2020

 It has long been a self-indulgence of mine to write an extensive post at the end of each year outlining in completely unnecessary detail things, mainly cultural, that I have done. For reasons that I don't need to explain I find that this time around I can't be arsed. A year ago I summed up 2019 by saying that it had been, as I had predicted, worse than 2018. I make no claim that I extended that to forecast a miserable 2020 as well. Still, Trump lost - several times in fact - so it wasn't a complete wash out.

When I looked back at my diary I was rather surprised at how much  I had actually done in the circumstances, although oddly enough I seem to have read fewer books that the previous year. I played nine wargames - none since March 2nd - and traditionalists will be pleased to note that one of them was Sidi Rezegh.

Quite a few two player boardgames have hit the table at the Casa Epictetus. Conscious that I haven't suggested a boardgame in quite a while can I point you towards Targi, which I highly recommend to those whose bubble only includes only one other (*); and it's even better with the expansion.

Of course many people have left us this year. One to whose music I have been listening a lot since he died is John Prine. So let's wrap up the year by listening to him tell us just what he's doing right now:

                                                        “Hope

                                                         Smiles from the threshold of the year to come,

                                                        Whispering 'it will be happier'...”

                                                                      - Tennyson

Peace and love to you all.

* at a time

The Corner Conundrum

 I have come across a new resource for horse and musket siege warfare. Among other things it has some nifty animated diagrams to explain why bastions were needed and why they were the shapes that they were. When it comes to saps though, it would appear that they are drawing on the same source material as everyone else. Duffy is clear that, other than in unusual circumstances, saps only had one side, which still leaves open the question of how to represent the corners. If one was to take the sensible option and simply delineate the trench with suitable rectangles then it would look like this:

If one replaces those with the saps that I have moulded (and you will note that I haven't got round to casting any more) you get this, which looks completely wrong because it is completely wrong:

A more 'correct' layout would be something like this, which isn't remotely aesthetically satisfying:

The problem is, obviously enough, that you can't see the trench. I do have some ideas, the one which I favour the most being to include a tiny model Phil Harding using his trowel to point out the edge line to an even more tiny model Tony Robinson. Failing that, I have one or two other possible solutions in mind, and shall report back.

No idea

 So, that was Christmas. The most exciting thing that happened to me was burning my finger while pulling a cracker; never happened before, all those years, all those crackers.

As for the joke in the cracker:

Q: What do you call a deer with no eyes?

Season's Greetings

Peace. We look at our world and speak the word aloud.
Peace. We look at each other, then into ourselves
And we say without shyness or apology or hesitation.

Peace, My Brother.
Peace, My Sister.
Peace, My Soul.

            - Maya Angelou

Gut Yontiff to you all.

Here Come Demould - Of The Castings

"And will you succeed?

Yes! You will, indeed!

(98 and ¾ percent guaranteed)"

- Dr Seuss

So, the mould having sufficiently cured, I used it to make a polyurethane cast. That part of the process wasn't as fraught as I thought it might be. Whilst there is a limited time to mix and pour the combined chemicals - around two minutes - that's actually plenty, and although the chemical reaction is exothermic, nothing got overly hot. The results are most acceptable.

Here's a comparison with the original model:

Production is fairly quick:

Paradoxically, the fact that it has all worked first time has rather disconcerted me. In my mind I was going to have several attempts at getting the mould right and then a few goes at casting before eventually patting myself on the back for having mastered a new craft. Instead I am pondering what to make with this new not-very-skilful skill, not to mention several hundred grammes of resin. In the meantime I am going to do two things: paint one of the castings, and mould and cast something which is shallow compared to its width, just to see how that works.

Here Come Demould - Of The Mould

 "At the moment of truth, there are either reasons or results" - Charles Ellwood Yeager

Having left it for more than long enough for the silicone to cure, I start to break off the foamboard from around the outside. It looks reassuringly solid.

Blimey, it is solid. It is also solidly stuck to the tile. I hadn't given a great deal of thought to how I might get it off; fortunately it responds to brute force.

And, to my complete surprise, it looks pretty impressive; lots of detail with not much tidying up to do. So far, so good.

This be madness, yet there is no method in't

 "No matter how cynical you become, it's impossible to keep up." - Lily Tomlin

The sap rises again...perhaps

 "As the gardener, by severe pruning, forces the sap of the tree into one or two vigorous limbs, so should you stop off your miscellaneous activity and concentrate your force on one or two points." 

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson could have been speaking directly to wargamers with that sentiment really, except maybe for the bit about vigorous limbs. So, back to saps. The thing about playing a siege game is that one would need lots of saps, lots and lots. I'm not saying that I intend to satisfy that need, but I would quite like to know how I would do so should I ever feel like it. Those of you who followed my previous link to Rod's Wargaming Website may have seen this post in which he uses a rather ingenious trompe-l'œil approach to the problem. It's very creative, but not the way which I wanted to go. Incidentally, whilst he claims to be modelling from Duffy's illustrations he has made his sap two-sided, which I'm not convinced by. I also can't decide if it would make the zig to zag transition easier or harder.

I have a couple of ideas, the first of which is resin casting. I've never done it, but quite fancied having a go and so I sent off for a starter kit. When we left the somewhat underwhelming model that I had made it was tacked to part of a bathroom tile. The next step is to make a box around it - I used foamboard - into which silicone will be poured to form the mould. The join between the foamboard and tile is sealed with copious amounts of hot glue.

After that one calculates the weight of silicone required to fill the dimensions of the box, discovers that the starter kit doesn't contain enough to allow one to, as it were, start, and sends off for some more. I have been using a supplier in Norn Iron, which added a day or so to the delivery schedule, although presumably a lot less time than it will in the new year. It arrived yesterday and was mixed (note to self: get a bigger mixing vessel) and poured.

The paper towels represent the places at which the quantities of hot glue were insufficiently copious; another learning point. It has to be left for twenty four hours to cure, which will finish this afternoon. However, I am booked in for some heavy duty social bubbling, so it may well be Monday before I get to demould. Am I confident? No, not at all, but it passes the time.

Floreat Etona

 

"The essence of a class system is not that the privileged are conscious of their privileges, but that the deprived are conscious of their deprivation." - Clive James 

You can donate to UNICEF here.

Pythagoras Day

 It's a Pythagoras Day today (16² + 12² = 20²). There will only be a maximum of two more in my lifetime; I'm getting old.

Pythagoras is best known for demonstrating how to squash a hippopotamus, but, according to Wikipedia, among his lesser known sayings was "Do not take roads travelled by the public". Truly a man ahead of his time.

Much more reliable is the story of him going into a bar mumbling to himself "If a right-angled triangle has a short side X, a long side Y and a hypotenuse Z, then the square of Z must be equal to the square of X plus the square of...the square of...the square of...".

The barman says "Y, the long face".

post eventum sapientibus

 Wargames blogs have been around for years now, and certain customs and practices have arisen. One of these is promising to do things that are not only never done, but which the both the bloggist and his or her readers know that there is little or no intention of doing in the first place. A small example of this is my claim yesterday that I was going to produce a model of the sap as illustrated by Vauban and Duffy. Clearly, I was never going to model the trench part - that would be silly - and I always knew that I would skip the fascines on the top given that they would probably be mostly covered in earth. I possibly half thought that I might add the sandbags, but in the end I didn't; partly CBA and partly because I think they would make the subsequent steps in my plan more difficult. So, what I have actually made is a row of gabions in front of an earth bank. It's pleasant enough, but falls woefully short of what was shown in the plans.

What it did do is give me a chance to get out the hot glue gun, which is far and away my favourite modelling tool. There is possibly some deep Freudian reason for that, but fortunately I have given up introspection for advent.

The gabions are from the Italeri Battlefield Accessory Set, in part because that's what I had to hand, but mainly because they come in half sections. 

