Let me take you back to… the end of July 1983

 Fresh back from holiday, and unemployed as I had lost my shared paper round (my chum had got an apprenticeship and we were both replaced by someone younger and cheaper! It was also the last I saw of the local paper; an early lesson in how the nation works today), I began to put my plan into action.

So, here is the map my imagination transferred to my dad’s beautifully kept garden with some photos I found as close to 1983 as possible, as there was a fair bit of transformation going on in the 80s. My dad had just built a base for his new greenhouse on the site of my sister’s old Wendy house, which was lifted and shifted to the position on the map, along with a pile of the original crazy paving. That part of the garden was now basically a spoil heap, which would prove ideal for wargaming.

As far as the kit was involved, the radar station was two bricks on a mound of spoil from the greenhouse base, surrounded by barbed wire made from garden wire I wound round a broom handle! The bridge and lookout tower were from the Airfix Checkpoint set, the ‘resistance house’ on the port was my sister’s Britains farmhouse. The German camp was bare concrete as it was just a starting point and the Italian colonial troops (all the dismounted Airfix Indians!) lived in tents made from folded cardboard. Otherwise, the Italians guarding the station were Airfix (roughly 10 figures), the Germans were something like 20 Airfix and Matchbox DAK transported by the Airfix Hanomag and Bedford and the Britain’s Kubelwagen. The Good Guys were a mix of Airfix (mostly Australians), Matchbox, Timpo and Britains and totalled (eventually, as the resistance would be DAV x figures strong)15 figures.

All the goodies had individual stats in accordance with the Recon rules, but for the sake of my sanity, the baddies had group stats, with the DAK being better quality than the Italians and colonial troops.

Behold! The cartographic skill of Zod returns!

The Port. A later photo, as there was a huge shrub hedge to the left in 1983.

The jungle, and pretty much close to how it would be in 1983. Note tasty tomato production behind.

A good view of the coast road and my dad’s concreting skills. The German camp is to the right, not the left as my map shows.

My dad, post cancer op, using the hover mower he called ‘that bloody thing’. At least it kept him off the heavy petrol mower for a while… He is standing on the exact location of the radar station, the mower is roughly where the bridge was. Note the paving stones which I designated the only passable area of the lawn.

Some Time Away from Everything

 A few days ago I was sitting down to some tea and cake in Saltram House near Plymouth, traditionally where the family holiday begins (or at least Minime’s Annual Ice Cream Scam begins…), when the Mem’s mobile rings. It’s a text from my doctor with the results of my annual dicky ticker test, which I had taken the day before. To cut a long story short, I was gleefully informed that I was clinically dead and must eat more bananas. That put a shot across the bow and spoiled the atmos somewhat, as the Mem made it clear my usual holiday habits of eating pasties and cream teas until my stent begged for mercy would end when I finished my slice of cake.

Anyway, regardless of that, I was delighted to find that Lidl in St Austell had a good supply of fresh fruit and by keeping to my new diet I was allowed a few treats. I also had a break from the internet as I couldn’t link the iPad to the Mem’s phone so resorted to finishing Ian Knight’s excellent Zulu Rising, Corelli Barnett’s equally excellent biography of Marlborough (our greatest general and I will fight you for it) and two James Holland tomes: Big Week and Brothers in Arms, both from Emma’s wonderful New Chapter bookshop in Mevagissey. I also found a Ladybird book on Oliver Cromwell, so my Cornish ECW thing is still going strong.

Back to reality tomorrow, enduring the day job (I was planning to be retired by now) and dealing with my increasingly batty mother, who has taken to swearing like a navvy and giving nursing staff Harvey Smiths. So here are some relaxing holiday snaps to show life isn’t all bad. Yes, they are more arty sunsets.

Let me take you back to… July 1983

 Almost 43 years to the day, in fact!

Somehow, we managed to go on holiday again. I’m assuming as college finished early, like Minime’s has, that we were able to tuck an extra one in before the Skool holiday ripoff period started. Whatever and however, we ended up in a rather nice bungalow in Ilfracombe, Devon (Willow Close, to be precise!). My sister was far too old for family holidays and had managed to duck out. Frankly, so was I, but a week with my parents was preferable to a week of sisterly tyranny, so I went with mum & dad. To head off any potential surliness my parents told me I could do what I wanted (within reason) so long as they knew where I was. Which was fair enough, but limiting when I didn’t have my bike! Nevertheless, I spent a pleasant week dossing, sponging, listening to music and figuring out the most impressive game ever.

