Pot51pouri

That last post was a bit wargaming heavy so perhaps it's time for some waffle and digression. I could do with some light relief as I'm recovering from a truly tedious and futile journey to Birmingham and back through the teeth of Storm Gertrude. When I tell you that the highlight of the trip by a considerable margin was a Greggs sausage roll you will understand exactly how bad it was.

On the way back - during which I had to stand for the whole journey - I finished the latest 87th Precinct novel on my kindle (I have come late to McBain, but am relishing them) and having left my WWI trench research at home, I turned to the first of the Sharpe books. I had bought this in a weak moment when Amazon offered it at a big discount - presumably to tempt me into reading the rest at full price - and never got round to starting it. Having done so I didn't like it and shan't be finishing it. It's by no means impossible to do this sort of thing well (e.g. Patrick O'Brian or C.S. Forester), but this is poor stuff.

On the up side I have been to see Giles Hedley and the Aviators who were rather good. Hedley himself is perhaps too posh to make a totally convincing bluesman - although he did apparently once open shows for both Son House and Mississippi Fred McDowell - but they make a fine noise. They cover all the usual bases: House himself, Howlin' Wolf, Sleepy John Estes, Robert Johnson, Charley Patton and no doubt others I've forgotten; but they do it very well. The drummer, Sam Kelly, is unbelievably cool (and talented; if you've ever listened to Craig Charles you may have heard Cymande, of which Kelly was a founder member) and Hedley is the only man I've ever seen play two harmonicas at once, by nose and by mouth. A very good evening was made even better when I won the raffle.

The younger Miss Epictetus and her boyfriend continue to wreak mayhem across South East Asia. In the latest episode, said boyfriend has apparently chundered over an entire extended Bengali family while they were peacefully enjoying some folkloric Cambodian entertainment. In the version of the story relayed second hand to me by the elder Miss Epictetus, the recipients of his, shall we say, illness were in some unspecified way responsible for their own misfortune, but, whilst I am as prone to stick up for my children as any father, I'm not entirely sure that I buy that.

And now some random music, in no way reflective of my frame of mind: