcs a year and a half ago!  I had more varnish problems with these. Some time ago I switched to Vallelo polyurethane matt varnish as the Humbrol was drying and leaving white patches. However this time the Vallejo didn't not dry matt on some paints I had used a Citadel shade on. Frustrated I stirred some Humbrol for twelve minutes and put it over the shiny bits. Seemed to be OK but was still leaving the odd white patches which I had to paint over.  I wish there was a matt varnish that actually worked reliably!

I need to start thinking about what should come in next.  Ideally, I want something that is not just started but well on the way so I can get them done reasonably quickly, as I find figures with a lot of work still to do on them rather depressing. I keep some of my most recent (i.e. the last seven years or so) figures in little plastic tubs behind my chair on one of my bookshelves.  I need to look at what is in here and see what I could push along. At present I am thinking of my 1864 Danes as there are only a few (nine?) of them and they have a quite simple uniform.  At least none of these need preparing as they are all based and undercoated at least.  However Charlotte wants me to do some riders of Rohan. I did start six some years ago but they are in a box somewhere and I don't know which box. 

The redoubtable Mike Siggins commented on Facebook this week that he hadn't worn a watch for thirty years but was now thinking of getting one. I find this very peculiar. I have worn a watch every day since I started senior school at eleven. I really cannot understand people who say that they have the time on their mobile phones. So, when they want to see the time they have to get their phone out of their pocket and look at it (and maybe even unlock it first), as opposed to just a quick flick of the wrist and there it is. Also what if the sun is out? Then you can't see anything on a mobile phone screen. Do people then have to find a tree to stand under? Also I cannot see the numbers on my phone as they are so small, so then I would have to get my glasses out too. Hence why my everyday watch is this one, as it is so clear. I went to a meeting once at a big architects firm and they were all wearing this watch (based on the clocks at Swiss railway stations) as it is a design classic! One more thing, of course, I don't usually carry my mobile phone on me as I don't want it microwaving my brain every hour of the day. Mostly I forget to charge it up too. 

This weeks annoyance is people drinking beer out of bottles. Again, just why? I have been watching several US TV series lately and I'm sorry but I think men drinking from silly little beer bottles looks childish or even, he said, not worrying about being politically incorrect, effeminate. They look like they have baby's beakers as they sip, sip, sip ineffectually. The worst example, oddly, is the otherwise estimable Perdita Weeks in Magnum. When she does it, obviously to look like one of the boys, she looks very uncomfortable doing so.  She purses her lips and tries to sip, sip sip, a tiny amount of beer. Glasses is what you need for beer. Big glasses so you can get a proper mouthful not a baby beaker serving. Cognac is for sipping. Beer is for quaffing! And as for that idiotic idea of sticking citrus fruit into the neck of the bottle to restrict the flow even more and make the beer taste like washing up liquid. Really. That is why you live in a Third World country, Mexicans! I absolutely refuse to drink beer out of bottle!

Today's music is the soundtrack to  Prehistoric Park by Daniel Pemberton, who went to the same school as I did. It goes very well as background music when painting Lost World type tribesmen. Speaking of which, I have discovered I can get Amazon Prime on my TV. This has been available for years for me but I didn't know how to do it but Charlotte set it up so she could watch Shaun the Sheep: Farmageddon for her birthday. The Old Bat watched it too but as she walked out of Star Wars and has never seen another science fiction film in her life all the in jokes were totally lost on her. I have always wanted to watch the Man in the High Castle but instead I am watching Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World. Excellent! Dodgy CGI dinosaurs, the same location as I'm a Celebrity Get me Out of Here, lots of Australians with equally dodgy English accents and tribe of the week (no more than twenty of them) in a forty foot across set.. And, of course, Jennifer O'Dell in her little leather outfit and Rachel Blakely looking lovely too. I wonder what Conan Doyle would have thought of it? I wonder what he would have thought of his estate taking the money and running, as well? 

Oh, alright here is a picture of O'Dell as Veronica (a name which holds a lot of resonance for the Legatus). She designed this outfit herself so was not exploited by the costume department as you might think. As the credits say, ' befriended by an untamed beauty'. Apart from her hair, that is, which is always tamed to within an inch of her prehistoric curling tongs.

Today's wallpaper is this lovely breakfast time study by William Breakspeare (1856-1914) from Birmingham.   Not a very well known painter but he exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer exhibition eight times and studied in Paris for a time.

