So, farewell then...

 Well hello. Hands up who thought I was dead? 

Speaking of being dead, It's farewell to David Hockney, the pro-smoking crusader who dabbled in the fine arts in his spare time. There has been some discussion about who is now Bradford's most famous living son. For nostalgic reasons - and because it's hard to get away from football at the moment - I favour Ces Podd, but a consensus seems to be forming around Dynamo.

It's also farewell to Sir Kier. On the one hand I am a bit miffed that it appears that there won't be a contest to replace him, and that therefore I won't get to vote. On the other hand, given that I clearly had no intention in voting for either Burnham or Streeting, my vote wouldn't have counted for much anyway.

And finally, it's farewell to the legendary wargames room, epicentre of wargaming in the Lower Wharfe Valley. We seem to have played our last game there, and sadly didn't realise it at the time. More details will not follow.

Lard Workshop the Second

 The Mojo Dojo Casa House Epictetus still has no kitchen, and so I have been getting out and about as much as possible. As luck would have it the second Lard Workshop took place in Nottingham on Saturday and gave me the excuse to take a couple of days away. As with last year, I spent an afternoon exploring part of the city, on this occasion the National Justice Museum. I wouldn't suggest making a special trip, but if you're in the vicinity it's worth a look. Like many museums these days it featured costumed interpreters, here seen explaining how 18th century executions worked, including more detail than I felt I really needed to know.

You'll be as relieved as I was when I tell you that the lady above, convicted of stealing some scraps of lace, had her death sentence commuted to six weeks in prison in the nick of time. There was a bit of a theme for the weekend though, because one of the first sights that greeted me when arriving for my first game was this victim of evil Prince John.

We were in the 12th century where I was playing the, previously unknown to me, Sheriff of Lardingham, who was attempting to find some mead to serve to the aforementioned Prince John and to Archbishop Roundwood, the latter appearing to be named after the chap who put on the excellent 'Flashing Blades' game which I played in 2022. Sadly, I managed to get his Grace killed rather than refreshed. However, the forces of law and order captured Maid Marion, eliminated Little John and Friar Tuck, and badly wounded not just Will Scarlet but also Robin of the Hood himself, so came out the winners. The rules used were an amended version of Dux Britanniarum. I'd never played these before, but they were similar enough to other Too Fat Lardies rules to make them easy to pick up, while being different enough that one could still get confused. Excellent fun though.

My afternoon game was once again 'Infamy, Infamy'. When I played it last year my intention was return home and put on a game immediately, which obviously never happened. It's unlikely to happen this year either as we have just started the long awaited Peninsular campaign (see James' blog for full details). But it was a great game anyway. I was one of the Roman commanders, attempting to burn the wagons of some marauding Goths. We had a plan - which we didn't get close to being able to even try out - but, as always seems to happen to me in this game, I got ambushed. I like the rules overall, even if I find the close combat a bit convoluted, and wouldn't mind playing them more than once a year.

I thoroughly enjoyed the weekend, apart perhaps from finding my train home full to bursting with disgruntled Grimsby Town supporters, and I am particularly happy to be able to report that Don had arranged for the weather to be much cooler this year.

PotCXXpouri

 This is mostly going to be about wargaming, but I must pass on my congratulations to the boy Windass, who done good. My interest in football has diminished in line with the growth in murderous regimes using it as a front. However, young Josh was at school with the elder Miss Epictetus (and yes, his father did cut a somewhat incongruous figure at nativity plays etc), so I have kept half an eye on his career from afar. I have no real idea why young men seek out the highly-paid and glamorous career of a professional footballer, but moments like that at Wembley yesterday must go some way to making the rest of it tolerable.

Anyway, on with the wargaming. We have played Möckern twice more, or more accurately one and a half times. It has become apparent that Epic C&C will not fit the role assigned to it i.e. a game that can be guaranteed to finish in an evening, which is a shame because to me it's much better than the original version. On a happier note the new 'Activated' tokens worked very well, to the extent that I have dug out some other tokens (actually they're tiddlywinks) to mark things such as units taking a march move. I don't know why I didn't think of this years ago.

