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, tempting figures,models from the past and an art blog

So, it is another Royal Wedding today and, luckily, the Old Bat will be glued to the TV all day, enabling me to get a decent amount of painting done.  The Old Bat doesn't even like the couple; Harry is a 'dim, bush mush' and Markle is an 'American trailer trash golddigger' who is 'making the Royal Family a laughing stock'. It won't stop her watching everything, though! Mainly so she can insult guests fashion choices.

I hope to get on with my Byzantine Infantry, which I have done a bit on this week.  If I can get all the black and leather bits done this weekend I will be pleased.  I have also got the shields started and have got some transfers for them, although I am already getting stressed about how to deal with these.  I have bought some Micro Sol and some Micro Set but even with my glasses I can't read the instructions on the bottles.  The key question is: do I still need to paint them with gloss paint or gloss varnish before I put them on? Also the transfers have no hole for the boss so I have no idea how I am going to deal with that.  Stressful times ahead!  As my particular friend A says.  Isn't this supposed to be a relaxing hobby?

Why come to Israel?

To relax I am enjoying watching the Giro d'Italia at present (although possibly the accompanying regional selection of Italian wines is helping in this) , although they haven't had the best of weather. It was even cloudy in Israel.  Talking of Israel, during Eurosport's coverage we are getting the usual travel advertisements for Tel Aviv Jerusalem; two places I wouldn't dream of visiting, despite the (rather engagingly old fashioned) use of alluring girls in the commercials.  

Follow me!  Oh, alright then

Last year's advert (only people who work in TV call them commercials) had top Israeli model, Shir Elmaliach, filmed in a point of view way, leading a lucky man through carefully selected highlights of the two cities.  Linking them together as a destination is quite clever (the original advertisement won a lot of awards) given that Jerusalem is an interesting historic city and Tel-Aviv appears to be like Basingstoke on sea with added bus bombs.  It was one of those adverts that I actually used to stop fast forwarding through the advert break for, so as to better appreciate Shir's pert posterior in a variety of clingy outfits.

This year, although they have bought back Shir (sadly, largely filmed from the front - it was like when FHM did a pictorial on Jennifr Lopez and only photographed her from the front) they have teamed her with British presenter Sian Welby (no I have never heard of her either - perhaps she is on the Shopping Channel or some such).  The new advert dumps the disembodied man being led through the two cities' delights and just has the two girls taking selfies of each other and people taking selfies annoy me enormously. Instead of intimating at naughty fun in the sun for the male visitor, as in last year's advert, in this one the girls actually look like they would prefer naughty holiday fun with each other.  Using two girls is not necessarily more effective than one! Sian is quite annoying, gurning her way through the film, and is not a patch on Shir, even though the latter looks like she has patently never ridden a bike in her life as she wobbles through the scenery.  Epic fail, as my son would say. It is supposed to evoke an Instagram story, apparently,whatever that is.

It doesn't quite have the Marmite effect of another travel campaign, for Tui (originally Preußische Bergwerks-und Hütten-Aktiengesellschaft), shot in Turkey and featuring gap-toothed British model Bethany Slater.  This advert carpet bombed our screens from last October and started to drive me mad with its stupid dancing crabs and annoying, gets into your head, synthesizer riff. The simpering singer, murdering the Rufus and Chaka Khan hit Ain't nobody, makes you think the girl miming in the advert is an insipid simpering girl herself; probably called Alison who probably lives in an unfashionable part of North London somewhere and works in HR.  Sorry if you know someone called Alison but I once had a simpering, insipid girlfriend called Alison (very briefly) who lived in Belsize Park.  She didn't work in HR but was a nurse which should have been more exciting than it was.