Paint Table Saturday: Three projects

It's paint table Sunday and I have realised that it is counter-productive to write blog posts when I could be painting so I am doing this, retrospectively, now that the good light has gone. I get bored painting, very quickly, and given my eye issues I no longer find it relaxing and  can only manage about forty five minutes at a time, now.  To stop myself getting too bored, therefore, I usually have around three active projects on the go at the same time.

I began these warriors of Rohan, for Lord of the Rings, back early last year but have pulled them out again. I have now located their shields and today I finished the base coats of them, So for the next few weeks it will be onto shading.

First completed figures of 2020

This week I finished the Lucid Eye Red Simians and as the factions for this game are only seven figures I dug out another unit I had started. In fact all I had done on these was the flesh base coat. Why do I hate the word 'flesh'? It gives me the shivers and I never use it in spoken English. It's like the American  'panties' or 'tights' or 'offal'. Just nasty, creepy words that make my brain recoil.

Next up, therefore are the Jaguar Tribe who are based, I believe, on some Aztec period Central American people. I haven't looked up how they should look as the historical name of the people is too complicated for me to remember. It was like yesterday when my father in law asked me what antibiotics the Old Bat was on and I couldn't for the life of me remember or pronounce their names. The Bat had a relapse last week and the doctor sent her to Epsom Hospital. They actually put her in a bed in the Covid-19 ward (interestingly, only four people in it) while they did tests. Oddly, they didn't test for the Chinese Virus as they were sure that she had had it. They put her chest pains down to Gastroesophageal reflux and presecribed some pills, They let her out of the hospital and the next day she felt worse. By Friday she couldn't breathe but, fortunately, the local doctor rang up to check on her. She prescribed some antibiotics and I just managed to get them before the pharmacy closed. Just as well as by eight in the evening she couldn't breath or speak (that's how you know the Old Bat is really ill). However the antibiotics kicked in and this morning she is tired but much better. The doctor had rightly diagnosed pneumonia (which a lot of Chinese Virus patients seem to be getting afterwards). So, anyway I moved the Jaguar tribe along yesterday between running errands for the Bat.

Also, as part of the Jaguar faction, there are a couple of, well, Jaguars. I will paint one as black and try to paint the other in its spotted form, although that may be a bit ambitious.

Finally, my third unit under way is another Lucid Eye Savage Core unit, the Atlanteans, who I based and undercoated on today. They are are, basically, Ancient Greeks. I have painted quite a lot of Greeks so should be able to manage these. I need to decide on a colour scheme for them. As they are not historical I can go wild so I think I am going to use the colour scheme I used for Lucius Verus who, in turn, I based on a costume from Cleopatra (1963).

So, these three projects should keep my busy, although I am flat out at work at the moment writing a very long report so can't paint during the day. Maybe I can get a bit done some mornings but the weather is not going to be so bright next week.

I usually drink Lifeboat Tea but have nearly run out so have not opened the last two boxes I have (because if you finish your last boxes you will get the Chinese Virus and die) so am currently drinking Fortnum & Mason's Queen Anne tea which is loose leaf. Now, I used to be a terrible tea snob at university and we all only drank leaf tea. It's years since I have had it at home but it is a bit of a revelation, not least as regards price per mug. The box I have (which was part of a hamper my parents in law were given at Christmas) is £12.95 a tin. But twenty-five teabags of the same stuff is £5.95.  This makes the loose tea much, much better value. I started the tin three weeks ago and have over a third left. twenty-five tea bags, costing nearly half the price of a tin, would have lasted me about three days.  I think it was my slinky lady friend K, at Oxford, who used to drink this. It is certainly fragrant, elegant, warming and, indeed, familiar. There is a Fortnum & Mason shop in the Royal Exchange in the City, so when I can next go to London I might get some more or try Royal Blend, which is the one I used to have.

So, finally, what are my annoyances this week? One wargaming and one not. A really major annoyance is that on my new computer keyboard the insert key is next to the backspace key, something I don't remember from my old keyboard. So when I hit the backspace key (which I do a lot) I more often than not hit the insert key. This turns my cursor into a blue block which starts gobbling up text until  I notice. It is not good for my blood pressure!  Argh! It's just done it again while writing this paragraph.  The second annoyance is bases on wargames ships. Now, I have ranted on before as to my inability to comprehend why people put bases on AFV models (they aren't going to fall over!) but the new Warlord Games WW2 ship game (which I might have been interested in) come with the most ludicrous bases I have ever seen on a ship model. They are all stuck on something that looks like a French bread pizza base. Talk about an instant no sale. The models for their Cruel Seas weren't like this! Anyway, these naval games seem to require huge amounts of on board (to coin a phrase) clutter and I don't like tokens and cards next to units.