Recon was the catalyst. It was meant to be D&D in Vietnam (or Africa, as you could be a merc), which I tried on the college club with no success. But it did have legs as a conventional skirmish game, so I married it up with Once Upon a Time in the West (only the casualty calculator - I’m not mad, they were equally unplayable) and tried out a few moves with some card counters. What I had was something approaching a cinematic experience: I could create characters and use the D&D elements to make them achieve feats of derring-do. And I was in the mood for a commando raid…

My dad brought this back from work earlier in the year, after it had been read by most of the engineers in W E Sykes (yes - my father was a toolmaker!). It was about a commando raid on the coast of North Africa just before El Alamein. It is a fabulous book, but I had to reduce it a bit from a battalion-size action to half a platoon. My scenario was based in the Aegean (guess what film I was also inspired by) where the hun was building an advanced radar station which could seriously disrupt supplies to the Yugoslavian Partizans (bet you didn’t guess it was the sequel!). A small force of allied commandos would land by submarine, meet the local resistance, and destroy the station before it became active.

My room became a flurry of activity, as I diced for characters, made maps of the garden - yes, it could only be done with 1/32 figures in the back garden! - and worked out a plan that would never hold water militarily but would create memorable incidents. And the fact I remember so much so clearly over forty years later, when now I can’t remember where I put my glasses 5 minutes ago, shows I succeeded.

 Next time: more pictures, maps and, if my knees allow me up in the loft, figures.

And not forgetting…

Let me take you back to… June 1976

Saturday 19th, to be precise. My dad was about to undergo a double hernia op, which was a major thing then resulting in a week in hospital and about a month of recovery. Nowadays, you are in and out in a day but I digress…

The important thing is me, and more so as I would have my 10th birthday while dad was under the knife, so he took me to Addlestone for maximum scamming - whoops! - to choose some presents. I came away with a Matchbox He111 and a box each of the new 1/76 infantry (two German, though - dad did not want to be outnumbered). The one surprise present, though, was the Airfix LCM and Sherman. The LCM has long gone, but the Sherman survives in all its mid-80s Guards Armoured upgrade glory!

The hatch was modelled open as the Matchbox British had a tank commander and he needed a mount. So this is 50 years old and a bit fragile, but I still have my original Sherman which is probably 4 years older!

My dad built the Airfix stuff, but I had a crack at the He111. I did very well apart from not painting the pilots, which was my dad’s first comment when I showed him my magnificent effort. It was high praise indeed if you received a ‘Hmm. s’alright’.

Anyway, I’ll be jumping forward in time to 1983 again for my next post, with yet another holiday and my increasingly fertile teenage wargaming mind (helped by Keren Woodward from Bananarama).

Austrian Cavalry and the Wealden House

 I always seem to end up painting Austrians, an attraction the Mem (who didn’t enjoy her short stay in Innsbruck) cannot fathom. Does that make me another misunderstood Austrian painter?

Anyway, one cuirassier and one dragoon regiment done. Austria seemed to have a greater proportion of cuirassier to dragoons in the WSS, so another one is on the cards but I need a break from assembling Warlord plastics for a bit and these were the last of my prepped figures, so I crawled into the loft and dug out my box of unmade Innovate ‘Masterplan’ kits. I find terrain modelling very relaxing (which helps while I’m taking some enforced rest from work) and I’ve been eying up the Wealden House for a while. The original is in the Weald and Downland open air museum and features a garde robe (a khazi, Darren) which is faithfully reproduced in the model. However, Innovate has not included a miniature of Jeremy Lobb, who was rather cruelly shut in it on a St Annes school trip in 1976 (nothing to do with me). The only other strong memory I have from that visit was Jonathan Cox and his sausage sandwiches, which he would not shut up about. But I digress…

I was unaware that Innovate did a few ‘specials’ to go with their generic range, assuming this one was designed specifically for the museum. I’ve not seen another on sale since I got this, so I have probably upset the kit collector gang again, but models were made to be made. I’m still kicking myself I missed out on Thomas Hardy’s Cottage when it was on evilBay a few years back. Never mind. I’ve another Tudor house and some of the other kits will suit the WSS well enough for my purposes.

The Wealden House is one of the more challenging kits and needed more attention than my usual modelling MO tends to allow, but the end result was worth it. I always repaint these kits (cheap craft acrylics are best) as they have some rough edges that need smoothing, but they are good enough ‘in the raw’ and make sturdy buildings for wargaming. You can still get them, mostly on eBay, but they are becoming increasingly rare. I know I’ve said that before, but sadly it is true.