There has also been some progress on the kern. To recap, I bought these  - a mix of Tumbling Dice and Red Box figures - earlier in the year when Test of Resolve was all the rage, but then went down with Covid. Having recovered sufficiently to think about painting again I discovered I had no plastic primer. By the time I bought some more the moment had passed and, once again, nothing happened for a while. Eventually having sprayed the plastic figures it was necessary to fix javelins to the metal figures, but I found that my superglue wasn't very super. In fact it wasn't any sort of glue at all. This was a bit of a surprise because my normal problem is sticking the wrong things together - one of them usually being my fingers - rather than failing to stick at all. Either I'd had it too long or I'd bought cheap stuff in the first place; knowing me it will probably be both. So, after yet another delay more glue was procured and there has been some progress.

I wouldn't hold your breath for a photo of the finished article, nor for a report on our refight of Mortimer's Cross.

Ian Beesley

 I was ill for part of last week. Just a heavy cold I think, although to be honest every time I have taken a self-administered Covid test over the last couple of years I have seriously wondered whether I was doing the bloody thing properly. I eased myself back into the land of the living by going to an exhibition of photographs and I shall be easing myself back into the land of blogging by writing about it.

Bradford-born Ian Beesley is currently the subject of a career retrospective exhibition at Salt's Mill. That career started at the same time as I was doing my first degree at Bradford University in the mid 1970s and there was much to bring back memories of the time. I was fortunate enough to be guided round the exhibition by the photographer himself and the background information he provided added greatly to the whole experience. As I'm taking things slowly I shall mention just one of his stories.

In 1997 to celebrate the centenary of becoming a city, Bradford council commissioned Beesley to take portraits of one hundred Bradfordians ranging in age from the newborn to the very old. He went to visit one chap of 104 in a nursing home and the manager said that she was pleased he was there as the individual in question had only had two other visitors all year and they were both foreign gentlemen and so didn't really count as far as she was concerned. After taking the photograph Beesley asked about the other visitors. "Well," came the reply "Bert always visits me when he's in the country". Upon questioning it came out that the old chap had been on the ground staff at Maine Road, and that the Bert in question was Bert Trautmann, the German POW who became Man City goalkeeper and played much of the 1956 FA Cup Final with a broken neck. Rather impressed, Beesely then asked about the other visitor. He, it turned out, had been from the French embassy. The old chap had served on the Western Front and his visitor had come to present him with the Légion d'honneur. I think that story - and the manager's part in it - neatly sums up what's wrong with the attitude of the British to the rest of the world. I'd like to be able to say that things have improved in the last twenty-five years, but we all know that the opposite is true.

Anyway, it's an excellent exhibition, and there's a rather fine Hockney piece currently on the display in the next room as well.

Pot57pouri (slight return)

 I have been absent. In my absence I have been away. Lots of culture was involved, so watch out for a long boring post about it all. In the meantime here's a photo of one very non-cultural site which previously featured on this blog here.

By coincidence I bumped into the same two characters as last time, looking even more grizzled as they came out of the tunnel than they had at the old White Hart Lane. It has to be acknowledged that it's now a very impressive stadium indeed, although it by no means resembles going to the match as I remember it. As if to prove the point we brunched along the Tottenham High Road on organic eggs benedict accompanied by designer sparkling water in an expensively pretentious bottle, the days of several pints and a kebab now being merely a distant memory.

There was no sign of the Costa del Sol Cup. 

Bradford City of Film

 Bradford has a long connection with filmmaking; indeed it was the first UNESCO City of Film in the world. And of course the very first moving pictures ever were taken next door in Leeds. So lots of films have been made in this part of the world. I previously mentioned 'Ilkley: the movie', which was eventually released as 'Say Your Prayers'. Now, I have never seen it, and nor do I know anyone who has, from which I think we can deduce both that it had a very limited release and that it's rubbish. However, given the chance I would watch it because, you know, it's local.

