Pot96pouri

My intentions of laying out a Square Bashing scenario in the annexe have been undermined by the absolutely glorious weather we're having. It looks like it's going to be a while before normal meteorological conditions are resumed, so in the meantime here are a couple of musical items which continue where we left off the other day:

Back to the No Future

"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." 

- George Orwell, 1984

The latest accusation levelled at DC is that he has retrospectively amended previous blog posts to make it look as if he predicted the current pandemic. On behalf of bloggists everywhere I wish to protest most strongly at his actions. If readers start assuming that items have been reworked then no one will, for example, believe my post from some years back in which I correctly forecast the result of the 2020 Grand National.

Dominic Cummings reflects on his current career prospects

Somehow one gets the feeling that even if Dom's future self travelled back in time to pass on the secrets of the future, that he would reject the advice on the basis that he knew better anyway.

Lucius Aelius Sejanus

If any of the players in the current shenanigans had any knowledge of the classics, they may have been considering what, if any, lessons could be learned from the story of Sejanus.

In the 1976 BBC production of Robert Graves 'I, Claudius' - which I recommend most highly - Sejanus was played by the wonderful Patrick Stewart. I confess that I have been staring at the above photo for a while trying to work out if that's a wig or whether Captain Picard did at one point have blonde, curly hair.

Baldness hasn't done Stewart any harm though, as he is married to the somewhat younger Sunny Ozell. Here's a song of hers that might also have a message for the PM. It's called 'Git Gone':

Pusillanimity

"When small men begin to cast long shadows, it means the sun is about to set." 

- Lin Yutang

Do what I say, not what I do

According to Al-Nawwas ibn Sam’an, the Prophet Mohammed, may be peace be upon him, described wrongdoing as that which you dislike other people finding out about.

Tinywargames

I don't often mention it here, to the extent perhaps that newer readers may not even be aware of it, but I am actually rather interested in toy soldiers, wargames, modelling and so on. Several weeks on one's own unable to go out or see anyone should have been the ideal opportunity to engage in the hobby, but I have been somewhat busy doing other things. One of the paradoxes of life is that in order to be properly lazy you really have to work at it.

Anyway, all that may be about to change, because I have received a package in the post. At the beginning of March I visited the Overlord show in Abingdon. Among the traders that I don't see at northern shows was Tinywargames, who make mats. Following a useful chat at the time and an exchange of emails afterwards I ordered one. Immediately after that the country went into working from home mode and so I wasn't entirely surprised when it didn't turn up. However, I definitely let it slide for too long before chasing it up, which I only did last week. They sprang into action and the replacement, or possibly the package that had never been sent in the first place, arrived promptly. Either way, and especially in the circumstances, I'm more than satisfied with both the customer service and with the product.

I have been wanting some railway track to use with Square Bashing. I thought of buying a cheap toy train set - and one can get some ridiculously cheap ones - but the track in the ones I have seen is OO/HO gauge, which while it matches my 20mm figures doesn't suit the subscale terrain that I use with them. I then looked at N gauge track, but, contrastingly, that is ridiculously expensive, even second hand. The track on the mat that I have bought is a suitable size for what I want and came in a 1.7 metre strip on thin rubber, which lays very flat on top of the Hexon. When I have cut it up I shall have over 5 metres made up of various lengths. The only downside is that they will all be straight. However, as it's a grid based game I can't see that being a problem.

So, I am now enthused to see what it looks like in action by setting up a scenario. I think I know from where I can steal one, so more details to follow in due course.

Game changing

“These games sprang from their deep need to close their eyes and flee from unsolved problems and anxious forebodings of doom into an imaginary world as innocuous as possible.” 

                                                                - Hermann Hesse, Das Glasperlenspiel


This front pages of this morning's newspapers are filled with news of a Covid-19 test which is apparently going to be a game changer. Now a more cynical man than me might think that this sudden announcement by the government was intended to make sure that the media did not instead lead with the embarrassing policy reversal on their immigration bill that they had been forced into by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer; any cynicism perhaps being strengthened by the fact that they said the same thing two months ago and nothing happened. Starmer, by the way, is proving quite an effective exponent of Bismark's assertion that politics is the art of the possible. Ironically, Bismark - just as conservative as, although substantially more competent than, the current UK government - was himself forced into introducing a number of social welfare programmes in Germany under pressure from socialists.