And that completes the French

 I will get round to photographing the whole lot eventually, but the regiment Battenbourg completes the French Collection (see what I did there). My first unit of Spaniards, Reales Guardias Españolas , are done bar the flag. Most of my units are currently sans flag, but this will be corrected when I save up enough cash to order from Maverick Models. The building behind is another Masterplan model, now rather rare.

Matt, Gloss or Somewhere Inbetween?

 Wasn’t Matt Gloss the drummer in Bros? Anyway…

A few years back I had an exchange with Andy Copestake (Old Glory UK) which was sparked by his wonderful ‘Shinyloo’ project. It was about how some figures suited the shiny better than others and we both agreed this was the case. I actually think this can be simplified by ‘new figures and post-1900’ for Matt and ‘Old Skool’ for Gloss. Having said that, scale plays a part too!

The simplest way to approach this is to trial on a couple of figures and decide what works best for you, as your opinion on your toys overrides everybody else’s. For my WSS stuff it was a no-brainer and Matt was the way to go. I now use AK as it gives the flattest Mattest I know. It’s designed for airbrushes, but paints on well and you don’t need much.

And that completes my Cloggies!

So, here is my quick guide on when to shine and when to flatten. And the inbetweenies.

Gloss: All pre-1900 Minifigs, Hinchliffe, Hinton Hunt (and similar), Airfix Type 1, Connoisseur, Warrior.

Matt: Everything post-1900, ships, aeroplanes, all ranges dating from the 1980s onwards not by Peter Gilder, all plastics.

Satin: All pre-1900 figures under 15mm. Trust me, it works.

Twelve and one flag it is, then!

 Finally settled on twelve figures for foot, but keeping five for horse as it looks better than four. I’ve got to get some flags and more 40x40 bases as I now have a major rebasing operation on my hands! I figured I could go against my standard basing configuration as I only need to represent column and line (and I won’t be playing with them anyway!). The other benefit of twelve figures is that I can get a unit from every sprue, so there is no wastage and it’s easy to work out what I need if I go mental again. I haven’t accounted for the Spanish, yet.

Otherwise, this is setting my juices flowing…

Prepping For Easter

 No, not stashing tins of soup and loo rolls, but doing all the boring stuff, like priming and bases, before I can start slapping on the colour.

Black! Black! The colour of the night! Mummy locked me in a cupboard and fed me pins!

All this started with a box of WSS Alliance infantry I bought on a whim. I made them up, primed them black then they sat in the loft for a year before I thought “I’m more likely to flog these if they are painted”.  So, I did and thoroughly enjoyed it. Now, a year later… I have scores of the bloody things! This will probably be the last phase (it’s my third Marlborough’s Wars starter set) if I can just stop faffing about and umming and arring over 12 or 16 figure infantry units and one or two flags per unit.

Alarmingly, I have more infantry sprues waiting for assembly but I’ve run out of painting sticks!

What Have The Funcken Romans Done For Us?

 From Arms & Uniforms Volume 1: Ancient Egypt to the 18th Century by L & F Funcken (a book I had out on near-permanent loan from Virgina Water Library in the early to mid 70s):

The funny braccae are a bit of a giveaway. 

And all the best people have these…

Let me take you back to… May 1983

 Traditionally (well, since the early 70s), my family always holidayed in the Tregony Holiday Park in Cornwall during the late May Whitsun week. This is because my dad’s factory used to close for that week (along with the August bank holiday) before they allowed the workers to have a choice, but we carried on anyway because errr…. Tradition? Anyhoo, I was nearing the point of desperately not wanting to holiday with my parents but still wasn’t trusted to stay home alone for a week in case I set fire to the house or just ate chocolate. To be fair, that probably would have happened but it did mean I ended up a tad teenagerish and spent most of the week bored. It didn’t help that May 1983 was wet and dull and Spandau Ballet were rampant in the charts.

But all was not lost because I had brought my own entertainment! I’d found a fishing tackle box for a quid in a discount store (for the life of me I can’t remember where) and had stocked it with my Pony Wars card figures, scenery and other useful wargaming stuff. I was also armed with the Newbury Colonial Rules and the April edition of Military Modelling with Stuart Asquith’s article on Cowpens. Well, what do you think I was going to do? Revise for my retakes? Go to St Mawes again?