In the meantime I have been to see 'Ali & Ava', also shot in Bradford, but this time in the inner city. It's a nice, warm-hearted watch with all the conflict and difficulties resolving themselves, mostly off camera and in ways not clearly explained. I did enjoy it though, and the physical Bradford shown in it is very much the real Bradford. For those who don't know the city it is perched on hills surrounding a central valley (*) and most views are across the centre to another piece of high ground, and that's faithfully reproduced here. In case anyone wonders about the sudden appearance  of an opulent bookshop among shots of gritty terraces and segregated housing estates, that's the Waterstones in the Wool Exchange, which is a lovely building. Wool of course was once the source of the city's wealth. 

I bet Heathcliffe and Cathy didn't go to Keighley first

Your bloggist is slowing down in his old age and therefore my companion was the same person that I went to see Belfast with recently. This new film contained such a glaring public transport solecism that I turned to her at the end expecting a tirade of "that would never happen". But with the contrariness of her sex, she shrugged her shoulders and said that she couldn't see anything wrong with it. So, it is left to me to point out that if one lived in central Bradford and wanted to go to Haworth for the weekend then one would just go there and not first head off in a different direction, stop at Keighley station and get on the KWVR. 

Not the National Gallery

And, while we're on the subject of public transport, like the proverbial bus a second film shot in Bradford has appeared immediately after the first one. 'The Duke' (**) is mostly set in Newcastle, but the terraced houses seen in the film are in Bradford and the scenes purporting to be the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square were actually shot in Cartwright Hall in Lister Park (***).  I recommend the film, which is very entertaining, and there are excellent performances from Helen Mirren and especially Jim Broadbent, although they're both a decade too old for the roles they play. I said in yesterday's post about Macbeth that great acting doesn't require speech and Mirren proves that again. She manages to express her disapproval of her husband's behaviour simply by the way she knits. As H.L. Mencken astutely observed: "A man may be a fool and not know it; but not if he is married". The annoying error in 'The Duke' is class related rather than anything to do with transport. Helen Mirren lays the table for tea (and that is correct: tea not dinner) and puts the dessert spoon to the right of the knife. Wrong! In a working class home of the early sixties the spoon would have been placed across the top. Don't they do any research?

* The football ground is called Valley Parade for a reason. Unusually for this part of the world there is no river at the bottom of the valley. The road that runs along it is called Canal Road, but there's no canal either. 

** This actually has a couple of tenuous wargaming connections, one of which is that the Duke in question is Wellington.

*** I was there a couple of weeks ago to see 'Island to Island', an exhibition of photographs of the West Indies. If you're in the area I recommend both it and the vegan chocolate cake in the café. 

PotCVIpouri

 “I have not the least sympathy for these useless and destructive pastimes, football and politics.” 

- César Aira

I shall temporarily make an exception for the first of those.

Premier League table 2021/22

Pos	Team	P	W	D	L	GD	Pts
1	Brentford	1	1	0	0	2	3
2	Aston Villa	0	0	0	0	0	0
3	Brighton	0	0	0	0	0	0
4	Burnley	0	0	0	0	0	0
5	Chelsea	0	0	0	0	0	0
6	Crystal Palace	0	0	0	0	0	0
7	Everton	0	0	0	0	0	0
8	Leeds United	0	0	0	0	0	0
9	Leicester City	0	0	0	0	0	0
10	Liverpool	0	0	0	0	0	0
11	Man City	0	0	0	0	0	0
12	Manchester United	0	0	0	0	0	0
13	Newcastle	0	0	0	0	0	0
14	Norwich City	0	0	0	0	0	0
15	Southampton	0	0	0	0	0	0
16	Tottenham	0	0	0	0	0	0
17	Watford	0	0	0	0	0	0
18	West Ham	0	0	0	0	0	0
19	Wolves	0	0	0	0	0	0
20	Arsenal	1	0	0	1	-2	0

Gaming resumed this week with added Mark. He not only took some photos, but he has also posted them here. Very cleverly he has set it out as quiz, in which you have to guess the order in which they were taken. As a help, let me tell you that the second photo shows the final position on the first evening around the farm in the centre, which has turned out to be the focus of the action, and was taken from more or less where I was standing. The main question in my mind at the moment is how to resolve the standoff between the two units facing each other across the road on the right. Winning some initiative would be a good start.

A Little Afternoon Music

 Not only have postings been sparse recently, but they have all been about wargaming; and how dull is that? Cultural opportunities at this time of year are always a bit thin on the ground, and this is not, needless to say, the best of times. I have however been to a couple of pieces of musical theatre. 

