A Fable of Cable

 Back in the day when I was of no fixed abode I occasionally explained my absence from these pages by pointing to a lack of broadband. That excuse hasn't been trotted out for a while, but one of the founding principles of this blog is that all topics will be recycled at some point. So, I haven't been here because my broadband hasn't been working. 

My house is connected to Virgin cable, but another founding principle of this blog is that beardy Branson is a twat. All other fibre optic service providers are installed by BT Openreach, who have entertained me with six months of unlikely solutions to the challenge, ranging from closing the A659 completely for a couple of days while they dug a trench across it to installing my own personal telegraph pole in my garden. In the end they did what I would have done all along, namely replace the existing copper wire that was already there with a fibre optic one.  At that point the existing service was turned off, and....nothing. However, a mere six days later the new system is at last up and running. It's a bit faster I suppose and I've now got one of those phones that won't work if there's a power cut; there's progress for you. I have also been given £10.08 compensation for the inconvenience caused; love the precision.

Maggots In My Scrotum

 And so to the theatre. I have been to see 'The Book of Mormon', and laughed continuously from beginning to end. It's hilarious.

Is it also offensive? Oh yes, at least if you are the sort of person who is offended by songs about AIDS, paedophilia and female circumcision, all done with lots of swearing. But even if you're not then some of this stuff is so outrageous that no description by me will do it justice; it really needs to be seen to be believed. One review I saw said it was brilliantly conceived and superbly executed, and I would go along with that: 5 stars for sure. 

The other question you will be asking: is it rude about the Mormons? Not particularly I would say. Individually they are portrayed as nice, well-meaning people and the tenets of their faith are laid out - admittedly in song and dance - for the audience to make up their own mind about. I shan't be giving it all a great deal of thought - Occam's Razor suggests there was an obvious reason why Joseph Smith refused to ever show anyone else the golden plates - despite the leaflet pressed into my hand by the Mormon missionaries waiting outside the theatre afterwards. But they were really nice and smiley, not like the angry evangelicals who picketed 'Jerry Springer: The Opera' when I saw that many years ago.

One final point, I only learned from research after seeing the show that there really was an African warlord called General Butt Naked.

Go back to your oar, Forty-One

Five or so years ago, before the galleys were put away, I think we had agreed that grids were the way to go, not least because it avoids all debate about who can ram/board/rake what and when. When the galleys once again emerged from the display cabinet last week, we picked it up where we left it: hex grids with chips occupying two hexes, principally I think because ships are longer than they are wide. Whilst last week's game was fun, there was I think a consensus that it wasn't quite right. If you look carefully at the picture below you can see that one change made was that ships are now back in one hex.

The big difference that makes is to make turning easier, not so much for the models, but rather for the players trying to figure out how to get stuff from A to B. The whole thing was, to quote Peter, "slicker" and I'd go along with that. There were other changes, pretty much all of which seemed to work, and the traditional post-game discussion came up with potential solutions to the few that didn't. This is the type of game that needs to be played to a conclusion quickly. Grids help, the 'slicker' turning and moving help a bit more, and what would really top it off is if the ships sank or surrendered a bit sooner.

The initiative rules have ended up as somewhat of a hybrid between classic Piquet and its derivative, FoB. It includes, I think by chance, the latter's mechanism for potentially interrupting one side's long runs of initiative by a short burst of activity from the other side. I seem to remember that we've tried that combination before, and I was reminded last night of its merits. For what it's worth I vote for all 'Dress the Lines' to become 'Lulls'. While on that subject, the deck for 'Fleet of Battle' - that's what the rules are called - contains one card whose name is frankly impossible to pronounce, to the extent that I mentally think of it as the 'She Sells Seashells' card. I need some help from this chap:

And so it goes

I have once again had the opportunity to see live a musician whom I would love to have seen forty years ago, but for some reason didn't. This time it was Nick Lowe, or 'Nick Lowe, Nick Lowe' as he is known to anyone who listened too much to the 'Live Stiffs' album in the mid-seventies. He was every bit as good as I had expected and I don't think that's just the nostalgia talking. He performed songs from a number of his incarnations, with perhaps just a hint of bias towards those which lyrically resonate with his increasingly aging audience. This Johnny Cash influenced number for example:

And then for those of us who did indeed remember the brides when they used to rock and roll, there was this Chuck Berry homage:

But Lowe's songwriting skills run to more than mere pastiche. After he played the next song to a silent and reflective City Varieties, he expressed a wish for a world in which its message was no longer required:

Zolotoi Petushok

 I had been thinking for a while that one way of regaining my blogging mojo would be to revisit favourite themes from the past. The opportunity to do so was handed to me on a plate earlier today, when I returned home after my morning constitutional to find my spare bedroom on fire. The failure of smoke detectors to detect, well, smoke has featured here before in consideration of smouldering chariots, exploding laptop chargers and a number of others. However, damage was minimal and given that the whole episode would appear to be my fault, it's probably best to move swiftly on. Instead, I shall be looking to exploit the distinction of being the only wargames blog which reviews operas.