Game changing is something we are all too familiar with in the wargaming fraternity of the lower Wharfe valley. As I have often observed in these pages, it is rare that a game in the legendary wargames room of James 'Olicanalad' Roach ends using the same rules that it starts with. Like me you have probably been thinking of the rather pertinent point that Wittgenstein made in his book "Philosophical Investigations":

"Let us recall the kinds of case where we say that a game is played according to a definite rule.
The rule may be an aid in teaching the game. The learner is told it and given practice in applying it. Or it is an instrument of the game itself. Or a rule is employed neither in the teaching nor in the game itself; nor is it set down in a list of rules. One learns the game by watching how others play. But we say that it is played according to such-and-such rules because an observer can read these rules off from the practice of the game, like a natural law governing the play. But how does the observer distinguish in this case between players’ mistakes and correct play?"

How indeed?

Earlier in the lockdown I had an email from James about a quote he had found whilst reading on the history of wargaming, a quote which coincidentally once again relates to late nineteenth century Germany. It was about rigid Kriegsspiel, that is, Kriegsspiel moderated by strict written rules and dice rolls. Apparently, the game was largely dismissed by most officers prior to 1870 but afterwards gained a following in German military circles. However:

"….it was not due to the rules but rather in spite of them. It is doubtful if there was a single war game in the Prussian Army that was played according to the rules."

He concluded his email by saying that not much changes. It certainly doesn't.

The Mozart of the Blues

An awful lot of musicians whom I admired have died recently. Sadly another one has joined the list with the passing of Lucky Peterson, who I was privileged to see perform live a couple of times. Peterson was a direct link back to the blues greats; he was mentored by Willie Dixon, was taught organ by Jimmy Smith and played alongside Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Jimmy Reed, Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Etta James, Mavis Staples and many, many more. He got his nickname because he started his performing and recording career at the age of five. There's plenty of his music available on YouTube, but for now we'll just have this number recorded in his hotel room only a couple of months ago, 'The Coronavirus Blues':

To Hope

When by my solitary hearth I sit,
And hateful thoughts enwrap my soul in gloom;
When no fair dreams before my "mind's eye" flit,
And the bare heath of life presents no bloom;
Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head!

Whene'er I wander, at the fall of night,
Where woven boughs shut out the moon's bright ray,
Should sad Despondency my musings fright,
And frown, to drive fair Cheerfulness away,
Peep with the moonbeams through the leafy roof,
And keep that fiend Despondence far aloof!

Should Disappointment, parent of Despair,
Strive for her son to seize my careless heart;
When, like a cloud, he sits upon the air,
Preparing on his spell-bound prey to dart:
Chase him away, sweet Hope, with visage bright,
And fright him as the morning frightens night!

Whene'er the fate of those I hold most dear
Tells to my fearful breast a tale of sorrow,
O bright-eyed Hope, my morbid fancy cheer;
Let me awhile thy sweetest comforts borrow:
Thy heaven-born radiance around me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head!

Should e'er unhappy love my bosom pain,
From cruel parents, or relentless fair;
O let me think it is not quite in vain
To sigh out sonnets to the midnight air!
Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head!

In the long vista of the years to roll,
Let me not see our country's honour fade:
O let me see our land retain her soul,
Her pride, her freedom; and not freedom's shade.
From thy bright eyes unusual brightness shed
Beneath thy pinions canopy my head!

Let me not see the patriot's high bequest,
Great Liberty! how great in plain attire!
With the base purple of a court oppress'd,
Bowing her head, and ready to expire:
But let me see thee stoop from heaven on wings
That fill the skies with silver glitterings!

And as, in sparkling majesty, a star
Gilds the bright summit of some gloomy cloud;
Brightening the half veil'd face of heaven afar:
So, when dark thoughts my boding spirit shroud,
Sweet Hope, celestial influence round me shed,
Waving thy silver pinions o'er my head!

- Keats

Hair pollution

“One of the causes, by the way, of the apparent lack, at the present time, of great men lies in the poverty of the contemporary male coiffure. Rich in whiskers, beards, and leonine manes, the great Victorians never failed to look the part, nowadays it is impossible to know a great man when you see one.” - Aldous Huxley


Huxley was writing about the 1920s. Had he been writing about 2020, in a world where everyone's hair is getting longer, but the decisions of our politicians are getting no better, he might have had to remind himself that correlation is not causation.

Dos hombres calvos

OK, my question may have been as badly written as a Boris Johnson master plan, but it did provide something to think about for a few people for a short time, and even more importantly it's stopped me having to come up with a new subject to post on. Still, the fact is that even had the original question been drafted by the finest legal minds known to man it was always going to be more a case of "How long is a piece of string?" than "Who won the Derby in 1954?" (*).

