Wargamers Bloggers Quarterly, Penny Dreadful, reducing the lead pile, my birthplace and even some painting!

The Third issue of Wargamers Bloggers Quarterly is out.  Unlike the bumper second edition it has gone back to the slim proportions of the first issue.  Personally, this one's contents are less interesting to me but this is always going to be a problem with any wargames magazine.  I thought two how to paint/model (essentially) articles was a bit much and anything to do with naval wargaming makes me fall asleep (aviation wargaming too, I am afraid, despite the fact that I love both ships and aircraft).  Sidney Roundwood's WW1 piece had some fantastic photographs though, even though late war isn't my period. Unfortunately one post, at the end really annoyed me.  It was another piece on the variability of scale seen in 28mm figures but was ruined by totally unnecessary use of (uncensored) four letter words. Now I do find the use of four letter words in written pieces (especially) not offensive, really, just a bit...tragic.  It makes anything you write sound like something a thirteen year old schoolboy would do and, I think, takes away from any argument you might be making.  Not that this man's arguments were very compelling.  Why do they measure figures foot to eye, he ranted, saying that was not how they measure people.  No, of course not but model soldiers invariably wear hats so measuring to the eye is sensible when you can't tell where the top of their heads are.  Anyway, do download WBQ, if you haven't already as it is an initiative well worth supporting.

Good CGI London in Penny Dreadful but there is something fundamentally wrong with this picture!  What is it?

I have actually managed some painting this week on some In Her Majesty's Name figures and my four new Servants of Ra figures arrived from North Star too along with a figure to complete my new Pulp company I am working on.   I think my return to IHMN has been provoked by watching Penny Dreadful, which was a birthday present from my friend A.  We are both enjoying it and are watching it accompanied by appropriate Victorian drinks, like Porter and, er, Port (which I'm not really allowed).    It's a nice (perhaps "nice" is not really the right word) Gothic counterpart to Ripper Street and, as ever, I spend rather too much time looking at the sets to see how well they have recreated Victorian London.  It suffers from a surfeit of red bricks again, as it was, like Ripper Street, shot in Ireland not London and, in fact, I am sure some of the buildings used are the same.  Dublin really doesn't look much like London did.  Still, I would happily watch Eva Green doing the ironing, let alone acting all dark and fascinating, despite an English accent that is sometimes a bit more Romford than Mayfair.  Although, it's better than Billie Piper's Belfast accent which makes her totally incomprehensible much of the time. 

I haven't watched the third season of Ripper Street even though it is available on Amazon Prime, which I am a subscriber too.  This is because I don't know how it works but also, unlike young people, I do not want to watch TV programmes on a computer or a "mobile device".  I want to sit in a comfortable chair with a nice glass of wine looking at a big screen, not squinting at some low quality download  (all streaming is rubbish quality) on a tiny screen.  

I am making a real effort to reduce the lead pile at present and so far this year I have got rid of 38 more figures than I have acquired (only about 7,000 to go).  I just put my Foundry Ancient Egyptians on to eBay so that will take another fifty off the total.  That said I did just pick up the Warlord Black powder supplement on the Sudan, Blood on the Nile (which looks tremendous), from Perry miniatures so I could acquire their Col Fred Burnaby figure.  I am tempted to get him painted right away as it will get my Sudan efforts going again.  

Bearsted Hospital (right) the building on the left was scientist Michael Faraday's home

The estimable Mr Bob Cordery  celebrates his birthday today and posted a picture of the hospital where he was born which, coincidentally, I walked past on Friday.  Now, I celebrated (not really the right word) my birthday last month, albeit I am ten years younger than Mr C, so I thought I would show the building where I was born too.  Bearstead Maternity Hospital is just across the green from Hampton Court Palace and in previous incarnations was a yacht club (it backs onto the Thames) and a military hospital during the Great War.  It closed as a hospital in 1969 and is now posh flats.  We used to drive past it when picking up our daughter from school. 

Speaking of whom, I didn't get a whole lot of hobby stuff for my birthday this year but my daughter excelled herself by getting me a copy of The Hobbit Battle of Five Armies Art & Design book direct from Weta Workshop and signed by Alan Lee among others.  What a good girl!  Perhaps I will pay for her pole dancing instructor's course now!

Our road on Tuesday morning

I've got a horrible bug at the moment which has left me almost unable to speak and I didn't enjoy having to trudge through the snow earlier in the week to get to the station because one inch of snow, of course, brought the main road to an almost total standstill.  It took my wife exactly an hour to drive one mile towards getting Guy to school (they turned back in the end because the traffic wasn't moving).  Fortunately, I put my Canadian overshoes on and got to the station in fifteen minutes.  Oh how my Canadian friends laugh at our snow problems.  My friend Sophie is in Toronto at present and tells me they are expecting six to eight inches in the next day.

I got some tidying up done on the workbench this week but free time is going to be in short supply for the next few months.  I hope to have a few painted figures (here's a clue) to show in the next few days.