PotCIIIPouri

 Well, here we are, April 11th, and there's a blizzard outside. On top of which the radio appears to have been hijacked by North Korea and is paying non-stop tribute to Kim Jong Phil, who has apparently left us at a tragically young age. 

Young people undertaking their Gold Award expedition

When I was last here it was for a book review. Trebian, over at Wargaming for Grown-ups, has now reviewed the same book, and it seems to have not gone down terribly well. I think our overall conclusions aren't that different - read the book, but make sure that it's someone else's copy - but for once I have been outintemperated (*). A suspiciously large part of his beef with the book seems to be that Dr Lewis hadn't read his (Graham Evans' aka Trebian's) book on Edgecote/Edgcote. I have read it and can confirm that it is a lot better than Dr Lewis' book, but if anyone genuinely thinks that 'Medieval Combat' is the worst book they've ever read then I can only suggest that they are not reading enough books.

According to obituaries that I have seen - not one of which, by the way, mentions the fact that he arranged the murder of Princess Diana - Baron Greenwich didn't have that problem, and in fact owned 11,000 books including many of poetry; so props to him. I am proud to say that this blog can exclusively reveal his favourite poem from among that large collection, one that befits both an old salt like him and this poignant moment in our nation's history:

There was a young sailor from Brighton

Who said to his girl "That's a tight one"

She exclaimed "Bless my soul

You're in the wrong hole

But there's plenty of room in the right one."

* This is definitely a word.

2017

I have had better years, but I suppose I should be grateful that we are still here and that neither the tangerine half-wit or the only fat person in North Korea have yet blown us all to kingdom come. In which spirit I offer you my highlights of 2017:

Opera: I have seen 15, albeit a number of them being single act works in Opera North's latest 'Little Greats' season. Among these was a 'Trial by Jury' which I can honestly say was the first Gilbert & Sullivan that I have ever enjoyed. Am I getting old? However, the best piece that I saw was a chamber version of 'The Turn of the Screw' while other highlights included a wonderful semi-staged Turandot and the first Tosca I have seen where the heroine actually throws herself off the battlements instead of doing away with herself in a manner unfaithful to the libretto, but simpler to portray on stage.

Theatre: I saw 46 plays (including Romeo and Juliet four times) which only included one real stinker (which wasn't one of the Romeo and Juliets), plus a few that I wouldn't bother to watch again (which did include one of the Romeo and Juliets). A few things stand out: 'Twelfth Night' at the Globe, Bazza's farewell, and a very explicit 'Rita, Sue and Bob Too'. I'm going to award two prizes: Best One Man Show which will be shared between 'The Autobiography of Jane Eyre' and James Hornsby's 'David Copperfield' and Best Theatrical Experience That Has Something Loosely To Do With Jane Austen which is also shared, this time between 'Mr Darcy Loses the Plot' and 'Austentatious'.

Films: I saw 15 on the big screen. Of the new ones (I'll exclude Vertigo and The Graduate from consideration) the best was 'The Handmaiden' which I highly recommend, although as I think I said at the time it's best not to watch it with your mother. Honourable mentions go to 'The Death of Stalin' (did anyone else think Jason Isaac's Zhukov was essentially an homage to Sean Bean?) and 'Baby Driver'.

Books: I am bereft. I can find no indication that there is any intention to translate the fourth book in the 'Fortunes of France' series into English, let alone the rest of them. This is a disaster. In the absence of 'Le Prince que voila' I am instead going to go for 'The Song of Achilles' by Madeline Miller.

"Throw me a frickin' bone here!" 

Gigs: I have seen 43 of these with the blues featuring very strongly. Nevertheless Tom Russell, whom I saw twice, has to be the best with honourable mentions for Wille and the Bandits, Devon Allman and Eugene 'Hideaway' Bridges.

Pancho Villa crossed the border...

Wargames: Highlight of the year was undoubtedly the trip to Kirriemuir, the biggest game that I am ever likely to play in, and the chance to roll dice with with Charles S. Grant. It was excellent, but it was a long, long way. Best game in the annexe was, I think, the ersatz Eckmuhl with Prussians standing in for Austrians in an EPIC C&C scenario. Best game at James' was Sidi Rezegh. No, just kidding, it was his Garigliano scenario, especially the four player game.

Event of the year: This is a tough one. Possibly I should just acknowledge the fact that this year I didn't get taken to A&E in an ambulance even once. It's also hard to look beyond the kick-off for the new rowing boats on the river, which was extremely funny and compelling in a 'can't take your eyes off it, car crash' sort of way; the lesson learned being that Members of Parliament shouldn't get in a rowing boat with someone four times as heavy as themselves. However, I'm going to plump for what happened in Knaresborough on May 30th, the significance of which wasn't fully understood at the time, and the details of which I am not going to reveal.