The comment by the soi-disant nundanket (**) that started it all excluded colonial wars, so I'm afraid that the Zulu War wouldn't count, or the Boer War for that matter. Others must make up their own minds about the Falklands, but I certainly don't consider it a victory. A quick look at the map will suffice to show that everyone ended up exactly where they started, at the cost of much blood and much treasure along the way. Other than scale, it's not dissimilar to the Iran-Iraq war which was occurring at the same time. One of the things that always irritated me about the whole 'Thatcher won the Falklands back' business was of course that it was her that lost them in the first place; not that you should infer that I gave a toss either way. Although as it happens I did at around that time play a modest role in the building of both the new airport at Mount Pleasant and an Iraqi naval helicopter base next to the Shatt al-Arab; sadly, and as so often, these are stories which must await another day.

Coming back to the present, and having already mentioned the current Prime Minister, here is a public service announcement on his behalf:

*   Lester Piggott on Never Say Die at 33/1

** There is a surprisingly long list on Wikipedia of people whose names don't contain any capital letters. Despite including such notables as a female Tibetan singer called alan, it is shamefully devoid of wargames bloggers. The only people on the list of whom I had heard previously were e.e. cummings - who has featured on this blog more than once before - and k.d. lang, who is about to feature now:

Ask a silly question...

"Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers." - Voltaire

So, the somewhat throwaway question that I asked yesterday was: when was the last time that any nation apart from Israel won a war against a significant foe unaided?

Not being particularly busy at the moment I have pondered some more on the subject and the main conclusion I came to was that as a question it lacks a certain precision. The word 'unaided' almost inevitably opens a 'sorites paradox' type fuzziness. The question explicitly makes clear that the support which Israel definitely received from the US during its wars doesn't qualify as aid, but probably implies that the support that North Vietnam received from the Soviet Union and China does. You pays your money and takes your choice.

The sunny weather having disappeared from Yorkshire, and pouring caustic soda down the drains not having taken as long as I thought it would, I then exercised the little grey cells over tea and biscuits and had some further thoughts:

• The whole of the period between 1792 and 1815 counts as one war. If you treat it as separate wars you get into all sorts of debates as to when one stops and another starts. It doesn't matter anyway as there is a later candidate.
• The Mexican-American War might qualify; I don't don't know enough about it to decide whether the Mexicans count as a significant foe for the US at that point. It doesn't matter anyway as there is a later candidate.
• The Spanish-American War doesn't count because the US were supporting, and fought alongside, local liberation fighters. The fact that they shafted their allies as soon as the war was over is irrelevant for this purpose.

Which leaves the best, heavily-caveated, answer that I can come up with to my own rather vague question as - the Russo-Japanese War. Feel free to disagree and/or tell me to get a life.

Pot95pouri

"The only true wisdom is in knowing that you know nothing." - Socrates

During the current inconveniences there appear to be a lot of remote quizzes taking place. I haven't done any myself - my innate miserable git overcoming my love of showing off how much I know - but people have taken to using me as their "phone a friend" option. Presumably they are using the term 'friend' loosely, but I am happy to oblige if I can. Obviously some questions are more in my sphere than others. It's one thing asking me in which Shakespeare play a certain character appeared, but quite another asking what number was painted on Herbie the Love Bug. (Having said that, now I know it's 53 I don't suppose I'll ever forget.) My good nature in this has, I'm sorry to say, been abused. One lady started to ask me answers to her crossword puzzles. And I don't mean the worthwhile, cryptic kind, I mean the what's another word for 'house' kind. I began to suspect that she wasn't putting a huge amount of mental effort in herself, which was rather confirmed when she asked me for another word for 'stick', three letters 'R', something, 'D'.

"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know." - Mark Twain

Which brings me to a little quiz of my own. In a comment to yesterday's post Mr nundanket (and the lack of capital letter still bothers me) posits that the British have never won a war against a significant foe without having allies. The question that I have subsequently asked myself and to which I have not yet come up with a satisfactory answer is: when was the last time that any nation apart from Israel won a war against a significant foe unaided? Any suggestions?

Let's finish with a joke, followed by some Little Richard (with Jimi Hendrix in the backing band):

A suspected Covid-19 male patient is lying in bed in the hospital, wearing an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose. A young student female nurse appears and gives him a partial sponge bath.
"Nurse,"' he mumbles from behind the mask, "are my testicles black?"
Embarrassed, the young nurse replies, "I don't know, Sir. I'm only here to wash your upper body and feet."
He struggles to ask again, "Nurse, please check for me. Are my testicles black?"
Concerned that he might elevate his blood pressure and heart rate from worrying about his testicles, she overcomes her embarrassment and pulls back the covers.
She raises his gown, holds his manhood in one hand and his testicles gently in the other.
She looks very closely and says, "There's nothing wrong with them, Sir. They look fine."
The man slowly pulls off his oxygen mask, smiles at her, and says very slowly,
"Thank you very much. That was wonderful. Now listen very, very, closely:
"Are - my - test - results - back?"