The advert has Bethany as a rather tragic singleton whose life is transformed by flying to a Tui resort in Turkey on a Tui airliner (they probably have their own Tui tank division as well,  so at least they might be able to get you out of Turkey if there is another attempted coup), having her face painted green and dancing badly, to the extent that in the follow up advert she appears to have sex in the pool with some random man (hopefully she uses a Tui condom).  Well, that's the way it looks to me.  You too can have naughty fun on a cheap package holiday, although not as much fun as promised by Shir in Israel (I would imagine). One of my friends loves gap-toothed Bethany and watches it every time it comes on, although latterly Tui seem to be using other more normal looking people in their adverts now, disappointingly for my friend.  Maybe the concept of Bethany being a tragic singleton is just too unrealistic, given her leggy charms.

Plastic Victrix Vikings sketches

Anyway, these aren't the figures I was meant to be discussing. As is well known, I can'r resist a shiny new range of figures, so if I see thone I tend to make myself go away and calm down for a bit before ordering them.  Kickstarters are particularly bad, as I get carried away by them and end up buying stuff I don't want (like Mars Attacks).  One I saw recently was by eBor miniatures (who I get muddled up with eBob) for Seven Years War plastic French infantry,  Oh, plastic people with tricornes I thought, excitedly. Shiny!  But when I looked into them, despite the Kickstarter having launched, there is virtually no information about them and just a picture of one figure.  Given they are asking for a rather eye-watering £40,000 and have only raised about £2000 I think this one I can give a miss.  Maybe if they had started with British figures.... Likewise the new North Star and Fireforge fantasy ranges, while tempting at first, would seem pointless given the number of Games Workshop Lord of the Rings figures I have got.  If you are going to have elves and dwarves at least have them sculpted by the Perry twins. Much more interesting is the recent announcement by Victrix of plastic Vikings (first), Normans and Saxons.  The first Victrix figures I bought were their Napoleonics and I didn't like them at all but their recent ancients have been wonderful. I will definitely be getting these!

Fraxinus posted about the new Airfix Vintage Classics range, which they are bringing out shortly.  These feature many of the models from my past. Plastic models, that is, not the walking up and down on a catwalk (sorry, runway) ones I used to know when I was younger, when hanging out in Milan during Fashion Week. It was no coincidence that Lloyd's Italian brokers day was organised at the same time as Milan Fashion Week. No coincidence as I organised it, with my Italian colleague.  During one of these was the only time I literally saw grown women eating just lettuce for dinner, when I went to the birthday party of a Brazilian model and my Italian colleague entirely failed to chat up Carla Bruni. Should have aimed slightly lower down the model pecking order. Heh, heh.

The Vintage Classics line will use some of the old box art.  Models will include the Bismark, the first model ship I built (it sadly ended its life in the garden being riddled with .177 pellets from my air rifle) and the Panzer IV, which I must have made a fair number of in the past (did anyone ever make it with the tragic short barrelled cannon?). The Panzer IV was my favourite tank kit and I might just get one to put on my shelf somewhere.  I wonder whether you can get a 1/56 one?  But then it would need some Perry Afrika Korps and that wouldn't go well.  I was looking at the Airfix website recently and was amazed by the almost complete disappearance of their historic ships ranges but now, at least, some of these will return. I did build the Royal Sovereign model in the past and it sat in my mother's lounge for decades as I, amazingly, actually completed, painted and rigged it.

Under the sea

When I thought my eyesight had deteriorated too much to paint wargames figures I did think about going back to making model ships again but the question for me is where do ship modellers keep their finished models?  You can't really hang them from the ceiling like aircraft.  That said, I recall reading an AE Van Vogt short story, once, where an alien creature sat in a space craft under the sea but could not sense water, so passing ships appeared to be floating in the air above.  Could you hang your ship models at exactly the same height so that they appeared to be floating in invisible water? Like the Grand Hyatt hotel in Dubai where I used to stay, sometimes.  It would be worse than trying to get pictures to hang  at the same height, though.