Or have I? Not long ago I saw a conversation with Stephen Sondheim's biographer in which he said that the composer's view was that if productions were put on by an opera company then his output were operas, but if they were done on Broadway or the West End then they were musical theatre. 'A Little Night Music' was put on by Opera North so, ergo, it's an opera. Either way both I and my companion for the the afternoon thoroughly enjoyed it. I wouldn't be the first reviewer to point out the irony of songs - 'Send in the Clowns' being probably the best known example - which had been specifically written for actors who couldn't sing a note, being sung beautifully by opera singers who could probably have done them without drawing breathe if they had felt like it. The one in the photo above is the illustrious Dame Josephine Barstow.

Equally tuneful were the cast of 'Piaf', an excellent play with songs about the Little Sparrow from Belleville, and that's despite the fact that one of the actors has represented the UK twice in the Eurovision Song Contest. Rather effectively Edith (*) and her associate Toin were portrayed as Cockneys rather than having cod French accents of the 'Allo 'Allo variety. The rest of the actors spoke in what I assume were their natural accents (apart from briefly when the Bosche occupied Paris) and that also mostly worked. The exception was when Charles Aznavour was revealed as being Welsh. Even worse he was facially the spitting image of the chap who used to advertise Curly Wurly.

'Sheeeee may be the beauty, or the beeeeeast'

For the record, Aznavour in real life actually looked a bit like Roberto Mancini. And as even more of a digression, Terry Scott of course played Cardinal Wolsey in the previously-covered-in-this-blog 'Carry on Henry'. Back to la Piaf: she lived a life, as they say, but she regretted nothing. Rien de rien.

* Named after Edith Cavell - today's pub quiz fact.

I say chaps, well played

 

Pot98bpouri

 Some questions have arrived at the Casa Epictetus, and I am inclined to answer them:

Q1: Can you tell us how you hurt your neck? No, mind your own business, although I will confirm that no horses were involved

Q2: There is previous evidence that you are a Brentford supporter. Can you explain how they went overnight from being the form team not just in the division, or even in the country, but on the planet, to coming fourth in a two horse race? I have absolutely no comment to make on this subject.

Q3: Has any light been thrown on why someone thought it would be a good idea to donate a hand grenade to charity? No.

Q4: Is it the case that you set off the smoke alarm while using the laser cutter and a fire engine turned up? There may possibly be some truth in this. In my defence, setting fire to pieces of wood is an intrinsic part of the activity, and I was wearing a mask and therefore unable to smell anything.

Q5: How can you justify your assertion in the comments section a couple of days ago that there is a mathematical joke to suit all occasions? At last, a sensible question:

A mathematician is tired of maths and decides to become a fireman. At the fire station they give him a test to check his suitability. He is told to imagine a skip full of combustible material, a hose and a tap and asked what he would do if the skip were on fire. 

The mathematician replies, "Well, I put the hose on the tap, turn the water on, and put out the fire." Obviously that is the correct answer so they move on to the second question. The mathematician is asked what he would do if, on a fire inspection, he came across the same skip full of combustible material. "That's straightforward," he says " I would set fire to it."

This causes a certain amount of bewilderment so they ask him why. "Well," the mathematician replies, "that way I reduce the problem to one that I've already solved."

Peace Studies

A number of people seem to have assumed that I was being metaphorical yesterday when I described my film going companion as having a degree in Peace Studies. But no, not so, she was awarded a B.A. Peace Studies by the University of Bradford. It used to be a unique course, in the UK at least, although I don't know if that still obtains. There is a department of War Studies at Kings College, London; the two used to hold an annual football match, maybe they still do. It was a widely held view amongst students reading other subjects at the university in the 1970s that Peace Studies wasn't what one might think of as a 'proper course'. Indeed it was universally accepted that the only timetabled activity that they had each week was a requirement to spend an hour or so one afternoon in the department, lounging on bean bags and drinking herbal tea. My acquaintance, who I only met a few weeks ago, demurred when I put this to her, but she studied in the 1980s, so maybe things had changed a bit by then. I do know a number of excellent stories about one Peace Studies student contemporary of mine - I shall call him Raif - and will perhaps return to them in another post. One of my favourite memories is of him putting theory into practice by attempting to convince two sets of angry football supporters (of Bolton Wanderers and Tottenham Hotspur as it happens) that they should refrain from aggression towards each other because they had more in common than they had differences. Fortunately we managed to rescue him in time.