You will note that we are back on the really, really crud covered cutting mat today.

Quelle saprise

 The 'Vauban's Wars' rulebook contains the following picture, apparently from a publication by Vauban himself. (My scanner won't work - no doubt a Windows 10 update problem - so photos only.)

It reminded me of something, but, as seems to happen increasingly frequently as I get older, I couldn't remember what. It has now come back to me: it's this from Chapter 6 of Duffy's 'Fire and Stone', which also appears to be from a publication by Vauban, but is slightly different.

Duffy also includes this illustration, which is more obviously a redrawn version.

On the printed page the figure standing guard in the trench is exactly 25mm tall, which is probably not coincidental; the book does after all contain some rudimentary rules for wargaming sieges. I think I shall try to make a model of, loosely, the sap shown in those plans.

No doubt you are all asking yourselves the same question as me: given that saps zigzag forwards towards the enemy, what does the man at the front do when he wants to turn the corner from zig to zag? Perhaps making a model will reveal all.

A Nocturnal Upon St Lucy's Day

It is the Feast of Santa Lucia, a much bigger deal in Scandinavia (not to mention the eponymous Caribbean island, where it's the national day) than it is in the UK. As was explained to me by my Swedish colleagues over glögg and lussekatt when I worked in Gothenburg, that's because December 13th was the winter solstice under the Julian calendar and therefore a festival of light was just what they needed. 

Regular readers will know that nothing pleases me more than a debate about the Earth's orbit around the sun, but they are a non-confrontational race of people so I didn't bother to point out the obvious flaw in the Julian calendar theory. Still, it does explain why John Donne started his poem in the way that he did:

 'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's,

Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;

         The sun is spent, and now his flasks

         Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;

                The world's whole sap is sunk;

The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk,

Whither, as to the bed's feet, life is shrunk,

Dead and interr'd; yet all these seem to laugh,

Compar'd with me, who am their epitaph.

Study me then, you who shall lovers be

At the next world, that is, at the next spring;

         For I am every dead thing,

         In whom Love wrought new alchemy.

                For his art did express

A quintessence even from nothingness,

From dull privations, and lean emptiness;

He ruin'd me, and I am re-begot

Of absence, darkness, death: things which are not.

All others, from all things, draw all that's good,

Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have;

         I, by Love's limbec, am the grave

         Of all that's nothing. Oft a flood

                Have we two wept, and so

Drown'd the whole world, us two; oft did we grow

To be two chaoses, when we did show

Care to aught else; and often absences

Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.

But I am by her death (which word wrongs her)

Of the first nothing the elixir grown;

         Were I a man, that I were one

         I needs must know; I should prefer,

                If I were any beast,

Some ends, some means; yea plants, yea stones detest,

And love; all, all some properties invest;

If I an ordinary nothing were,

As shadow, a light and body must be here.

But I am none; nor will my sun renew.

You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun

         At this time to the Goat is run

         To fetch new lust, and give it you,

                Enjoy your summer all;

Since she enjoys her long night's festival,

Let me prepare towards her, and let me call

This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this

Both the year's, and the day's deep midnight is.

                                       - John Donne

Mortars - various

 Thanks to everyone for their kind words regarding my latest efforts at CAD design, laser cutting and Polyfilla gap closing. Unusually for these strange times I have some progress to report for a second consecutive day.

I was going to try my hand at scratch building some Gribeauval style siege mortars, in a similar manner to this. But then I came across Speira Miniatures and decided to take the easy option and order some from them instead. They duly arrived from Helsingborg this morning.

They are 3D printed and they can therefore supply them in whatever scale one wants. I obviously went for 1/72 and can confirm that the dimensions are spot on for a 12" Gribeauval mortar, at least according to the Osprey book on the subject. In other words substantially more accurate than I could have made them.

While I was at it I bought some Coehorn style light mortars. These are actually from their ACW range, but van Coehoorn's orginal design wasn't changed overmuch from its first use in 1702 until its final outing in 1915. On top of which, those are 1cm squares that they are sitting on, so one would have to be a pretty enthusiastic rivet counter to spot any difference.