That said, I did dig my model of the RMS Mauretania out of the loft after visiting the ocean liners exhibition at the V&A,  Maybe I'll take it to Cowes this year.   I never made the HMS Belfast , either. and always wanted to, although back when I made model warships you didn't have to worry about the dazzle paint scheme!  That would be a nightmare!  Usually the biggest stress with ship models is getting the waterline stripe right. At least there would be more room on my workbench, now, for a ship under construction.  These old Airfix models are very crude compared with modern ones but that is part of their charm, really, as no doubt Airfix hope.   They are promising more than the initial release of 25 models (depending on how they sell, I suppose) but some are lost forever, the original moulds having being destroyed in the Second Iraq war (they had been sold by Heller to an Iraqi firm), supposedly).

Odalisque (1873)

Given it is the Giro I should have wallpaper by an Italian artist, so here is a Turkish-style odalisque (the lowest grade of girl in the harem) by Francesco Paolo Michetti (1851-1929). The orientalist subject matter is unusual for the artist who specialised in outdoor scenes.  Michetti originated in the Abruzzo region of Italy and after studying at the Academia in Naples moved to Paris to continue his studies, exhibiting at the 1872 Paris Salon.  In 1883 he bought an old convent building, back in Abruzzo, as his studio and home and took much of his inspiration from the local people and landscape.  He also exhibited in Milan, Naples, Berlin and at the first Venice Bienalle.  For the last twenty years of his life he lived as a virtual recluse and stopped exhibiting.

Given I haven't started a new blog for ages I have decided to do one which just features art from my Paint Table Saturday wallpaper, Art Friday on my Facebook Page, as well as a number of my other blogs.  Initially I have collected (and in some cases expanded) the pieces I have posted before.   You can find it here.  Expect lots of naked ladies and the occasional military, maritime and Baltic landscape painting.

Italian music too, with Giuseppe Sinopoli's tremendous Nabucco.  It's not my favourite Verdi Opera, that is Aida, but the first act charges along at a tremendous pace and is full of fantastic melodies.   I bought my copy in the legendary Farringdon Records in Cheapside, from the legendary Tony.  I got it when it came out in 1983, having bought the DG Aida the year before.  It is excellent music to cook Spaghetti Bolognese to!

A men's magazine location, some Roman ruins and an African steamboat

Yesterday I had to go over to my sister's house to sign some papers to do with selling a flat we had bought to provide income to pay for my mother's care home bills.  As it was, despite the typically gloomy BBC weather forecast, a nice afternoon we went over to Virginia Water which is part of Windsor Great Park.  We have both been going there for as long as we can remember (at least fifty years, we thought) and my sister runs there most weekends but I hadn't been there since the children were little.   

My favourite part when I was small was the waterfall (or cascade as they call it) which is a splendid but artificial structure.  It is at its best when, as yesterday, there has been a lot of rain. Originally built in 1750, it was washed away in a storm and was rebuilt into its current ten metre high form in 1788.

More than fifty years ago a pictorial and the cover shot were done here for the second issue of a brand new men's magazine.  Scottish girl Linda Richie, Penthouse's second Pet of the Month, was photographed by Bob Guccione, cavorting around the cascade in rather less clothes than she wears on the cover.  For an undressed, NSFW shot you will have to go over to Legatus' Wargames Ladies!  This issue, Volume 1 number 2, appeared for  April/May 1965. The two month issue was caused by having to find a new printer for issue 3, as the first two had sold so fast the numbers required had overwhelmed the original printer.

I took this picture yesterday of the area where Miss Richie posed for the cover.  It's the top corner of the general view in the third picture up.  I am sure that the Crown Estate didn't give Penthouse (which was already notorious before it even launched - Guccione having been fined £600 for distributing flyers containing pictures of naked ladies in the post to advertise the magazine) permission to shoot here.  However, he later wrote of a shoot he did in Richmond Park (people forget Penthouse was originally launched in Britain and only went over to America in 1969, when Guccione found out he was outselling Playboy to US troops in Vietnam) where his model just wore a raincoat which she had to remove for photos and rapidly put on again if they heard people approaching.  No doubt Miss Richie had to do something similar!