Observant readers may have noted that some of the items mentioned above are making their first appearance here. My diarist's mojo deserted me at some point in the autumn with the one beneficial result being that I have no longer had the compulsion to tell you either what I ate for breakfast (porridge with cinnamon, honey and sultanas as it happens) or every last detail of my ongoing cultural pseudery. Among the other elements of my life to be jettisoned was playing boardgames, hence the lack of reports on those recently. I had become somewhat jaded with it all, but I think a period away has restored my appetite and I expect to pick it up again in the new year. If you're really lucky I'll start writing ill-informed guff about operas again as well.

May/June Boardgames

It's been another distinctly non-vintage couple of months for boardgaming, although I still managed to play twenty games:

6 nimmt!: A bit random maybe, but a perfectly fine short card game which I prefer to X nimmt!.

Abluxxen: Another fine short card game.

Arctic Scavengers: The role of theme in boardgames isn't always that important; however I would suggest that while it can't make good games better it can make bad games worse. I have a distaste for the post apocalyptic almost as great as that I have for fantasy and magic. This gets a big thumbs down from me.

Avenue: This is a quick and interesting enough game that handles a lot of players without taking any longer.

The Climbers: I do like a 3D game and I especially like this. I suspect that my unexpected victory a couple of months ago will never be repeated, but I'm always happy to play.

Codenames: Reliable filler.

Elysium: I was pleased to play this again. It has an interesting auction mechanism and is one of the few engine building games that I don't mind. The scoring is also exactly like Rummy, thereby proving that there is nothing new under the sun.

First Class: From the designer of Russian Railroads, this is a bit like Russian Railroads. My advice would be to play Russian Railroads.

Five Tribes: I like this; recommended. The number of tribes involved is probably one, possibly zero, but certainly not five.

Ice Flow: Another favourite of mine, with a very different mechanism to most games.

Istanbul: An enjoyable game, which is rather looked down on by the hard core gaming fraternity; their loss.

Lords of Waterdeep: Speaking of theme, this one's is notoriously wafer thin. Treat it as an abstract worker placement game and it's good.

Package?!: A filler which, as they often do, took longer to explain than to play. Nominally about delivering parcels, it has a mechanism for doing down other players which rebounds if you're not careful. Enjoyable.

Port Royal: Yet another nice little card game. I'm not sure I entirely grasped the best tactics; maybe next time.

Power Grid: China/Korea: We played the Korea board, which had an interesting - though possibly irrelevant in our game - split in the resource market between North and South. You'll be pleased to know that the North doesn't seem to have any uranium.

Quantum: Another old favourite unplayed for a couple of years. I think the dice as spaceships mechanism is very clever. For added interest to wargamers, there is the opportunity - necessity even - to attack everyone else's ships, which is achieved by rolling dice adjusting for various factors and comparing the results.

Sail to India: There's a lot of game in a small box here.

Skull: I thought that this had suffered from overexposure and was unlikely to appear for quite a while. I was wrong.

This War of Mine:  More post apocalyptic drivel, this time it's a co-operative just to rub salt in the wounds. Apparently it's based on a video game; I trust that the original is better than this over complicated farrago.

The Voyages of Marco Polo: This is an OK worker placement game with a map. My tip is to buy as many camels as you can, as early as you can and as often as you can.

Pot23pouri

News that Cuba is to lift restrictions on importing cars built after 1959 came as somewhat of a surprise to me. Any visitor there can't help but notice that most cars are - as in the rest of the world - Toyotas; they're just not the ones that anyone takes photos of. The old cars are clearly there as a tourist attraction and I can confirm that there is something very memorable about driving through Havana in an open top classic car with salsa music on the radio and warm wind blowing through where one's hair would normally be. The version that I got from our driver was that far from being relics dating from before the 1959 revolution most of them were actually fairly recent imports from the US via Mexico, specifically brought in for touristic purposes. I can't help thinking that this news story is more spin than substance.

At the age of thirty-seven she knew she'd found forever

And so regrettably we once again turn to those who have left us. Any readers for whom watching the 1966 world cup in grainy black and white was a key formative experience (and on reflection that's perhaps where my otherwise inexplicable interest in North Korea comes from) will feel keenly the sad news of Eusebio's death. What a shot that man had.

And then Phil Everly. They didn't write it, theirs wasn't the best version (step forward Gram Parsons), but one feels obliged to mark his passing by printing the lyrics. That's the way it rolls in the world of wargaming blogs.