My new friend is plugged in to the circle of Bradford graduates who remained in the city after graduation and we have discovered that among them are some that I knew back in the day. Very sadly one of those died between Christmas and New Year, before I got a chance to renew our acquaintance. It's a salutary reminder that life is short and getting shorter.

Going back to Peace Studies, as far as I am aware the course hasn't produced any notable politicians. There are however two alumni of the wider university in reasonably prominent positions in the UK at the moment. The first, Clive Lewis, is standing for the leadership of the Labour Party. His flagship policy seems to be the abolition of the monarchy. Whilst I'm all for that, I'm also well aware that it isn't a vote winner; indeed it isn't going to win my vote as a party member for him. The second has appeared in this blog before. At one point the two main parties seemed to be competing as to which had the worst MP named Williamson, and the Tory entry was Gavin, also an ex-student in the Wool City. In the topsy-turvey, Alice in Wonderland world of British politics he, despite being both useless and a self-serving toad, was actually fired as Defence Secretary for being on the right side of an argument. Still, you can't keep a bad man down and he is currently Secretary of State for Education.

Hey, nonny, nonny

And so to the opera. Having seen a theatrical production of 'Much Ado About Nothing' earlier this year I have now been to see Charles Villiers Stanford's rarely performed opera based on the play. You might be starting to think that there are an awful lot of rarely performed operas being, well, performed; and you would be right. The summer is full of festivals whose main purpose seems to be to seek out obscure operas and stage them. In addition these things go in cycles; Handel for example was out of favour, in terms of his operas, until the 1990s and now they're everywhere.

As usual when I see something rarely done I thought it was perfectly good, and couldn't tell you why no one performs it any more. It's one of Shakespeare's more ridiculous plots and so lends itself to operatic treatment quite nicely. There's a balcony scene and the director placed Hero's traitorous maid on the actual balcony of the hall, but sadly chose not to have Borachio climbing a ladder up from the stalls to reach her. Professor Dibble, the world's foremost authority on Stanford no less, said before the performance that the composer was at his best in comic opera. Despite that I am sad to report that the whole Dogberry routine wasn't any funnier for being put to music than it is in the play. Perhaps that's what the Manchester Guardian had in mind when they wrote at the time of its first  performance: "Not even in the Falstaff of Arrigo Boito and Giuseppe Verdi have the characteristic charm, the ripe and pungent individuality of the original comedy been more sedulously preserved."

I can't tell you much about Stanford (1852-1924); the only book about him (by Professor Dibble naturally) is out of print and copies change hands for around £500, which speaking as an accountant suggests it might be worth reprinting. He taught composition to students who went on to be more well-known such as Holst and Vaughan Williams, plus others who no doubt would have gone on to great things had they not been killed in the Great War. He is undergoing a bit of a revival at the moment - if I understood Officer, sorry, Professor Dibble properly there are plans to stage another of his operas at Wexford - and there is plenty of his large output available on CD or indeed Youtube. I rather like this short setting of a poem by Mary Coleridge:

Mary Coleridge was of course related to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, but she wasn't in any way related to Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. To bring things full circle the latter studied under Stanford, who conducted the premiere of his pupil's most famous work 'The Song of Hiawatha'.

Incidentally, the librettist of 'Much Ado About Nothing', Julian Sturgis, also performed the same function for Sir Arthur Sullivan's single serious opera 'Ivanhoe'. However, perhaps what makes him unique amongst opera composers or librettists is that he also played in two FA Cup Finals. It was a different world in those days.

Pot85pouri

So, I've been working a bit, going to the theatre a lot, and condoling with an old school friend about the Champions League final as well as more serious matters in his life. Amongst other things we had a wander round the Shaftesbury Avenue branch of Forbidden Planet which prompted my friend to express dismay at the lack of Fireball XL5 merchandise; strange that.