So, a thumbs up from me for Speira Miniatures, excellent products and good service.

One last point: you may, like me, be wondering why my cutting mat appears to be covered in crud in those photographs. I have been to take a look and can confirm that it is, in fact, covered in crud. 

Never Mind The Bulwarks

 Bastions are Go! 

It's the usual story about the spraying, and there's a design fault that means they can't currently be used in straight wall sections, but I think they achieve the objective of vaguely suggesting what they're meant to be.

I shall have to get round the straight wall problem by making some spacer sections to flank them; as if I didn't have enough different bits already.

The cannon are what I propose to use as fortress guns. Those above are from Hat 8311 Napoleonic Naval Cannon and Crew, and the others are from Orion 72001 English Pirates. The Hat ones are a lot better, but waste not want not. I was trying out the 2p pieces as bases, but they are a bit too big. Crew will be individually based so that the guns will serve whoever is defending.

Sappeurs

 Apart from bastions and artillery, on which subjects much has been written and very little actually done, a horse and musket period siege required sappers, engineers etc. When, at the start of the first lockdown, I photographed those elements of my collection never to have seen the table top I ran out of enthusiasm before reaching the French Napoleonic engineers in siege dress.

I have rather a lot of these, which I think is going to come in handy. The opposition to the French will either be Russian or Prussian and I have no idea what the equivalent troops for those armies looked like, or where on earth I'd get some even if I did. The assumption will therefore be that they took their lead from the French and looked pretty much the same.

Three chaps with very unconvincing beards

To stop them from being truly indistinguishable, the French engineer units will each be accompanied by a line infantry sappeur, somewhat incongruously wearing full dress uniform. This is, of course, because I have a number of those and they have never to date seen any action. 

Bastion failure #1

 I keep saying that I intend to make some bastions to turn my town walls into a Vauban fortress. 

What I really mean is that I want to make something that gives a least some of the look and feel of a Vauban(ish) fortress whilst having the footprint appropriate for 20mm figures on a 1.5m x 2.5m table. This is a task that is so far proving beyond my design skills. 

On a more positive note, I have produced some wall segments that connect at other than 90 degrees.

I've also finished painting the forty or so Ancient Britons that I started several months ago. Hooray.

Napoleonic Siege Artillery, a modest recrudescence

 "We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done."

 - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It's a good job that there is no form of audit for wargaming blogs, because the overall ratio of things promised to things delivered would probably shame even the current prime minister. I thought that I had avoided this trap in a recent post when I blithely said that nobody made any 20mm Napoleonic siege artillery and therefore I wasn't going to do anything further on the subject. No sooner had I written it than something began to bug me. Somewhere in my subconscious a distant memory was trying to rise to the surface. It has eventually done so and has led me to to Rod's Wargaming Website. Firstly, if anyone is unfamiliar with that blog you need to start by reading the 'About' page; quite a story. Anyway, the specific post that I had remembered reading was this one. So, a reverse ferret it is, and I think I shall take a look at what can be done after all.

The first step is to consult this book:

And this book:

PotCIpouri

"Whatever they do, I won't deplore, or even preach a lesson" - Charles Perrault, Sleeping Beauty

There is still nothing much happening here, except for mince pies and lots of them. Some progress, though slow, is being made on painting the castle. 

It must be nearly finished, as Rapunzle has taken up residence.

Or perhaps it's Sleeping Beauty, who has woken up already because it's all taking so very, very long. 

I've been asked why the towers are modular. It's because I didn't trust the birch ply not to warp if used in sections that long.

The Anniversary Walls

 It's exactly a year ago today that I produced the first prototype piece for my castle, which is nearly - but not quite - finished. So, a fairly quick timescale by the standards of most wargaming projects I would say. I have enough basic pieces now, although I shall be making some more damaged and breached walls. I will also make some bastions if I can come up with a design that looks the part without being overly complicated to cut out and assemble.

