Don't Call Me Ludwig

“Alas, he is so handsome and wise, soulful and lovely, that I fear that his life must melt away in this vulgar world like a fleeting dream of the gods.” - Richard Wagner about King Ludwig II of Bavaria

Ludwig was a big fan of opera, liked building grandiose castles, and was, or at least was considered to be, mad. Be that as it may, opera having been welcomed back to the blog yesterday, it's now time for the return of something vaguely related to wargaming, namely another progress update on the castle.

As previously the pieces are at various stages of painting. It hasn't been good spraying weather recently. I have also changed the undercoat colour, and not entirely because I ran out of the other one. I think black will help to cover the joins.  

I had decided to wait until I had finished making all the pieces before painting on the mortar lines to show the individual stone blocks. However, 'finished' doesn't appear that easy to define. One element of a modular system is that one never uses all the pieces at the same time anyway. So, perhaps it's time to get on with some of the finer detailing.

Rue, Britannia

 I mentioned recently that I had been to an outdoor, socially distanced opera. Well, now I've been to another, so I'd better write about them.

First up was the dress rehearsal of a short, family friendly version of Humperdinck's 'Hansel and Gretel' that Opera North are touring as 'Whistle Stop Opera', with four singers and an accordion . It was excellent in every way: musically of course, it didn't rain, it was free, and, probably most important to me anyway, it was a small, small step towards some sort of a hint of a return to normality. It took place in the car park of the UK's oldest surviving working men's club, which is in an inner city area a kilometre or so south of central Leeds. The entire audience was made up of middle class visitors whilst the locals ignored events completely.

Also excellent - and free - was Northern Opera Group's performance of Thomas Arne's 'Thomas & Sally', which was one of the few elements of this year's Leeds Opera Festival not to be online. Taking place in a small park between a multi-story car park and a shopping centre (and which for the first time that I can ever recall contained no winos) it was billed as a one-act comic opera. I didn't laugh once, and it had two acts, but nevertheless it was very good. Perhaps the comic part is simply that the soprano not only doesn't die, but even gets to marry her sweetheart in the end. 

Now you'e all thinking to yourselves, "Thomas Arne, where do I know that name from?". Well, I suspect that you are bringing to mind the rousing choral finale to his opera 'Alfred' (as in 'the Great'), a song beloved of racist simpletons and rabble-rousing demagogues alike.

As a different song puts it:

"Land of hopeless Tories, 

Mother of the Sleaze" 

N.B. Credit for both cartoon and lyrics to Martin Rowson

On dit que le destin se moque bien de nous

 I'm back. I'm tempted to pretend that I've been on a week long mescalin trip, but I think we all know that actually I have been doing sudoku and listening to the cricket. I have been to see an outdoor, socially-distanced opera production, but I'll come back to that later.

In the meantime, here's the former first lady of France singing a poem by W.B. Yeats.

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."

Pot98apouri

 Fingers have been pointed at the lack of wargaming content hereabouts. The natural response to that would be to publish (yet) another post on some random other subject, but I shall not stoop to that. (Although stay tuned for an entirely non-wargaming Question and frankly not many Answers session tomorrow.) Instead, let us consider developments in what, you will recall, the Economist described as 'a good hobby for an anxious time'.

Well, and obviously, I haven't got any myself, otherwise I would have written about it already. In common with a number of other bloggers I posted to say that I had received my copy of 'Infamy, Infamy' and implied that I would try it out and/or review it and then post again. In common with many of those other bloggers, I haven't done either. I therefore broke my recent habit and bought a copy of the July/August issue of Wargames Soldiers and Strategy, which carries a review therein. I haven't read it yet, but when I do you know that you can rely on me to post about it here.

Not reading wargames magazines and the lack of shows to attend means that I am sadly off the pace in understanding what's hip and happening. It would be nice if I could rely on the blogs which I read to keep me abreast of things, but disappointingly they do tend to wander off topic rather a lot, writing about walking, swimming, cycling and suchlike nonsense. In any event, I was surprised, but intrigued, to come across a reference to Wofun Games. Firstly, that's a terrible name, and the full name - World of Fun Games - is even worse. However, I did find the concept interesting. What they do, as you probably already know, is produce plexiglass flats for a number of different periods. For at least some of those periods the figures are based on drawings from the range of Peter Dennis Paper Soldiers books published by Helion. It may be that, like me, you have looked at those books and asked yourself "Can I be arsed to photocopy, cut out and mount all these?" and then, also like me, replied in the negative. Well, now you don't have to, all you have to do is put your hand in your pocket. I confess to being tempted by one of the periods available, although not tempted enough to actually do anything about it.