Love hurts, love scars
Love wounds and mars
Any heart not tough
Nor strong enough
To take a lot of pain, take a lot of pain
Love is like a cloud, holds a lot of rain
Love hurts
Love hurts

I'm young, I know
But even so
I know a thing or two
I've learned from you
I've really learned a lot, really learned a lot
Love is like a stove, burns you when it's hot
Love hurts
Love hurts

Some fools rave of happiness
Blissfulness, togetherness
Some fools fool themselves, I guess
But they're not fooling me
I know it isn't true, know it isn't true
Love is just a lie made to make you blue
Love hurts
Love hurts
Love hurts

"Come, lead me to the block; bear him my head"

Back in 1991 I was privileged to see Sir Ian McKellen give his Richard III at the National Theatre. The renowned Richard Eyre production translated the action to the 1930s with the king as a Mosley type fascist - only somewhat more successful than the leader of the Blackshirts.

I mention this because recent events in North Korea naturally remind me of Act 3 (one of the most historically accurate elements of that play), and the peaked caps point directly to the McKellen version. One can imagine Chang Song-thaek calming his associates with words similar to those of Hastings:

"Where nothing can proceed that toucheth us

Whereof I shall not have intelligence

Tell him his fears are shallow, wanting instance

And for his dreams, I wonder he is so fond

To trust the mockery of unquiet slumbers"

Later of course,as he is being dragged away by the guards, he reflects (in Korean one must assume):

"O momentary grace of mortal men

Which we more hunt for than the grace of God!

Who builds his hope in air of your good looks,

Lives like a drunken sailor on a mast,

Ready, with every nod, to tumble down

Into the fatal bowels of the deep."

The rest of us might be somewhat taken aback by the goings on of the family Kim, but Shakespeare wouldn't have been. Now that's art.

Pot20pouri

 For anyone who knows an inveterate rule tweaker there is an interesting observation buried in a game report on Trebian's 'Wargaming for Grown-ups" blog. He postulates a cycle in respect of wargames rules like the Five Stages of Grief (Denial, Anger etc). It all makes perfect sense to me.

The angels ponder a D8 defence dice

 I am also most concerned about the fate of Comrade Chang Song-thaek. Apparently his crimes include 'drinking, gambling and womanising'. Frankly if that sort of behaviour is to be held against people then which of us can truly consider ourselves safe?

Your bloggist has left the building

Ben as I didn't know him

I have been to a lecture on the interpretation of 'Six Metamorphoses after Ovid' (Opus 49) by Benjamin Britten with particular emphasis on the second movement, Phaeton. Obviously I have a full technical grasp of all the arcane issues surrounding the craft of oboe playing, but - reluctantly - I will have to assume that you don't. I will therefore restrain myself to observing that it would seem that different people like to play it in different ways. Who would have thought it? However, all oboeists, even today, appear to be restricted in what they do because they remain in awe of Ben (as they all refer to him, as if they had known him well) and his strict views on how his works should be played. This is despite the fact that he's been dead for almost forty years. All of which rather puts me in mind of Salvador Dali's reputed aversion to the performing arts because of their transitory and impermanent nature.

Presumably there are a number of you wondering why a major twentieth century composer wrote a piece of music about a Volkswagen, but hopefully there are a larger number of you familiar with the story of the son of the sun god who was allowed to ride his father's chariot, lost control of the winged horses and plunged to earth when Zeus fired a thunderbolt in order to prevent him from burning up the whole world. The latter among you, of course, will be pointing out that Phaeton did not undergo a metamorphosis as such, but instead, well, died. I did mention this at the time to Ben, as he liked me to call him, but he simply blamed Ovid and that was the end of it.

Anyway, the one thing that we can all agree on is that it's a good job that in this enlightened modern era no callow youth would be allowed to abruptly take over his father's role and imperil the planet by not knowing what he is doing.

'Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.' - Ovid

Catherine Howard - an apology

I was hanging with my homies the other day and the subject turned inevitably to the subject of why Kathryn Parr was executed. So that's the first apology: me and my crew can't tell the difference between Henry VIII's fifth and sixth wives. Anyway, confusing the Kates aside, there was a debate

Catherine someone or other

as to the exact nature of the crime of which she was convicted. Some said treason, others said something else, don't know what, but not treason. The debate raged to no conclusion in particular. However it transpires that she wasn't actually convicted of anything as she wasn't afforded the courtesy of a trial; instead simply being condemned via an Act of Attainder. They did things differently in those days. Or perhaps not.

Another world problem that we solved was to conclude that no-one be worried by the threat of North Korea. The reason? It's the shoes that their soldiers wear.