The lecturers who attempted to teach me operations management at business school wouldn't be very impressed, because far from getting a smooth production flow set up, I rather concentrated on the laser cutting and the spray painting. The detailed work all got put to one side and I have recently been faced with painting endless lines of white mortar (*), which has all been very dull. There are a dozen or so pieces still being sprayed, as and when climatic conditions allow. I have discovered that it's a waste of time trying to cover them in one coat - I don't really know why; perhaps because the paint is textured - and that it is better to give them half a dozen or so quick sprays, which adds to the elapsed time. When it is 'finished' I shall set up a proper picture.

* For the record the colour actually used is tapioca. 

Life imitates art

 "Life imitates art far more than art imitates life" - Oscar Wilde

Lockdown has so far consisted of nothing much more than sitting around eating Heston Blumenthal's Spiced Mince Pies with a Lemon Twist, perfectly pleasant without being remotely worth the money, and chuntering about Windows 10, the October update of which has disabled a number of features on my laptop. You would not believe how many tickets I had booked for events in November: ranging from Beethoven to Buster Keaton via Alan Bennett. I was even going to see 'Citizen Kane' on the big screen to mark the 75th anniversary of its release. Coincidentally, the following clip has been forwarded to me more than once over the last couple of days; people seem to think it captures the zeitgeist.

Vauban's Wars - the unboxing

I mentioned a couple of months ago the publication of 'Vauban's Wars', a set of horse and musket siege rules which had been long in the gestation. It had been my intention to take a look at James' copy - he's in the Piquet Inc inner circle and will undoubtedly get one - but given that I'd been waiting to see them for some seven years already, plus the likelihood that the way things are being managed in the UK at the moment it will probably be another seven years before the inhabitants of the Wharfe Valley are allowed to visit each other's wargames rooms, made me splash out and buy my own copy.

The man himself

So, these are my first thoughts:

• The production values are good. It's a 98 page ring bound book in colour plus quick play sheets. 
• Sheets containing the cards, which need to be cut out, are provided. Alternatively you can, as I did, pay extra for a playing card quality version. Either will fit the standard 63.5mm x 88mm sleeve.
• There is a thorough list of contents, background information including a glossary, designer notes and game markers for photocopying.
• The colour photographs are not, as is so often, merely to look good and inflate the price, but actually give a pretty good indication of what is going on, which is particularly useful given the differences with a normal tabletop battle. 
• The game is a Piquet derivative - hence the cards - or to be more specific it's based on Field of Battle, the faster flowing and less swingy updated version of Piquet.
• These rules cover the aspects of sieges such as sapping, mining and bombarding at the level of one turn representing three or four days. As and when assaults and sorties are indicated these will need to be resolved using a separate set of tactical rules, before returning to siege game. Rules to manage the transitions are included
• Events such as weather, supply, espionage, disease, relieving armies etc. are covered, but all at a fairly abstract level.
• There are no army lists as such, but some reasonably prescriptive constraints as to the minimum and maximums of each unit type. National characteristics exist - especially for the Ottomans for some reason - but don't appear to be that significant.
• Everything seems straightforward to me from my first read through, although it must be remembered that I have played a lot of Piquet. 
• Overall, I'm very impressed, but the proof of the pudding is of course in the eating. It will be a while before I can try them - and they have to take their place in the queue of new rules anyway - but there is a report of a playtest game here for those interested.

A couple of relatively unimportant points require mentioning. Firstly, the rules are printed on US size paper, which is unsurprising but irritating for those of us in the rest of the world. It makes it much harder to put the quick play sheets in protective coverings. For C&C, for example, I retyped them all on to A4 before laminating them. Secondly, and on a more positive note the rules contain an absolutely explicit definition of what constitutes a flank, which happens to be the definition with which I agree and have been pushing for some years, and the author supports this with no less than a full page colour diagram. It's all a bit superfluous because, by and large, units are behind cover in trenches and fortifications and impossible to flank, but it's the thought that counts.