Mention of finals makes me realise that I haven't mentioned the cricket. Well, exciting or not I'm really not sure how anyone could get triumphalist about winning in that manner: a fluke followed by incorrect interpretation of the rules resulting in a tie, the nature of the tie-break being completely biased in your favour, still only managing another tie and then turning out to be the winner using a formula that makes the countback method in high-jump look positively scientific. I am unimpressed. I actually missed the climax of it all because I went to see Lisa Mills, last mentioned here, with a band this time and damned fine she was too. In case anyone is concerned, the lack of alcohol free beer has been rectified.

While I am here and complaining about triumphalism, let me write something about the anniversary of the first moon landing, which I am of course old enough to have watched live on television. Notwithstanding its underlying purpose of being cold war propaganda, I still regard it as perhaps mankind's greatest achievement in my lifetime and so full respect go to not just Armstrong and Aldrin but to the whole team behind them. It's just a shame about pretty much everything else that the human race, and especially our rulers, have done over the intervening period.

And finally here is Duane Jarvis covering Lucinda Williams' 'Still I Long For Your Kiss':

Pot63pouri

"Time is a circus, always packing up and moving away." - Ben Hecht

I have been pottering along here at the Casa Epictetus doing nothing very much. I am not retired and yet I don't work. I am in what Dorothy L. Sayers referred to as 'that time of life when a man can extract an Epicurean enjoyment even from his own passions - the halcyon period between the self-tormenting exuberance of youth and the fretful carpe diem of approaching senility'.

There has been a low level of wargame related activity. I have established that with a couple more trench sections - junctions specifically - I can play the second scenario from the Stout Hearts book. I have come to two conclusions: that I can't be arsed to build them myself and that the first game was successful enough to warrant the investment of a few quid more, and therefore I shall place an order for said trench sections to be collected at Vapnartak. On the painting front I have completed more casualty markers for To The Strongest and quite a few light infantry and Commander/Hero figures for the Ancient Britons that I don't actually need. I also did a couple of the druids from the Hat Gallic Command pack which inevitably led me to consider whether it was time to revisit the Pony Wars rip off rules and convert them to hexes. I don't currently have enough Hexon hills to put on a game, but I don't think they are going to find their way into this order.

On the music front I've watched quite a few local bands in pubs ranging from the blues of the ever reliable Dr Bob & the Bluesmakers, the excellent soul covers of the Solicitors, the poppy folk originals of the Ale Marys and the zydeco of Bayou Gumbo. The last of those seemed to rather misjudge their audience. The lead singer introduced one song with a joke that made perfect sense if you were familiar with 'À la recherche du temps perdu'. The Frenchness so eagerly embraced by Otley in the days of la Tour de France has obviously dissipated, and the Tuesday night crowd in la Jonction had clearly not got round to reading their copy of Proust's masterpiece quite yet.

Speaking of reading, I have been doing quite a bit. I have just started on Jonathan Sumption's history of the Hundred Year's War. It's a big book (and that's just the first volume) and so it's left at home rather than being taken about with me. That's probably for the best because of course he is one of the members of the Supreme Court hearing the appeal about triggering Article 50, and presumably when the judgement goes against the government even the sight of his name on a book cover will be sufficient  to provoke anger in the streets. When I do venture out I rely on my kindle. Recently I have read Priestley's 'Bright Day' (which, given my love of coincidence, I was pleased to see includes a trip to a thinly disguised Malham) and McBain's 'King's Ransom'. The latter has found a place on the - very short - list that I keep of books where part of the plot turns on a cost accountancy issue. I accept that this is perhaps a niche interest, but it appeals to me. Should you wish to read them, the others in this limited category are 'The Rise of Silas Lapham' by William Dean Howells and 'Angel Pavement' by, coincidentally again, J.B. Priestley. I omit Eli Goldratt's 'The Goal' and Roger Jones' 'The Carpetmakers' for reasons which I'm sure will require no further explanation.