Spicing up V.E. Day

“History is a matter of facing the facts, however painful some of them may be. Mythology is a way of refusing to face facts. The study of history not only enlarges truth about our past, but opens the mind to ever new accessions of truth. On the other hand, the obsession with myths, and especially the more destructive myths, perpetuates the closed mind”. - Theo Moody


Among the many elements of all the mawkish sentimentality yesterday which irritated me was the implication that the nation could somehow 'remember' something that, for the overwhelming majority of us, happened before we were born. I'm old enough to be retired and even so my late parents were too young to have played any active part in the second world war. It's history, and we should treat it as such; in other words we should try to learn something from it rather than just dress up and pretend. Others have of course written better than me on both V.E. Day and the grotesque English capacity for self delusion; here and here are good places to start, but I'm sure you will find many others worth reading.

Anyway, in the spirit of proper historical investigation and to remind us what the world was actually like seventy five years ago, I have dug out some very rare archive footage of Baby Vera, Ginger Vera and Posh Vera entertaining our boys.

For you, Tommy, it's about bloody time that the war was over

"The worse things get, the more passionately the English cling to the past." - W.H Auden

He puts a spell on you baby

"Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn and caldron bubble.

Fillet of a fenny snake,

In the caldron boil and bake;

Eye of newt and toe of frog,

Wool of bat and tongue of dog,

Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,

Lizard's leg and howlet's wing,

For a charm of powerful trouble,

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn and caldron bubble.

Cool it with a baboon's blood,

Then the charm is firm and good."

I write this blog because I find it mildly therapeutic to do so. Creativity (no, seriously!) helps me with my mental health and if I find that I want to chunter about something then I have a ready made forum. It does get read by a few people, although I don't know how any new readers ever find it. I take some pride in the fact that a constant presence on the list of google search terms which send people here is "beardy Branson is a twat", but beyond that I have no idea. However, someone new has clearly found it because they have left a comment on a post from last year. Rather splendidly the comment - which can be found here - is a testimonial for a witch doctor. Dr Agbazara, for it is he, specialises in bringing back ex-lovers via his powerful spell casting. Now, nothing would give me greater joy than to be reunited with the big, bouncy woman, but I confess that I am a sceptic. In truth, I have no confidence in either the powers or indeed the bona fides of the good doctor, despite his having, at least according to the anonymous reviewer, succeeded in coaxing back Jenny Williams. But, you are entitled to make up your own minds and so I won't be deleting the comment containing his contact details; the international dialling code quoted therein is for Nigeria, should that help you in forming your judgement. If you do avail yourself of his services then please let us know how things transpire.

Here's Nina Simone:

The world will be my lobster once again

"For the most banal event to become an adventure...you must begin to recount it." - Sartre

Jean-Paul spent some time as a prisoner-of-war, using his spell in confinement to read Heidegger and write a play. I haven't done either of those yet, but this Friday is looking fairly free, so you never know. My relative absence from blogging over the last week has not really been caused by the extreme banality of my life. Nor, contrary to suggestions, has it been because I have either fallen into a black pit of despair or eaten so many biscuits that I can no longer fit behind my desk; although, for what it's worth, one of those is closer to the truth than the other. No, the issue has been more to do with the fact that Blogger has been refusing to work properly, and not for the first time. There is probably a reason why serious bloggers use Wordpress.

Anyway, back to Jean-Paul Sartre. Apparently, in his late twenties he tried mescaline to see what would happen. What happened was that for some months afterwards he thought that he was being followed around by lobsters. However dull things may get, I shall be sticking to coffee.

In a Dark Time

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,

I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;   

I hear my echo in the echoing wood -

A lord of nature weeping to a tree.

I live between the heron and the wren,   

Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What’s madness but nobility of soul

At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!   

I know the purity of pure despair,

My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.   

That place among the rocks - is it a cave,   

Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!

A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,   

And in broad day the midnight come again!   

A man goes far to find out what he is -

Death of the self in a long, tearless night,   

All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.   

My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,   

Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?

A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.   

The mind enters itself, and God the mind,   

And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

                                  - Theodore Roethke