I have a twofold interest in the rules. I would like to play them as written, although that would probably require James to acquire the necessary siege and fortress guns, which I don't expect come cheap in 28mm. As far as I know nobody makes them for 20mm Napoleonics, so any game in the annexe is going to see some substitution taking place. I am tempted to make some bastions to match my town walls in any event. One question would be how to interface the siege rules to the hex grid if using, as I probably would, C&C for the assaults and sorties. Which also reads across to my other area of interest. It seems at first review that there would be scope to straightforwardly amend these for the late medieval period, and in that case the same question of matching to a grid would come into play if I wanted to use them in conjunction with To the Strongest!. 

Compassionate Conservatism

 

Crack Dens and Brothels

 

"Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed." - Herman Melville

ON play ELP

 "No wise man ever wished to be younger." - Jonathan Swift

My incapacities have been fairly selective: I can't drive or do anything that requires close up focussing plus I fall over if I'm not careful, but other than that I can get about OK. And so I have been able to partake of some of the cultural activities opening up, albeit to be immediately closed back down again. Firstly, there was a recital by a baroque violinist. In fact, now I think about it, that was the day I got carted off to hospital, although it would be most unfair to blame her.

Once I had got myself together again it was the turn of what is now known as the Leeds Playhouse, which has been having a festival of performances for works with not many performers. First up was Poulenc's short opera for single soprano, 'La Voix Humaine'. I've seen this a couple of times before and I still wonder a bit what it's meant to represent. Is she really living through what we see or is it the condensed reminiscences of an unhappy period in her life on which she is looking back? I believe that Cocteau's play, on which this based, was more explicit, especially about the ending, but I've never seen it so that doesn't really help.

I'm also a bit ambivalent about the second piece, Beckett's 'Krapp's Last Tape', which likewise dates from the end of the 1950s. Krapp is a sad, shabby, bald man in his sixties who sits all alone at home on his birthday looking back on his life and wondering how it had ended in loneliness and failure. So, no parallels with your bloggist there then, except perhaps for needing to cut down on the bananas. I think it was about getting old and realising that being young was better, but frankly am open to alternative suggestions if you have them. 

Lastly, but not least, I saw the brass and percussion sections of the Orchestra of Opera North perform a programme of works which might have been - but wasn't - labelled as a tribute to Emerson, Lake and Palmer. They opened with Copeland's 'Fanfare for the Common Man' and closed with a selection from Mussorgsky's 'Pictures from an Exhibition'. It was like reliving my youth, except without all the aggravation of health, ambition and hair. I enjoyed it immensely, but shall not be rushing off to buy a copy of 'Brain Salad Surgery'.

PotCpouri

Indeed it has, Dame Helen. Still, we have to keep on keeping on. This week's Royal Armouries lecture was a bit of a curate's egg; I learned more from the Q&A than from the presentation bit. The presenter didn't help himself by taking the time to debunk various myths about plug bayonets that can't have occurred to many people in the first place. He did, however, address one issue that had puzzled me, namely how one removed a plug bayonet from the musket without cutting one's hand. Apparently the answer is that you rarely can. Interesting fact of the week was that the plug bayonet wasn't developed so much in imitation of the pike as it was as a convenient way of sticking wild boar; and the name does indeed come from Bayonne.

While I'm talking about online talks, let me draw your attention to this one, in which the 12th Duke of Northumberland is going to speak about 1,000 years of the Percy family at Alnwick Castle, a period which ought to contain something of interest. The picture below reflects slightly less than a millennium of the Epictetus family at Alnwick Castle. The one in the middle is the elder Miss Epictetus; I don't know who the other two are.

And finally, this is rather nice, and it's in a good cause:

Britannia AD 43

 So, the fact that the world won't stand still is restricting my ability to indulge in those few things that remain legal in Leeds, sitting all alone at home painting figures for example, but oddly enough I can read books without any problem (computer screens are more difficult) and I have been looking through a recently published book in the Osprey Campaign series: 'Britannia AD 43: The Claudian Invasion' by Nic Fields.