Moving along the shore of the (equally artificial) lake from the cascade you come to an impressive set of Roman ruins.  Now, nearby Staines (or Staines-upon-Thames as it has now been pretentiously rechristened) is an old Roman town, originally called Pontes (and referred to as such in one of Bernard Cornwell's Last Kingdom books) as it was the site of the Romans first permanent ridge over the Thames.  In fact, it is also the Legatus' original home town (my sister still lives there - having previously lived in Sussex, Belgium, Toronto, Islington and Northern Ireland).   These ruins are not from the area's Roman past but were transplanted from the Roman city of Leptis Magna in Libya 

The columns and stones were organised as a gift to the Prince Regent by the British Consul General in Tripoli in 1816.  They spent some time in the British Museum before being transferred on gun carriages to their current site in Windsor Great Park in 1826. 

Since I was last there they have restored and opened to the public another small section of ruins the other side of the road which runs along the back of the site.  This section also includes some stones taken from Carlton House, the Prince Regent's residence in London.  When the Prince Regent came to the throne, as George IV, in 1820 he decided that Carlton House, which was on Pall Mall, was too small and so commissioned the expansion of Buckingham House into Buckingham Palace and the demolition of Carlton House.  The two expensive terraces of town houses put up on the site of Carlton House were sold and the proceeds used to help pay for Buckingham Palace.

I never went to Leptis Magna when I travelled to Libya, sadly, as it is some way from Tripoli and not something you can do in a spare afternoon.  It is very unlikely I will ever get to the country again, given the terrible state it is in.  I really liked the Libyans who, unlike most North Africans, didn't hassle westerners when visiting.  You could walk around the souk untroubled.  I did get out to another Roman City in Libya, Sabratha, nine years ago.  I went with some colleagues and the four of us had the city to ourselves.  The locals did see us coming, though, and upped the entrance fee to a rip-off 15 pence each.

The lake, which is Virginia Water itself, gives its name to the local town of the same name (Virginia Water, that is (although it does sound like the name of a suffragette) not Lake, which is in the Isle of Wight and features in their dreadful postcards of 'Seven Wonders of the Isle of Wight': 'needles you cannot thread, Cowes you cannot milk, Lake where you don't get your feet wet etc.  Dismal).  Virginia Water is almost entirely populated by golfers and along with Cobham (my local town) became the first towns outside London where the average price of a house is more than £1 million.  Originally there was a stream called the Virginia there but the Duke of Cumberland, when he was the Ranger of the Park, had an ornamental lake dug, reputedly by prisoners from the Jacobite rebellion who were imprisoned nearby.   The lake was much expended after the storm that destroyed the original cascade and is now about four and a half miles around the perimeter.  This makes a nice walk, as we did yesterday, or a good run as my sister does every week in the summer.  Three laps are excellent  training for a half marathon.  I have run the Windsor Great Park half marathon twice (a very long time ago, needless to say).

On location in Virginia Water

While we were walking along the shore my sister mentioned that she had seen a steamboat moored on the lake a couple of years ago when out for a run.  There are no boats on the lake, it was a film set.  Yes, Virginia Water was standing in for the Congo for the Legend of Tarzan back in the summer of 2014.  About a third of the way from the left, on the treeline in the top picture above, you can see the top of the obelisk which is a monument to the Duke of Cumberland.  "The butcher!"  I remember my mother telling me he was called.  "The only way to deal with the Scots," my father used to say.  

In the finished film

I thought that the steamboat was the best thing in The Legend of Tarzan and it made me want to get on and finish the model one I started to make years ago, based on a Gary Chalk design in Wargames Illustrated.

This was the first piece of wargames scenery I had tried to make since some papier mache hills in the early seventies and it says much for Mr Chalk's plans and instructions that it turned out looking reasonably boat like, especially as I changed his design to make my one longer.  It actually doesn't need very much work to finish it and I really should get on with it, as it has been lurking around in this unfinished state for at least ten years.  Basically I just need to do the canopy and dirty it down a bit.  Perfect for Congo!

Unfortunately, there is no place for paddle boats in the North West Frontier and that is what I will carry on focusing on for the next few weeks.