The plans of opera companies are fixed years in advance, and so it is entirely a coincidence that English Touring Opera are presenting Rimsky-Korsakov's 'The Golden Cockerel' at this time. The work is a satire on incompetence in war and on political corruption, first written in response to the debacle of the Russo-Japanese war and the resultant unrest in the streets, which Lenin referred to as 'the great dress rehearsal'. This could have been a 'cometh the hour, cometh the touring opera company' moment, in which art once again reflects and challenges real life. It isn't, and it doesn't, mainly because a focus on knock-about slapstick completely undermines any bite the anti-war message might have had. It is "all mirth and no matter", as Beatrice said. The director is also let down by a truly dreadful English translation of the libretto, whose sub-Gilbertian doggerel must have been really dated back the forties or fifties or whenever it was done. The original was based on a poem by Pushkin, who has presumably been turning in his grave for decades at the insult. 

Sadly, despite having a fairy tale at its heart it just never managed to become magical. Having said all that, the music was good, as were the performances, especially Paula Sides as the Queen of Shemakha and Alys Mererdid Roberts as the eponymous fowl. The design placed it in the pre- Great War court of Nicolas and Alexandra, complete with Tsarevitch (two actually) and Rasputin-like astrologer. The striking design on the curtain in place between acts was apparently inspired by the Rayonists, themselves active in Moscow and St Petersburg during that period. "What can you tell us about the Rayonists?" you ask, and "Not much." I reply. According to Wikipedia they could be considered to be Cubo-Futurists, so I suggest that's how you think of them. It also rather tantalising says that in 1913 they started to paint their faces and published a manifesto entitled "Why We Paint Our Faces". What it fails to include is any reference to the contents of said publication, which is sad because, who knows, if their argument had been convincing enough I may have reached for the maquillage myself. 

Plures Nugas Vitae

 There was some galley action last night, more than five years after they last hit the table, or possibly just since they last hit the table while I was both there and bothered to write about them.

Mine are the three ships marked with a 6. The one on the left has rammed and sunk the wreck; the one in the centre has rammed its target to no effect, has lost its ram (that's the pink bead) and is entangled; the one on the right tried to rake its target, failed and is entangled. Believe it or not, this was the absolute high point for the Carthaginians. No sooner had our other squadrons of ships entered the fight than they were either boarded or rammed, or occasionally both. The rules? Well, they possibly need some work. 

Having opened the book on Edward the Exile mentioned yesterday, I have inevitably been reading it. I'd forgotten how full it was of all sorts of interesting digressions - such as how the son of the Doge of Venice came to be King of Hungary - but it also has some sections which seem strangely relevant to the zeitgiest. For example:

"The democratic Kievan period upon which the Russians now look back with nostalgic yearning began with the coming of the Viking Varangians in the ninth century and ended in the holocaust of the Mongol invasion in the middle of the thirteenth century. Kiev's leading role was taken over by Moscow whose princes borrowed the tools of statecraft from the tyrannical Mongol system."

Nugas Vitae

 Concerns have been raised about whether all this snow that I referred to yesterday actually ever existed. Well, firstly, there was indeed a lot of snow, although it disappeared quite quickly. And, secondly, it is possible that readers have mistaken this blog for some sort of accurate historical record of what's going down. I, on the other hand, have always seen myself as the equivalent of a medieval chronicler.

"So, there was the Rev Ian Paisley and there was a giraffe"

Gabriel Ronay explains the approach of such chroniclers in his 'The Lost King of England':

"Readers liked to have a succession of bright incidents and adventures well seasoned with supernatural prognostications, but the reliability of facts did not concern them unduly. Chroniclers therefore paid more attention to amplifying their stories with anecdotes and strange occurrences than to the veracity of their sources. Closely reasoned argument, well-grounded facts and chronological cohesion did not suit an episodic style of narrative."

The lost king in the book, incidentally, is the son of Edmund Ironside, who had to flee along with his brother after their father was murdered by Canute. It's an interesting read, although the author's prose style is not particularly to my taste. It's also one of those irritating class of books which keeps telling the reader that is correcting a long-standing historical misapprehension which no one knew existed in the first place. I might have to re-read it now that I've dug it out. The bit that struck me most when I first read it was the assertion that when Thomas Moore wrote the story of the Princes in Tower - the ultimate source for Shakespeare - both he and his readers would have understood that he was merely rehashing the story of the æthelings and thus disparaging Richard III by comparing him to Canute. In the context of world events today, it is noteworthy that when the princes escape to the sanctuary of the Russian court (their maternal aunt being the wife of Grand Duke Yaroslav) the capital of that country is Kyiv.

Snow...unceasing snow

“All Heaven and Earth

Flowered white obliterate...

Snow...unceasing snow”

- Hashin

Before the snow returned we managed to play some X-Wing. Playing it back-to-back with 'Jump Or Burn' was interesting rather than confusing. About the only things they have in common is that you use various lengths of cardboard when moving stuff, that they are good fun and they don't outstay their welcome.

The X-Wing ship/pilot combinations do seem unnecessarily complicated to me. My lack of knowledge of the films etc, means I can't be sure whether it's there to reflect the 'reality', or whether, just perhaps, it's there to prey on the gullibility of those who buy all those models, cards etc. Who can tell?  The rebels won both games we played, or possibly it was the Empire; once again, who can tell?

Other wargaming activity has been limited to putting a bit more paint on the not very recent castings and taking another photo that looks awfully similar to the previous ones posted here. About half way through I think.