I hope I'm not damning with faint praise when I say it's OK. Two obvious problems that the author has are a lack of sources plus the significant changes in the geography of both the Kent coast and the course of the rivers Medway and Thames during the intervening two millennia. He copes with both as well as could be expected, although he does tend to repeat himself a tad. It's copiously illustrated with both paintings (by Steve Noon) and photographs of subjects ranging across museum exhibits, re-enactors, Roman remains from well after the invasion, much later buildings which happen to be where something may or may not have happened at the time etc. One of the photo credits is given to Neddy Seagoon, so one can't complain that the publishers have not looked in every possible place that they could think of.

Everyone will come to the book with a different level of prior knowledge, and most will be greater than mine. When Fields says that many people's impression of Claudius himself comes from Robert Graves via Derek Jacobi, he might have been describing me. Personally, I found the description of the difference between the alae and the cohortes equitatae to be very helpful, although I can't imagine it will make any difference to how I classify my Roman cavalry in 'To the Stongest!'. Also interesting was the contrast between the tribesman using local knowledge to finding their way through estuary marshes and the Batavian auxiliaries' ability to swim across rivers and move directly into combat. The text further prodded me towards thinking that the way chariot rules work in 'Infamy, Infamy' is more likely to reflect how they were used than those in TtS!; still, the latter shouldn't be hard to change. Lastly, but by no means least, I am very tempted to model (when vestibular stability has been restored) the illustration of Claudius parading towards Colchester on an elephant. And why not?

Still remembered

Two Poets

Two poets have been in the news. Firstly, Louise Glück won the Nobel Prize for Literature. I rather like the following lines from her poem 'Vespers', which say it like it is, for me at least.

"In your extended absence, you permit me

use of earth, anticipating

some return on investment. I must report

failure in my assignment, principally

regarding the tomato plants."

And Derek Mahon, Irish poet and 'aesthete with a penchant for left-wingery', died at the beginning of the month. He also tells it like it is, this time with perhaps a wider pertinence. These lines are from 'Afterlives':

"What middle-class shits we are

To imagine for one second
That our privileged ideals
Are divine wisdom..."

Milan 1630

I bet you all looked at that title and thought I was going to write about military history, or perhaps I was about to start wargaming a new period. However, and temptingly obscure though the War of the Mantuan Succession would be, neither of those is the case; you know me better than that.

I have been reading Manzoni's 'I Promessi Sposi', the classic of Italian literature which, on the off chance that you don't know it, is a bit Walter Scott, a bit Dickens or Thackeray, but perhaps mostly like Tolstoy. The author dedicates the whole of Chapter 31 to the arrival of the plague in Milan in 1630, and much of what he writes seems worryingly familiar. For example:

"The infection entered through the inadequacies of the edicts, negligence in carrying them out, and adroitness in eluding them."

Plus ca change.

A Question of Balance

 The lack of posts on the blog has been to a great extent driven by a lack of balance in your bloggist. By coincidence the cover story of this week's edition of the New Scientist is about the fact that the population as a whole is falling over more often and that the problem is occurring at a younger age than ever before. They point the finger at less and less physical movement being undertaken by the bone idle denizens of the modern world, or at least that's what I think it said, but the magazine is on the other side of the room and I can't be bothered to go and get it. I have been placed on a regime of Balance Retraining exercises, about which I shall simply say that it is a good job that I live alone. Yoga has been mentioned, as it frequently is, especially by those who don't do it themselves. However, as I can't currently walk in a straight line, the Revolved Bird of Paradise may be some way off.

Anyway, here's some Sam & Dave, dedicated to the fond memory of those who perform the Downward Dog.

Royal Armouries Lectures

 During the last few months I have found that many of the things I enjoyed doing pre-plague aren't anything like as good when one tries to do them online. I appreciate that comment will be misinterpreted in some quarters, so let me be clear that I am talking about opera, theatre, live music etc. However, one thing that seems to work rather well is the giving of talks, and I have watched quite a few now, on subjects such as how the myth of Prometheus has influenced culture, The Beatles and the Sixties Art Scene, and Crusader Arms and Armour from Africa and Asia; and very good they have all been.

