Pot67pouri

So, another month draws to a close, and once again many things have gone unreported in this blog. I went to Lincoln, although on reflection that was pretty dull. The big bouncy woman and I were this close to going out walking before storm Doris intervened (and apropos of nothing, the the name of that weather system has been bringing back uncomfortable memories of someone I used to go out with some decades ago). I also saw a performance of Return to the Forbidden Planet that I can best describe as troubling. The group involved seem to consist of middle aged men and much younger women. Normally this is a membership policy that would be right up Epictetus' street, but in this case it verged into the uncomfortable, not to say creepy. Miranda (the piece is very loosely based on The Tempest via the 1950s film) was played by a young girl not much older than the fifteen that Shakespeare ordained, and her love interest must have been at least twice her age; very wrong. The band were good though.

Wargaming has been covered mostly as we have gone along, but there was a small amount of painting: eight stands of longbowmen, four Celt casualty markers and half a dozen or so Great War Tommies. A number of 1914-18 field guns have arrived in the post so I hope to be more productive in March. I also returned some figures to Mark that he had originally passed on to me many years ago and with which I had done absolutely nothing in the meantime. It did mean however that he finally came to take a look at the wargaming annexe; I hope to fix up a game with him sometime soon.

A monkey with a beard

I am still ploughing through Trial by Battle, the first volume of Jonathan Sumption's massive history of the Hundred Years War. I am enjoying it, despite the long and somewhat dry lists of things like place names, people and so on. One such list that caught my eye this week is on page 404 and details the things that Edward III enjoyed himself by hunting in the forests of Brittany in November 1342: "deer, foxes, bears, monkeys and other beasts plentiful beyond measure". Now Sumption is clearly a very clever man and ordinarily I would not dare to cast aspersions regarding his scholarship, but monkeys? Monkeys? In the forests of northern France? Come on, your Lordship, get a grip.