The Russian Frigate Shtandart

Recently I went on board this replica early eighteenth century frigate.  See more on my Great Northern War blog.

The Archie Buller trilogy by Richard Hough

Mr Robert Cordery has been waxing lyrical about the splendid sounding series of Halfhyde novels by Philip McCutchan.  These are naval novels set at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century.  While reading about these I remembered a trilogy of novels set during the same period which I read some years ago but couldn't for the life of me remember who wrote them or what they were called.

I gave a brief description in a comment on Bob's site but he didn't seem to know them (at least from my description) and as he seemed interested and I knew I hadn't read the third book in the series I set out to locate them.  Now this is not so easy given that all my books are shelved two deep (one of the reasons I am putting all my DVDs in albums) but I had a feeling that they might be behind some of the books in my shelves.  They are so precariously stacked that there is always the danger that they will fall off when moving them but after five surgical mining digs (rather like a trench on Time Team) behind my World War 1 and World War 2 reference books I actually located them a little further along.  They were with some unread Patrick O'Brien novels and some erotica by Anaïs Nin behind a rather miscellaneous section which consisted mainly of books on James Bond but also some others which have ended up at the end of the shelf until I can sort my shelves out so they can fit in the right place.

When I finish reading a novel it usually goes up into the loft (to free up space) so I was surprised that all three were still down in my room.  I think I probably intended reading the first two again before starting on the final book.  A quick search on Amazon to see if they were still available (yes, second hand) told me I bought the second volume in 2004.  I think I picked up the first one in a charity shop in Cowes and must have returned from holiday to search for the other two.

Anyway, briefly, the first one, Buller's Guns, introduces us to our two heroes: The aristocratic Archie Buller from the Cotswolds and working class Geordie, Rod MacLewin, whose two stories will intersect over the course of the novels.  This one begins in 1865, covers the British invasion of Egypt in 1882 and finishes on land with the Naval Brigade in the Boer War in 1900.  The second novel, Buller's Dreadnought begins in 1904 and concludes at the Battle of Dogger Bank in 1915.  There is also some undercover work in Germany before the war and a beautiful German countess!  The final novel, which I have yet to read, covers Jutland, action off the Falklands and Chile.  I think I will have to start again from the beginning!

Author Richard Hough (1922-1999), was an eminent naval historian, an expert on dreadnoughts and a biographer of Lord Fisher, Mountbatten and Captain Cook, amongst many others. It was his book, Captain Bligh and Mr Christian which formed the basis of the screenplay by Robert Bolt for the 1984 film The Bounty starring Anthony Hopkins and Mel Gibson.  Hough's interest in the navy originally manifested itself in building model ships but his determination to join the navy was blunted when his father made him cross the North Sea in a fishing boat!  Instead he joined the Royal Air Force, initially learning to fly in Los Angeles where he hobnobbed with Hollywood stars, before flying Hurricanes and Typhoons.  Having shot down two German bombers on one sortie his own plane was hit and he suffered a crash landing in which he broke his leg, leaving him in pain for the rest of his life.  After the war he worked for the publisher Bodley Head but decided he wanted to write his own book.  Drawing on his vast collection of naval literature his first book The Fleet that Had to Die (1957) was about the Battle of Tsushima in the Russo-Japanese War. Over a hundred other books followed.

Resisting Temptation 3

Well, I was contemplating four days of painting when I ran out of white paint on Thursday.  Never mind, I'm sure I would have some spare tins in my paint pile, built up from the time it looked like Humbrol were going bust and I bought ten pots of each of my favourite colours.  (Does anyone else choose their lottery numbers by the numbers of their favourite Humbrol paints?  Probably not.) But no!  None at all!  Disaster!  So off I go to Addlestone Model Centre; the nearest place I can get Humbrol paints.  Now I have been going to Addlestone Model Shop (as it used to be called) for years.  In fact, I have been going there so long that I not only remember the previous building it was in but the one before that.  I probably first went there in about 1970.

I get the impression that it mainly specialises in radio control planes and cars but they have Scalextric and Hornby, Games Workshop and lots of plastic kits including a very good selection of 20mm figures and vehicles including some of the more obscure ones.  They really do manage to pack a lot into quite a small shop.  Now I buy a lot of paints and other model supplies in there but occasionally (well, quite often) I go in there to buy a tube of model filler and end up with a 1/48th Hawker Hurricane, or some such.  I have stopped this on the whole, partly because I can no longer remember which models I have bought.  However, yesterday they had the newly reissued Airfix Dambusters Lancaster in there and I was wavering.  I have never built a Lancaster and I was very impressed when one of my fellow lawyers at college built one in the law library once (he was slightly eccentric).  It just looked so chunky!  My daughter Charlotte has actually been in the cockpit of the one from the Battle of Britain Memorial flight and so she was encouraging me like mad.  But then she is always encouraging me to buy model kits which she wants me to build for her room but I never do as I always feel I should be using hobby time to paint figures.  Still, I thought, I did have four days over Easter.  No, I resisted.  Then I saw the Tamiya 1/48th one.  "It's only £99!" says Charlotte, in little red Devil mode.  "Yes but it's two feet across!  Where will I put it?  Mummy will have a wicket!"  I resist.  Again.

Then I go around the corner and they have a model kit that is so big it won't even go on the shelves.  Forget your 1/350 Tamiya USS Enterprise, that is only 105cm long. This is Trumpeter's 1/200 Bismarck which measures in at 126cm.  That's over four feet!  And it's the Bismarck!  The first model ship I built!  "Daddy it's only £79 more than the Lancaster and you get a lot more kit for your money!" says the little Devil.  No, I am not going to buy it.  It's 1700 pieces for a start.  You would need the sort of focus that is just not my strong point.   I escape unscathed and vow not to buy another model kit until I finish my 1/48 Spitfire Mk1.  

I did buy the Airfix Model World Scale Modelling supplement though, as my model making skills are still stuck in the seventies and it really does have some useful tips in it.  I might have a look at my Spitfire again tomorrow, now I have actually located it under the pile of junk that was in the corner of my room.  I have to say that the standard of finish top plastic model kit makers achieve now is just staggeringly awesome.  I'm an OK figure painter (I would give myself 5/10 - 6/10 on a good day) but the level at which these model makers are working is just way beyond my wildest dreams; I'd be about 2/10 on that scale.  Oh, well.  I just want to have a couple of model planes hanging from my ceiling!

Today I've had my best day's painting today for months, if not years.  The family were out and I started at nine and finished at about five thirty.  It was helped a lot by the good light today.  I got on really well with my latest Darkest Africa unit (it will be finished tomorrow!), I did a bit more on some of the Foundry Argonauts and I have based and undercoated some Romans.  Speaking of which, I bought some Aventine Romans for the Marcomannic War and while looking at the selection of shield transfers by Little Big Men Studios I noticed that they had a shield for Legio II Augusta.  Grr!  If only they did those for the Warlord plastics I might overcome my distaste for their dwarfiness and actually build some units to take on my Ancient Britains.  I wanted Leg II as that was the unit commanded by Vespasian as featured in the early  (and best - I never felt the books were as good after they left Britain) Simon Scarrow novels.  On the off chance, I dropped an email to Steve at LBMS.  Would the Aventine transfers work on the Warlord shields?  He came straight back and said that they would be far too big but would I like him to re-scale them to fit?  A brief e-mail exchange followed and less than 24 hour later I had eight packs of EIR Legio II August transfers for my Warlord plastics - the only ones in the world!  Well, probably not by now as no doubt he will put them up for sale shortly.  This really was exceptional service from someone who has transformed the look of wargames figures more than anyone else.  Except now I am starting to build two Roman armies at the same time!

Anyway, tomorrow, as Scarlett O'Hara said, is another day and hopefully a day with as much painting in it!.