The last item on that list was the first of the winter series of lectures from the Royal Armouries, a series which under other circumstances I would have attended many of in person. That's obviously an option for me because I live in Leeds, but their new practice of streaming them means not only that I don't have to get off my arse any more, but that others who are not based in West Yorkshire can see them as easily as me, either live or after the event. A recording of the recent one about 'genuine' Crusader armour and weapons sold to the unwary by Victorian dealers (and they may be fakes, but it's a very interesting story) can already be found here on their YouTube channel. The next two are on the subjects of 'Plug Bayonets' and ' The Development of Gunpowder Weapons in Medieval England', either or both of which may be of interest to either or both of my readers. The lectures are given by staff at the Royal Armouries, so they know their stuff, and are free, which now I think about it was what attracted me in the first place.

Details and a link via which to book can be found on the Royal Armouries website. Presumably future recorded lectures will appear on the YouTube channel, which anyway contains all sorts of fascinating stuff.

Sonnet 113

Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind;
And that which governs me to go about

Doth part his function and is partly blind,
Seems seeing, but effectually is out;
For it no form delivers to the heart
Of bird, of flower, or shape which it doth latch:
Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,
Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch;
For if it see the rud'st or gentlest sight,
The most sweet favour or deformed'st creature,
The mountain or the sea, the day or night,
The crow, or dove, it shapes them to your feature.
Incapable of more, replete with you,
My most true mind thus maketh mine eye untrue.

                                   - Shakespeare

Bloody Barons II

 I like to keep an occasional eye on  the most common search terms that have brought people to the blog. Sadly 'gay porn' has disappeared from the list, but thankfully 'beardy Branson is a twat' is hanging in there. Recently, the term 'Bloody Barons II' has appeared. Upon investigation I discovered that I had somehow overlooked the fact that Peter Pig had updated the rules first issued in 2005 and of which I own a copy. Even more investigation revealed that they are in fact a completely new set of rules, but have been given the same name.

My initial reaction was that it was some sort of con; in my defence I'm a bit of a cynic and that is my reaction to most things. However, logic says that it's the opposite that would be a con: the same set of rules with a new name. I don't know why I mention it. In any event I bought a copy.

As a slight digression, I am in the market for a fitness tracker or smartwatch and have been watching a number of YouTube reviews of various options. These influencer chaps - none of whom seem to be at all physically fit despite their interest in health tracking apps - have hit upon a useful trick for stretching out content. They do an 'unboxing' post followed, if one is lucky, by a full review in due course. That doesn't seem a million miles from what I have done (i.e. started to do) with 'Infamy, Infamy', and so this is an unboxing of 'Bloody Barons II':

• They are genuinely a completely different set of rules with, as far as I can see, no mechanisms in common.
• They are recognisably a Peter Pig/Rules for the Common Man ruleset:
• Four base units with casualties removed in half bases
• a pre-battle sequence, this one much simplified compared to others
• random game length
• Very useful playsheets; completely impenetrable main rulebook that seems deliberately written to confuse
• They are gridded with some obvious similarities to 'Square Bashing' e.g. in the morale phase
• There a couple of what look like innovative rules - albeit that for all I know they appear elsewhere in the RFCM canon - such as a phase where movement is by square followed by one where movement is, well, by square, but in a different way. Cavalry also seem to spend all their time off-table until they charge on to the field, melee and then retreat off-table again.
• Includes scenarios for all the battles from the WotR.

One of the things that I didn't like about the original rules was the way that they dealt with mixed bow and bill units, which was far too fiddly for me. These new rules seem to just assume that all units are mixed and abstract it from there, which is rather more to my taste. So, I shall add them to the pile of rules to try, and you can add them to the pile of rules awaiting a full review. Don't hold your breath.