To go with my Savage Core painting, I am listening to American ambient composer Michael Stearns' atmospheric 1995 album, The Lost World.  It really is a perfect accompaniment!

Today's wallpaper is the accurate if unimaginatively named 'bathers' (1920) by the Belgian painter Théo van Rysselberghe (1862-1926). It was painted toward the end of his life, in the South of France, like most of his nude groups.

Paint Table Saturday: Byzantines, a tidy workbench and a trip to Cowes

Regular readers of my paint table Saturday posts may be surprised by the absence of paint in this picture.  Previously there were dozens of pots of Humbrol enamel to the left, where my mug now resides in solitary splendour.  Under the computer screen were piles of figures I was working on and to the right was a horrible pile of paints, unopened figures and paintbrushes.  Chaotic does not even begin to describe it.  Then I read about a storage system in a review in Wargames illustrated and in less than 48 hours was presented with a heavy box of nicely finished plywood pieces.  Perhaps emboldened by my work in assembling my Victrix war elephants I charged straight in to start working on it.

I was so impressed with the unit and my skills in assembling it (er) that I sent off for two more units of drawers from the same manufacturer.  These went together as easily, although were not quite so robust, being MDF, but once painted black fitted pretty well with the big unit.  Together, the two were the same width as the large unit, although a little less deep from to back.  They came with drawer dividers but I wasn't going to use them so chucked them out.  No doubt Eric the Shed would have used the bits to make a Northwest Frontier fort!

So, here are the three units in situ.  Glue, filler, files and glasses top left.  Paints I am currently using underneath them.  Below that three drawers which hold tall bottles of varnish and paint, taller figures in process (Byzantines with spears) and bases,  The big drawer underneath that has all my Citadel paints and washes and the bottom draw has other figures in progress.  In the centre there is a space for white spirit and matches for stirring paint.  Top left there are special racks for paintbrushes and next to that are  knives, my magnifying craft glasses and my water pot.  In the big drawer below that are bits and transfers.  The bottom two drawers are more Humbrol tinlets.  It really is amazing how much I got into this thing!

Before

After

I couldn't quite get everything in.  My pots of sand and gravel with some overflow paints have gon onto my old paint rack behind the computer screen but it is an amzing improvement on what was there before.

 Before

After 

This is just part of an ongoing tidy up of my study.  There is still an awful lot to do but I now have one tidy corner at least.  The next job is to file a load of DVD's into albums and free up some shelf space for books,  Step by step!

So now that I have a less stressful working environment what is on today's workbench?  I haven't forgotten about the Carthaginian elephant crew but I am waiting the arrival of some Micro-sol and Micro-set for the shield transfers.  In the interim I have started the Byzantine infantry I got at Salute.  These aren't as refined as Victrix plastics but are perfectly serviceable and do not suffer from gnomish big head syndrome like the Gripping Beast plastics I have seen (at least their Vikings). I bought the extra resin command and these are very nice indeed.  Assembling the resin figures was a bit of a pig as even superglue takes ages to dry on them and you need to wait an hour after sticking on one arm, for example, before attempting to glue the next piece.  This is the second batch for a unit of twelve for Lion Rampant.  I have already started painting the first five but will leave them now until I get these up to the same stage.

I didn't get any painting done last weekend as I was down in Cowes for my father in law's ninetieth birthday party at the Royal Yacht Squadron at the Castle.  The Squadron are brilliant at this sort of thing and the weather was wonderful, which helped a lot as it meant that guests could wander out onto the lawn overlooking the Solent.  Tea on the lawn (technically tea overlooking the lawn) being a popular activity during Cowes week. A couple of years ago I had a nice chat with Zara Tindall, Princess Anne's daughter, there. Princess Anne knows my parents-in-law and has been sailing on their boat a number of times.  She is very nice too and was quite prepared to muck in on the boat, clean the decks, empty the bin etc.  The Old Bat is not convinced about 'that trashy American' due to marry into the Royal family imminently.  'I wouldn't curtsey to her!' she maintains. "She just wants a title then she will dump Harry and will be back to America and hope to become Jackie Onassis for the rest of her life!" says the Bat.  She'll still watch the wedding on TV, though, so she can be rude about all the women's outfits.