And finally I was sorry to hear of the death of former cabinet minister Jim Prior. As I think I have mentioned before he was the only Tory MP or former MP that I have ever met. I had dinner with him twenty years ago in Abu Dhabi while we were both selling weapons of mass destruction to Johnny Foreigner. He was very, very drunk. We discussed a number of relatively trivial things including the recent giant killing exploits of Brentford (my team) over Norwich (his team) in the 3rd round of the FA Cup, but I can remember that we also touched on one of the big political issues of the day -  the proposed third runway at Heathrow; plus ça change.

Pot59pouri

"Our lives are full of empty space" - Umberto Eco

The big bouncy woman is in vacanza and in her absence I am somewhat bereft. Any others - and I am neither confirming nor denying that there are others - are just not, in the words of T.S. Eliot, as "bavard, baveux, à la croupe arrondie".

But enough of that, and back to politics. I wanted to pass on a link to a blog post regarding the Labour Party leadership that I found interesting. There is some thoughtful debate going on regarding the issue, it's just that it doesn't get reported in the newspapers or on television.

Wargaming news is a tad slow; we appear to have got the rules wrong yet again in the Bohemian Blitzkrieg campaign so there is a short delay. But I have picked up a paintbrush for the first time a yonk. Admittedly it wasn't to paint any figures, but it was a start. The younger Miss Epictetus got it into her head to go to a pottery painting café and, in the absence of any interest whatsoever elsewhere, was forced to call on the aged parent. It was very relaxing, therapeutic almost, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself applying a Caribbean beach scene to a mug from which, when it's been fired and I get it back, I fully intend to drink coffee laced with rum. That should make the Great War project go with a swing.

It is, as one can't help but know, fifty years to the day since England won the world cup. I haven't watched, listened to or read any of the stuff being churned out to commemorate it, but in my head I have been transported back to watching a black and white tv in the living room of a house in Bethnal Green which was within the year knocked down as part of the slum clearance programme. The memories naturally relate mostly to those with whom I watched it and who are no longer with us; basically everyone except my younger sister. My grandfather - who now I think about it was almost certainly sitting there with a cup of tea laced with a dash of whisky; let no-one tell you nature isn't as strong as nurture - was also gone within the year. I still have a number of volumes of a history of the Great War that were the only books I ever saw in his house. 

I have always prided myself on never having been in the slightest bit patriotic. Someone - Julian Barnes perhaps - wrote that real patriotism was pointing out to one's country when it got things wrong. But reflecting on 1966 makes me wonder. I suspect that as a ten year old boy growing up in post-war Britain I was as patriotic as everyone else. Perhaps it was that day that did it. We'd won and that was it. Anything further would be mere repetition and so it didn't hold any further interest for me.

"If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat" - Simone de Beauvoir

Pot57pouri

I have still not received the new laptop charger ordered some weeks ago, indeed it has not yet been dispatched.  I am therefore unable to post to this blog on a daily basis as I would wish. This delay is the fault of - and this is the honest truth - Elkie Brooks. I know that is going to upset her greatest fan and quondam blog reader, but I have to say it as I see it. Ms Brooks is playing the Royal Hall in Harrogate later this year and I think I might have to get myself along there and take her to task about this charger business. In the meantime various other things have occurred.

Somewhat unexpectedly, even to me, I have been on a stadium tour of White Hart Lane. The place does have vague connections - via Harry Hotspur - with things that I am actually interested in, like medieval history and Shakespeare, and I have actually been there before on numerous previous occasions as a spectator. Indeed I have very fond memories of a game against Ipswich (Spurs 5 Ipswich 3) where Carl and I happened to meet two visiting Rhodesian nurses keen to be shown the sights of London. Their country of origin is an indication of exactly how long ago it all was - living in the past, moi? Anyway, I enjoyed the tour more than I thought I would and was rather surprised at a couple of things, notably how small the dressing rooms were and how uncomfortable the chairs in the directors box. I was impressed by the medals won by the incomparable Dave Mackay during the double season of 1960-61 and, to a much lesser extent, by the hideous monstrosity that is the Costa del Sol Cup, a trophy whose size is in inverse proportion to the number of people who have ever heard of it.

"Where's them nurses at?"

I assume that everyone has, like me, been expecting 3D printed figures to become available to wargamers for some time now. I have only just become aware that they are already here (and reviewed here).That link is to the 1/72 page, but there are others, and by the nature of their design and manufacture they are of course easily scalable. They are ridiculously expensive to the point of being completely unaffordable, but what a brave new world that has such figures in it.