So I commandeered the coffee table, sorted my carefully curated card bits and bobs into the two armies and went at it. Very slowly… It soon dawned on me that Newbury rules didn’t exactly give me the Loose Files and American Scramble I’d read about (didn’t stop me buying Cambrai to Sinai, though did it? 🤡) and worse, there was no way I would consider it for colonial actions. I played to the bitter end, the Tax Dodgers were given a pounding and then my mum suggested going to St Mawes.

This was something of a low point in the year, but it did teach me something: avoid complex rules. And St Mawes.

But, I still have the tackle box which now contains all my modelling kit. It’s covered in Milliput fingerprints where I created hundreds of 10mm and 25mm figures and gets a sort out every two or three years, when I chuck out something that I find I need the following week.

Where all the magic happens.

So what next? Can I get Recon to work? Will the weather improve? Will I ever practice my French vocab? Can I remember the chemical equation for photosynthesis without surreptitiously scratching it on a pencil?  Will Clare Grogan ever answer any of those letters I send her on a daily basis?

 Find out in the next instalment…

PS The Tregony Holiday Park was actually very nice and would go there again if it hadn’t been sold and turned into a housing estate. Oddly, if you go to the location now you can still make out the park layout.

PPS Always hated St Mawes. Once you’ve seen the castle, that’s it. Nothing else to do if you are a child and worse if you are a teenager because your parents are with you! Last time I visited was on Honeymoon and it’s just a rich twat’s paradise now. We sat across from one of the swanky hotels, slurping cornets and wondering how money seems to go to the most stupid on earth. However, we had a laugh watching some idiot woman, dressed like an ‘I Dream of  Jeannie’ cosplay, manoeuvre a shaded pram containing two ratty dogs up the hotel steps.

Let me take you back to…. January 1983…. And then to April 1983

 Ok, I’ve bounced backwards and forwards using my heat pump Time Machine (hence the unreliability), but this is a brief interlude before I begin work on the ‘big thing’ of ‘83. There might be another one, but this will do for now.

I must say I’m still a sucker for the shiny cover and paper.

To be more accurate, 7 January (because it was the same day The Fourth Arm started on BBC1). Dad was on 6-2 shift and I finished early from college so off we went to Wickes/Aldershot. With my eye on these shiny rules, I popped into Concorde Models and rifled through the large white drawers at the back of the shop. They stocked a useful supply of wargaming stuff, mostly Skytrex and Minifigs from memory, and on this occasion I left with some Skytrex modern tanks and the Osprey Zulu War book (which I still have). You can see how much I had on the go this year.

I soon managed to paint the tanks up and had a couple of test games but cash flow (more cash spread…), and my success with Pony Wars, had me resorting to card strips to fight my mini-campaign. This was the replacement for my second Pony Wars outing and took place in our conservatory (on the same rickety dining table) to the strains of Let’s Dance during the Easter holidays.

The scenario was a small British Battlegroup holding off Red Forces (of the Purple Moon, if you ever read Frontline UK in Bullet) in an unnamed British protectorate. The British were based roughly on what was used in the Falklands (scary to think it was less than a year earlier) and the Reds/Purple Moon were what my Jane’s Armoured Fighting Vehicles book said the Argentines had, so M47s (gorgeous!), Shorlands, LVTP7s etc.

It sort of went OK, and I managed to get a couple of games out of it but I honestly have no idea how anybody ever managed to finish a game with anything more than a reinforced company! Fair enough, I was new to the rules (and a bit thick) but goodie gumdrops it took ages! If only at the time I had a copy of the simplified modern rules that appeared a few months later in Miniature Wargames, things would have been so different.

Anyway, it all went the way of the plucky British and the decidedly oriental-looking foreign hordes were sent packing. No dodgy human rights lawyers around, obviously.*

With that particular boat floated, I parked the rules and my small collection of tanks and set my mind to Newbury rules and cutting card shields for my pipe cleaner Zulus. But that article in the April 1983 Military Modelling on Cowpens looked rather interesting…

*Especially those who have Ukrainian male models setting fire to their old stuff.

Let Me Take You Back To…. February 1983

 ….when I was off sick from college.

1983 was, along with 1977, what I considered a ‘formative year’. I grew up a bit, learned much and did a great deal.

Much of this was down to the radio I got for Christmas which freed me from the tyranny of parental control over what I could listen to without one of them moaning that they couldn’t hear the words. This opened a whole new world of individuality. My wargaming life also exploded, boosted by my dad’s regular trips to Wickes in Farnborough and a quick run in to nearby Aldershot for Esdevium Games and Concorde Models. I would end the year joining the Staines club but at this point I was on my own.