You are not really allowed to take pictures inside the Castle but I couldn't resist taking a shot of the Kaiser's racing ensign, from the Imperial yacht, just outside where the lunch was held (which isn't in the main building anyway).  There were two types of guests: yachtsmen and supercharged medical people.  All of them (and especially their wives) were snapping away inside on their mobile phones, disgracefully.  My father-in-law asked me to look after a girl (the youngest person there by about forty years) from a boatyard on the Thames who had single-handedly restored a Dunkirk little ship. He was worried she might be a bit overpowered by the type of guests (three potential Nobel prize winners) but there were enough boaty people for her to feel at home.  Last time I had seen her she was bending planks of wood to fit the hull of a boat. Talk about having all the skills I don't.  She came on her motorbike and despite wearing a nice blue dress, her arms and thighs (it was a very short blue dress) were speckled in paint.  Splendid, I thought, until I realised that I was old enough to be her grandfather. 

Lunch was excellent and, as a bonus the Old Bat wasn't there as she had to work and she certainly wouldn't have liked the Bembridge lobster. 'What sort of person eats something like that?" she cries in utter incomprehension.  Me, actually.  Isle of Wight lobsters are some of the best in Britain and when Mary Berry did a TV programme on them it was to the Island that she came.

The Squadron are very good at using local suppliers for their food and they had the full range of Isle of Wight cheese and even local crackers.  Yum yum.  It isn't that many years since the Isle of Wight was famous for being the only county in Britain without a single entry in the Good Food Guide but now it produces wonderful crustacea, lamb, tomatoes, garlic (especially), wine, beer and even gin.  There is even a Michelin starred restaurant on the Island now but I have never been.  The Old Bat would object to the price (she doesn't approve of going out to eat when you can 'buy the same food in a supermarket'),  Guy only eats breaded chicken and pizza and Charlotte is a vegetarian.  It's no wonder that I go out to eat regularly with ladies from my past!

I went to the Ocean Liners exhibition, at the Victoria and Albert Museum, with one of these ladies recently.  This really is the best exhibition I have attended for some time and is highly recommended.  I have always wanted to cross the Atlantic on a liner, although my father-in-law says it is often a rough experience.  He lived and worked in the United States in the late fifties and returned home in the SS Saxonia.  He had bought a new car in the US and provided it was over a year old he would avoid the import purchase tax of twice the value of the car that would be levied on arriving in Britain. He had calculated that he would avoid this by one day but the Saxonia was making such good speed that it was due to arrive a day early and he would be clobbered by the tax.  Being my father-in-law, he asked the captain to slow the ship down!  This he couldn't do but instead, took an unscheduled detour to Le Havre instead and saved my father-in-law hundreds of pounds.

It is appropriate that today's music is the official CD of the Liners exhibition which is a great collection of twenties, thirties and forties music, which played inside the exhibition.  I bought the book too.  I really need to get my bookshelves sorted!

Nude lying on a couch (1873)

Today's wallpaper is by Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894).  Caillebotte qualified as a lawyer and also an engineer but was drafted into the Garde Nationale Mobile de la Seine in the Franco-Prussian War. It was only afterwards that he began to study art seriously and he first exhibited in the second Impressionists exhibition in 1876. Although, as can be seen here, many of his paintings showed a tighter realism than his peers. Caillebotte's brother died at a young age and the artist (rightly) thought that he would not live into old age, so he wrote a detailed will leaving his collection of his and other impressionist paintings (Renoir was his executor) to the French State. Impressionism still wasn't really accepted in Paris by the authorities and they didn't want them balthough an exhibition of part of Caillbotte's collection, after his death at the age of 48, was the first show of impressionist paintings held in a public venue, at the Palais de Luxembourg.  More than thirty years later, the French government, having changed their mind about impressionism, tried to grab the collection but the Caillebotte family saw them off and many of the paintings in the collection were bought by Albert Barnes and taken into his Barnes Collection in Philadelphia, where the Legatus went to see them a few years ago.

This is an uncompromisingly realistic nude for 1873 and has none of the usual themes that artists used to justify painting naked ladies at the time; such as bathers or classical subjects.  As a result, it has a timeless quality which makes it look more modern than its 145 year old age.

Time to sort out the workbench

Utter chaos!

While I really should be finishing my Carthaginian elephant crew I have come to the realisation that my workbench (which gives it a whole artisanal air neither my skills nor it deserves) really needs sorting out.  Since before Christmas it has got encrusted with unopened packets of (oddly (or perhaps not) mainly female) figures which are burying my paintbrushes and other tools.  Inspired by a review in Miniature Wargames this month, I bunged off an order to Hobbies Ltd for a Hohbyzone organiser.  Now, I actually have a paint organiser on my desk but it is so disorganised I hadn't seen it for two years. 