Anyway, in tomorrow's non-daily post there will be some non-wargaming news. Stay tuned.

Variations on a theme

"If a theme or idea is too near the surface, the novel simply becomes a tract illustrating an idea." - Elizabeth Bowen

That may be true of novels, but surely the inverse is true of boardgames. When discussing wargames with Chris - experienced boardgamer, novice wargamer -  I tried to place the two types of games in juxtaposition to each other. One definition that I've seen (I can't remember where, so sincere apologies for the lack of attribution) a definition of the difference based on wargames being only those which are based on a free form approach to movement and range. In other words C&C would always be a board game even when played with miniatures.

My own take on it is that wargames should be considered a subset of boardgames (remember that the latter term actually covers many games without boards at all), one of whose membership criteria is that theme is very important. In historical wargames (I'm afraid I have no personal experience of fantasy or sci-fi gaming) the mechanics have to give both a game and a representation of warfare of the period which accords with the views held by the gamer. If that isn't the case - even to small degrees - then players will swiftly complain about or tinker with the rules as written. In many (most) boardgames the game derives from the mechanics and the theme is relatively unimportant. Players may suggest that house rules are introduced because they think it will make a better game, but not because it will bring the result closer to the way that people really build railways, collect property portfolios, carry out heroic quests etc. In my analysis C&C moves firmly back to being a wargame.

As ever, the truth is probably somewhere in between and the subset defined above should be viewed through the lens of Fuzzy set theory rather than in terms of Cantor's original version that we all learned at school.

Legend

Changing the subject, I was very sorry to hear of the death of Joy Beverley, eldest of the sisters of that name and widow of Billy Wright the former England football captain, and who, like me, came from Bethnal Green. No doubt there will be plenty of chances to listen elsewhere to their (not unpleasant) music, so I'll take the chance to link to some Sista Beverley instead, a track from back when two 7s clashed.

In a crowded hazy bar

So, two days late, but it's time to offer congratulations to the Bees.

I also neglected to mention before now that I'd been to see Feast of Fiddles and excellent they were too. For a bunch of old folkies (they include violinists who have played with amongst others Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span and the Battlefield Band) they are very eclectic in their repertoire. Last year when I saw them they opened with the theme from Thunderbirds, this time it was Kashmir, the Led Zeppelin classic.

I was there

And of course while we're on the subject of music, one must mention the death of Rubin Carter.

All of Rubin's cards were marked in advance
The trial was a pig-circus he never had a chance
The judge made Rubin's witnesses drunkards from the slums
To the white folks who watched he was a revolutionary bum
And to the black folks he was just a crazy nigger
No one doubted that he pulled the trigger
And though they could not produce the gun
The DA said he was the one who did the deed
And the all-white jury agreed.

 

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

Pot6pouri

• I have been looking more closely at the casualty markers that I bought from Warbases at Triples. They are the smaller ones - which is why I bought them - and are numbered up to 6. Mysteriously though, the order of the numbers is 1,2,3,4,5,0,6. No wonder they were on special offer.
• Miniature Wargames - the verdict on the changes? I'm not that impressed. The graphic design is better, but that's basically down to having black print on white pages rather than white print on black pages. I don't think you had to be a genius to work that out. Otherwise the relaunch seems to entirely consist of Henry Hyde getting his dull mates to write dull articles. I don't know what wargaming universe this Shuck bloke lives in, but it bears no resemblance to mine.
• Brentford 1 Celtic 2 - there's a score you don't see too often. I was in Glasgow last week and about the only shops airside in the airport were for the two football clubs. At 10:30 in the morning I was walking along Sauchiehall Street and outside a kilt shop I saw a woman drinking Special Brew from a can. It only needed a deep fried Mars bar and the scene would have been complete.
• I was having dinner in a country house hotel outside Birmingham a couple of days ago and a helicopter suddenly landed on the lawn in front of us. The waitress happened to be serving us at the time and my companion for the evening asked her who it was. "Bruce Springsteen" the waitress replied confidently. It wasn't.