Vapnartak 2023

 I was at Vapnartak at the weekend, for the first time since 2020. I arrived at about 10:45 and to my surprise had to queue for fifteen minutes to get in. There was some debate while we waited as to just how crowded it would be inside; in the end it was about the same as usual, so I'm not sure what the problem was. There are a few photos of the show elsewhere on the internet (try these for example), but none here I'm afraid. There were a number of games worth looking at and plenty of traders, and it was good to get back to visiting shows. The only other one that I have been to since lockdown was that attached to the Lard Workshop (*) and that was both smaller and unbearably hot.

Purchases were limited: some sabot bases to make movement easier in Test of Resolve plus the above book; oh, and a coffee, but sadly no cake because they didn't have any. I bumped into Peter and when comparing purchases I explained that I bought the book, as I always do with publications about the US invasion of Grenada, so that I could point out what they had got wrong. However, on this occasion a chat with the nice man on the Helion stand about the author and the commissioning process makes me think it will be less bad than usual. I bet they still don't mention Plessey though.

Peter also drew my attention to the fact that we had got far more rules wrong in Test of Resolve than I had admitted to here. So, that fact coupled with the new sabot bases, means that we shall definitely return to them in due course. Real life has intervened to make it hard to predict when that might be, but my fingers are firmly crossed that things aren't as bad as they may seem.

* Or possibly it was the other way around.

This House

“This house is a circus, berserk as fuck 
We tend to see that as a perk, though”

-          Arctic Monkeys

And so to the theatre. I have been to see James Graham’s rather fine political play ‘This House’. Funny, thought provoking and well-acted I would urge anyone in the UK to catch it while it’s on tour. Anyone outside the UK won’t understand anything, which brings me to the main point: it casts a really embarrassing light on our particular form of democracy. Whether a government stands or falls shouldn't really depend on wheeling terminally ill people into Westminster on trolleys. The story regarding Frank 'abstain in person' Maguire being plied with drink and locked in a cupboard was certainly current at the time, whether true or not. There has to be a more rational, dare I say modern, way of doing it. In one small move in the right direction it has just been agreed that MPs on parental leave can make use of proxy votes. Welcome, sort of, to the twenty first century.

In fairness some of the events – which I am old enough to have lived through – were so bizarre that any system of governance would have struggled to deal with them.  Considering that the scenery mainly consists of the whips offices plus a few benches to represent the House of Commons they manage to very effectively portray the whole John Stonehouse affair including re-enacting his pretend drowning on a beach in Florida. And whilst I have no idea whether Audrey Wise was as terrifying as made out to be here, the script does allow her to demonstrate that sometimes principles matter; there was a spontaneous round of applause when she did so. From where I stood then, and indeed stand now, getting arrested on the Grunwick picket line was a source of pride rather than shame. In fact I’m pretty sure that Shirley Williams – on a very different wing of the party – also picketed; as did I.

As did he

I’m not old enough to have actually met any of the players in the action, although one of them’s son-in-law was the chap responsible for sending me to post-invasion Grenada a few years later. The actor playing him didn’t look old enough, but then we were all so young in those days. Speaking of the cast, there are nineteen of them (plus musicians whose changing hair styles between acts reflect the fact that the 1970s weren’t exactly homogeneous), which inevitably increases the likelihood of sitting there asking oneself where one has previously seen some of them. The answer – again for UK readers – is the Oak Furniture Land adverts; apparently there's a sale on if you get down there quick.

"We all know what parliament is, and we are all ashamed of it." - Robert Louis Stevenson

Farewell Fidel

"A revolution is not a bed of roses. A revolution is a struggle to death between the past and the future" - Fidel Castro

Thought-provoking words at a time when we wait to see what sort of revolutions are about to be imposed on us all. 

The subject of Cuba always brings to my mind another subject very relevant to today's world: the lies that politicians tell. It's one thing to suspect that what one is being told is not completely accurate, it's a big step to knowing incontrovertibly that lies are being told based on one's own direct experience. For me that step came with the US invasion of Grenada, when I knew for certain that pretty much everything that Reagan said on the subject was an outright untruth. I've already wittered on about this enough in the past so I won't repeat myself (check out the posts labelled Grenada if you're really interested), and anyway you will all be familiar with the same story behind the more recent and more disastrous invasion of Iraq. But, in a world where truth seems less and less accessible it never does any harm to remind oneself.

The other source of misinformation is of course the media and it will be interesting to see how they report Castro's life and legacy. I've already read one lazily compiled report this morning saying that the US embargo has left the streets of Havana full of 1950s American cars. As anyone who has been there can tell you, the roads in Cuba are full of Toyotas exactly the same as everywhere else in the world. It's always referred to as the US embargo for good reason; nobody else took any notice.