A big heavy box turned up in well under 48 hours and I opened it up to find a quite terrifying number of pieces.  Fortunately, I had ordered an extra, optional drawer, which was packed separately, so I set to on making that on Friday.  The reviewer in Miniature Wargames said it was straightforward and he had assembled the whole thing in an hour.  Well, it took me around half that time to assemble one drawer but I am a DIY manqué. It left me stressed and tense and the look of the completed drawer brought back horrific memories of woodwork at school, where we had to make a box.  'Cut the wood on the waste side' bellowed my woodwork teacher (the memory of whom is so terrible my mind has completely erased his name and face, unlike all my other teachers, I realise) as I messed it up yet again. In fact that is the only single thing I learned from a year of woodwork.  In my school report that year I got D- for the subject.  'His work completely lacks any sense of care, accuracy or finish' wrote my woodwork teacher. I hadn't thought about woodwork classes for over forty years.

I had actually forgotten I had done them at all until I assembled this drawer.  A terrifying, suppressed memory of that ghastly room has now flooded back.  I am sure it has something to do with my complete hatred of undertaking any practical things to this day or, in the alternative, perhaps this skill is innate and I just don't have it.  I, very unfashionably, believe that some things (maths, music, sport, languages and art) need innate skills.  These cannot be learned, except to the most basic level.  You can do them or you can't. Your brain works like that or it doesn't.  No amount of tedious teaching can help, although, I suppose, I admit that I am very bad at learning things, as I am attempting to do with Spanish at present.  Basically, I am not interested in spending time learning how to do things.  Essentially, if I can't do something instantly (as I found I could with drawing) then I am not interested in learning it; as the fear is you waste endless hours on it and still find you can't do it.  Best not to waste the time and just accept you can't do it, as I do with DIY and modelling skills.

Crafty people love Gorilla glue.  I do not.

Still, I was very impressed with the material of this.  No smoked fish smelling, laser-cut flimsiness here.  It is good, solid plywood which is very well finished (made in Poland).  Fortunately, the Old Bat had some of the recommended Gorilla Glue (she has a lot of DIY stuff) to use on it, although I found the applicator totally baffling and ended up with it going on the floor, on my trousers and all over the bits of wood.  I decided to assemble the rest of it in the kitchen today, as the Old Bat was out of the way, otherwise I would have got ' you don't want to do it like that' comments, and I have run out of blood pressure pills at present.

On the move (on the move, we're on our way again  - as the theme to an early Bob Hoskins TV show used to go)

The plan is to install this crosswise on my desk (fortunately, it is the exact right size) but to do this I have to move all the other stuff, principally my plastic boxes of figures in progress (to use the term loosely).   I had a master plan for these in that they were going onto the shelves behind my chair where there were a lot of DVDs.  These are, ultimately, going into a new DVD storage case.  This whole operation is not so much juggling objects about but more a rather involved conveyancing chain but it will all contribute to the gradual tidying of my playroom, which is an utter tip at the moment.

So, this afternoon I found that the little Chinese take away boxes I keep my figures in fit perfectly on the shelf.  The Force is definitely with me on this one!  While moving them I also found a box of rocks which I had been looking for for weeks.  Tidying is good!

The worst part of my work bench is what lurks behind my computer screen.  What horrors lie behind it?  My screen is like the wall on Skull Island.  Out of side, out of mind.  Just looking at this photo I can see more figures, more paint, a WW1 tank fascine, some sort of Games Workshop tank and a load of paintbrushes I had completely forgotten about.  This will all have to come out but only after I had assembled the dreaded new storage unit.  I am already thinking about getting a couple more to go underneath it.

It is Sunday today and there was no paint table Saturday yesterday as we went down to Hampshire for the Old Bat's sister's sixtieth birthday lunch, which was very enjoyable. although the Old Bat glared at me for having  a pint of Itchen Valley Brewery Watercress Ale (which is brewed very close to the English Civil War battlefield of Cheriton).   So I was able to put the thing together on the kitchen table.  The man in Wargames Illustrated said it took him an hour but it took me an hour and forty five minutes.  I have to say that the fit of the pieces was just perfect.  I didn't have a soft headed hammer, as the instructions recommended (who has such a thing?) but a few good thumps with the side of my hand soon had everything in place, although I did resort to a hammer when attaching the base but only because my hand was becoming sore!

Finally, I gave it a coat of black spray paint so it matches with my other paint stand and my (nineties) desk.  I have now cleared the growing lead pile from my desk so next I have to remove everything else temporarily before starting to re-install things.

So by this evening I think I have cleared around one sixth of my desk but at least my original paint storage unit is now visible.  This is going to go behind my screen for storage purposes.