The Battle of Bunker Hill

Diorama in the Battle of Bunker Hill Museum

Well, I have been trying to resist the call of the American War of Independence for some time.  In fact I can remember the big new Miniature Figurines line being released in 1976 and all the attendant features in Military Modelling.  The Airfix and Revell sets actually got me painting some of my plastics, a very rare occurrence, but then I moved on to metal 28mm and forgot about them.  Then Foundry started to release their 28m metals and I immediately bought some but didn't pursue this as I had just joined Guildford Wargames Club where I found that Dark Ages, Ancients and ECW were the favoured 28mm periods.  I sold the figures I had on eBay with all the attendant Ospreys I owned.  I started looking at Giles Allison's superb blog which was so definitive that I decided that it was pointless to pursue the period any more (I think he may even have bought some of my surplus figures).  But...  But, I kept thinking about the period, with its interesting and colourful mix of forces, its very differing tactical approaches and the added appeal of woodland indians and New World forest engagements. 

Bunker Hill Diorama

More than this the combination of the Foundry and Perry figures offer an almost uniquely comprehensive range of figures.  More recently, when considering a new range of black powder period figures for skirmish wargames, it appeared on my shortlist once more. Scott, from Middle Earth, opined that he was never interested in the period because it was a (rare) conflict which the British lost.  This was something that I hadn't considered overtly but may well have been behind my unwillingness to dive in.  Or was it all those blessed straps!  

Today, however, I find myself in Boston with time on my hands.  Now, other than military history (and Victorian art, wine, food and women -which are all basically the same thing) I am also interested in historic ships.  I am staying in Cambridge, as I am giving a lecture at MIT tomorrow, so I am very close to Charlestown, home of two interesting ships.  The USS Constitution (more on which another time) is the oldest commissioned warship still afloat.  Built in 1797, they took it out for a sail last week!  Next door to it is the USS Cassin Young, a destroyer which saw active service in the Pacific and survived a number of kamikaze hits.  

USS Cassin Young.  Looks like it is doing 35 knots even in dry dock.  It actually weighs less than the USS Constitution, I was told

Now when I was visiting the Charlestown shipyards today they were just starting a parade to celebrate the 237th anniversary of the battle of Bunker Hill (even though that's technically next Sunday).  Charlestown was very much en fete and there were lots of re-enactors about, from various periods, but mainly concentrated on the Revolutionary War, as they call it here.

There were some ACW people with a rather splendid cannon and some WW2 softskins with a nice half track which got me feeling all nostalgic for Airfix kits!

Manky looking colonials

Now that's better!  Glad to see that there are still some Loyalists in Boston!

Lots of lady reneactors and some very small reenactors too. Off they all troop in the heat (unlike Britain, heh, heh!) up to the Bunker Hill monument.    I climb up to the top (all 294 steps), admire the (excellent) view and gingerly make my way down to the bottom again where I discover that my quadriceps muscles have ceased to function to the extent that my companion, who has flown from Vancouver to be with me (or go clothes shopping, in reality - the clothes shops here being some of the best in the Americas I am told), has to stop me from falling down the steps.  She runs five miles a day so seemed to have no trouble, or maybe its being ten years younger than me!  Never mind a couple of pints of the local Harpoon IPA seem to restore my equilibrium somewhat, although this evening my legs are getting very stiff!

The Bunker Hill Monument: actually on Breed's hill, the site of the battle, strangely.  221 feet high it feels like it when you are climbing up or, worse, coming down.

Having managed to negotiate the steps down from the monument we cross the road to the Battle of Bunker Hill museum which has an excellent diorama of the battle with lots of 10mm (I would guess) figures.  Oh dear!  All those ranks of redcoats, all those manky looking colonials and the Perries promising plastic British infantry which will, presumably match the anatomical proportions of their recent figures, as compared with the rather dumpy Foundry ones.  Oh dear,  I'm starting to feel weak again...  

As Sophie said,  "model soldiers are to you like shoes are to me.  You can never have enough and you only regret the ones you didn't buy!"