Who won the Cold War?

I have been asked to expand my recent comments on the Cold War. Now my only expertise on the subject is the fact that I lived through it, or at least from the invasion of Hungary to the fall of the Berlin Wall, plus of course what I learned at first hand from my tangential role in the US invasion of Grenada (to be absolutely precise my role was in the aftermath).

However, I am confident of one thing: whilst the Cold War was presented as a struggle between democracy and Stalinism which was won by the former, that is not what actually happened. In fact the Stalinists won and are ruling over us now, with their classic tools of surveillance, control of the media, propaganda and suppression of dissent.

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." - Camus

Serendipity...

...or possibly synchronicity. Or morphic resonance. Or possibly coincidence. Or maybe just ignorance on my part. I've only just realised that 'Gunny Highway' - the nom de plume of the person asking very sensible questions about rules playtesting - comes from the Hollywood version of the US invasion of Grenada. Although Reagan's real-life version of events didn't owe very much to fact and memorably ended with the US military slapping themselves on the back and giving out awards in a way that would have made even the Academy of Motion Pictures blush.

Gummy talks to the trees

Now I've never seen the film (I have nothing against Clint Eastwood's acting - 'Paint Your Wagon' is a masterpiece), but, as readers probably don't know, I built the airport at Point Salines; the one that caused all the problems. Or at least I was the project accountant. "Hang on a minute" I hear you say "you're not Cuban!" (1). No, and there lies much of my issue with Ronald Reagan's, er, lies. Anyway, the time is not right for me to publish my perspective on 'Urgent Fury'. It's either too soon or too late. The 30th anniversary release of UK government papers on the issue a couple of months or so ago simply led to the press (including very disappointingly the Guardian) repeating the official US version once again. One would think that given the subsequent experience of the deliberate falsehoods promulgated to justify the invasion of Iraq that they might have been slightly more questioning. But no.

"Lord, Lord, how subject we old men are to this vice of lying!"

(1) I did once, many years after the events of 1983, win a Salsa dancing competition in Cuba (absolutely true fact) and so won't deny that I have a little of the Latin love god in me.

One for the malchicks

 Hello droogs; it's been a while.

The legendary wargames room from a rarely seen angle

So what have I been doing? Well I went on a walk along Outer Edge from Langsett Barn, which was very pleasant apart from the climb up to the trig point, which nearly rendered me an ex-blogger. Anyway, there were some lovely views, of which this isn't one.

Your correspondent demonstrates his grasp of camouflage

I also went to see 'The Heat'. It's not in the slightest bit original, but I laughed a few times and that'll do me. Sandra Bullock appeared to be intending to enter a Michael Jackson lookalike competition as soon as shooting was over; if you ask me she was a cert to take first prize.

And finally a word about the Guardian. I have long lamented the fact that it isn't anything like the paper it used to be. Only the other week they printed a complete load of nonsense about the US invasion of Grenada, which long-suffering readers will remember is my specialist subject. However, all is forgiven. Yesterday they revealed the scoop that Dante Gabriel Rossetti (whose sister -  those same loyal readers will also remember - appeared in these very pages just a couple of weeks ago) kept a pet wombat, which died after eating a box of cigars. If that's not investigative journalism then I don't know what is.

Miniature Wargames and Battlegames

Well, your correspondent as ever has his finger on the pulse. Only a week ago - and unnoticed except by the large numbers of people who have commented on it across the blogosphere - it was announced by the owners that Miniature Wargames and Battlegames are to merge. Now wearing my accountant's hat I can understand the logic, but as a reader I am disappointed.

I enjoyed (most of) both of them. In the case of Battlegames this is actually despite the Old School (*) stuff rather than because of it. And Miniature Wargames had improved beyond recognition since being run by Andrew Hubback. They were different from each other - as indeed are WS&S and Wargames Illustrated - but who wants to read the same stuff all the time?

Anyway, that's not the only rhetorical question. Who will get custody of Mike Siggins?

And I feel sorry for Andrew Hubback whom I met once at Recon and seemed a very nice and patient chap. He needed to be to deal with the idiot who was haranguing him about the accuracy or otherwise of the Grenada game that Miniature Wargames had on display, boring everyone silly with his reminiscences of his time spent working on the Spice Isle shortly after the US invasion. Who was that tosser? Ah, yes, it was me. I remember now.

(*) There was an interesting thread on TMP not long ago where Henry Hyde no less drew an intelligent distinction between 'old school' and 'Old School'.