Lastly, there was college. I was on retakes, a result of a nightmare educational experience at my awful skool, but I could relax in college and found it rather easy, so I coasted a bit. This is why I ended up pondering Pony Wars, rather than revising for the mocks I was hoping to avoid if I could spin out an extra week. College may have been better than skool, but I was still happier at home!

In truth I had a nasty virus, so it was a week of coughing my insides out followed by an enforced week of rest. And this, dear reader, was when it all happened…

My original copy!

I had Pony Wars for about 6 months. For those unfamiliar with the rules, it was designed as a show participation game and the amount of gear to play it was well above what I could manage. But the suggestion in the back of the book to use card strips for the Indians… Why just the Indians? I had enough coloured card to represent all the various groups by colour code - buff for Indians, blue for cavalry, etc. But I really needed a table and, as luck would have it, our rickety old folding dining table was exactly half the size of the recommended playing area at 15mm.

All I had to do was halve everything! So, In a flurry of activity, coughing and Laura Brannigan, card strips were cut to half the 15mm base sizes (double thickness, pasted together), terrain was cut from an old cardboard box and all measurements were in cm rather than inches. My dad found a sheet of hardboard of the exact size (probably from Wickes) to cover the table (it was still my parent’s property!) and after three days of chopping, gluing and trial/error I was ready for action!

I chose the Homestead game as it seemed the easiest and I had an absolute blast! I had better eyesight and nimble fingers then, so it wasn’t that fiddly (to all intents and purposes it was 6mm) so it all went smoothly, but it was designed to play indefinitely and the end of the second day I was flagging. Not even Bonnie Tyler belting out Total Eclipse of the Heart (video was filmed up the road in Holloway Sanatorium) could motivate me, and when the drums started beating, signalling massive Indian reinforcement and Lord knows how many more hours, I called a halt.

Running something that size, even in rude health, is hard work but it was a fantastic experience with lots of memorable incidents. My favourite was the homestead that found themselves in the path of a large warband with only one round of ammo. They dutifully used the last bullet on the single female and prepared for the worst, only for the Indian reaction roll to be…. Leave the table! A cavalry patrol arrived two moves later, to find four men and a woman riddled with bullets… 

I also played a bit of this with card strips cut to scale. Not my original, but a pristine copy off evilBay.

I planned another game for Easter, but when it came to play I chickened out. The first game was so good, I couldn’t bring myself to despoil the memory with a poorer game. Plus I had moved on to the Zulu War.  I never dumped the rules and I did play again with the Southbourne group’s massive setup. Again it was a lot of fun, although this time I had nothing more than a single troop of cavalry! I think there is still mileage with the game if you reduce it by 2/3 to make things manageable. But I wouldn’t have missed the experience for the world.

Another trip to Aldershot resulted in a set of Newbury Colonial rules and an order to Peter Laing for some Zulu war figures, although the first game I played was a refight of Cowpens (using card strips…) on our chalet’s coffee table whilst on holiday in Tregony. Little did I know what that would start…. However, the summer was approaching and as the weather improved my thoughts turned to the garden and what I could do with all the 1/32 figures I still possessed. But that’s another story.

Not my original but still as complicated.

PS I passed all my exams.

I wonder what this can do…?

There is a name for this kind of horror…

Submechanophobia!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submechanophobia

As a kid visiting museums (with varying degrees of interest), I began to notice that I had an increasingly uncomfortable reaction to model sailing ships. Sailing ships only, mind. HMS Hood = no problem.

This grew over the years to the point where I now get a physical reaction. The Airfix classic ship size I can cope with, but as the models get larger I suffer anything from shortness of breath to feeling sick. It’s not only models: things underwater and boat hulls in general (especially water lapping against them) can set me off.

This has led to some rather embarrassing situations as I have worked in a number of navy buildings that often contain a model or two. In one location I was somewhat taken aback to find they had plonked a huge model of Victory next to the Gents. Caught short one day, I had to close my eyes and be led by hand to blessed relief by a bootneck, who I think is still laughing now. Of course, this was after I got married which may well have been different had the Mem not been similarly amused: our third date was a visit to the Mary Rose…

I’ve not met anybody with a similar problem, apart from the occasional agreement that stuff underwater can be a bit creepy, so it’s nice to know it’s not that unusual and there is a name for it.

And you never know - I might even be able to claim a PIP on day and get some of my tax money back. Every cloud, an’ all that.