A mere seven years ago, I heralded the imminent arrival of new set of rules for horse and musket sieges, called Vauban's Wars. Following an astonishingly short development programme they are to be published next month. I am quietly confident that a set will find its way to Ilkley, hypocentre of wargaming in the lower Wharfe valley, and the Peninsular war would appear to be an obvious setting for giving them a try. From what I have seen so far, I would imagine that there will be many elements which will be transferable to other periods. And, as regular readers will know, I have a shedload of equipment for medieval sieges. All I need is something to besiege.

Which seems an appropriate place to put a photo showing current progress on what is turning into the most expensive toy castle in the world. Spraying is slow at the moment, because being the English summer it rains most days. However, designs are in place for the castle which will sit in one corner of the town above (you can see one piece of wall towards the top right of the picture), so the project is still very much moving forward.

Small bomb thrown by hand

My absence from these pages has been primarily because I hurt my neck and sitting at the computer has been rather uncomfortable. In truth it has also been in part because nothing of interest has happened to me or indeed anywhere near me. However, I was awoken from my torpor today when the centre of town was suddenly sealed off by the police and several buildings evacuated. It turned out that someone had donated a hand grenade to Oxfam. As you do.

A better man than me could probably make a joke out of the fact that since shops are only accepting contactless payment at the moment, anyone who bought the grenade from Oxfam wouldn't need a PIN. However, until that better man comes along, we are left with the one about the mathematician being trained to use grenades. He was told to pull the pin and then count down from three before throwing it. It blew up when he reached minus six.

Drink responsibly

 

The Definition of Love

My love is of a birth as rare

As ’tis for object strange and high;

It was begotten by Despair

Upon Impossibility.

Magnanimous Despair alone

Could show me so divine a thing

Where feeble Hope could ne’er have flown,

But vainly flapp’d its tinsel wing.

And yet I quickly might arrive

Where my extended soul is fixt,

But Fate does iron wedges drive,

And always crowds itself betwixt.

For Fate with jealous eye does see

Two perfect loves, nor lets them close;

Their union would her ruin be,

And her tyrannic pow’r depose.

And therefore her decrees of steel

Us as the distant poles have plac’d,

(Though love’s whole world on us doth wheel)

Not by themselves to be embrac’d;

Unless the giddy heaven fall,

And earth some new convulsion tear;

And, us to join, the world should all

Be cramp’d into a planisphere.

As lines, so loves oblique may well

Themselves in every angle greet;

But ours so truly parallel,

Though infinite, can never meet.

Therefore the love which us doth bind,

But Fate so enviously debars,

Is the conjunction of the mind,

And opposition of the stars.

                          - Andrew Marvell

Zodiacal Light?

“Sometimes these flashes of normality come at me from the side, like ambushes. The ordinary, the usual, a reminder, like a kick.”
                                                - Margaret Atwood

So, there was I thinking that wargaming would never be the same again when, out of the blue, comes an email from James saying that he has changed the morale rules.

Yorkshire Day/Schweizer Bundesfeiertag Mubarak

There has suddenly been a flurry of hits on the very first post on this blog from 2012. I fully appreciate that the quality has diminished quite a lot since those days, and so presumably do the discerning readers who have restricted themselves to a single post from eight years ago. At that time I blogged fairly frequently about being a wargamer who didn't game. Why then, now I am in the same position of not gaming, am I not blogging about it? (The rhetorical questions were much better back then as well.) Rhetorical or not it's a good question, especially as Ilkley, which we must now learn to refer to as the hypocentre of wargaming in the lower Wharfe valley, has been suddenly locked down again, implying that there will be no quick return to the table. In the somewhat arbitrary nature of the way in which the UK government is behaving (which you will correctly interpret as a euphemism for 'it's a complete shitshow') the place where your bloggist blogs has not been affected beyond me having to wait another couple of weeks should I require either an intimate waxing or to go ten pin bowling. For the sizeable Muslim population in the areas which have been re-restricted it has been a much bigger issue because yesterday was Eid al-Adha (and a belated Eid Mubarak to them); it was a bit like telling most people on Christmas Eve that they couldn't have lunch with their relatives the following day.

A little piece of Switzerland in Yorkshire

I haven't seen any strong protests from those wishing to celebrate Yorkshire Day (which is today of course) by scoring a few strikes or by having a Brazilian, but no doubt the locals will be consoling themselves by telling anyone who will listen that the face masks are bigger in God's Own County than they are anywhere else. Eid, which means 'feast' in Arabic, also means 'oath' in German and today is also Swiss National Day celebrating (near enough) the day in 1291 when three cantons swore the oath of confederation. Sadly, when you look at it in detail, Swiss National Day turns out to be even more of a recent and contrived invention than Yorkshire Day is, on top of which Yorkshire is bigger. God, I'm starting to go native.

This mask is not from Yorkshire

So, to wrap up, here's Rossini via Yorkshire with some memorable music about a Swiss terrorist/freedom fighter: