Paint Table Sunday and goodbye to TMP

I have managed a bit of painting this weekend and my first company of Perry plastic Confederates are at the varnishing stage.  I need to make sure the varnish is OK. first, though! Since I started these, Eric the Shed has painted hundreds of fantastic looking Napoleonic British, though.   I wish I could paint faster.  These ACW figures were supposed to be an experiment in quick, wargames standard painting but it has not been a success!

Anyway, I have started on the second company of nine figures.  I have 18 companies of nine to do altogether!  I am managing to focus quite well, though, by alternating with the North West Frontier and these are the last nine figures I need for my initial The Men Who Would be Kings British force.  I based some more Perry Afghans last week too and my Perry mountain gun arrived too.

Today I hoped to get quite a bit of painting done as it was nice and bright.  The Old Bat, however, started grumbling about the front lawn needing a cut, though.  I refused to do that and told her that gardening was her job.  Then I had to do the supermarket shopping (with added vegetarian nonsense as Charlotte has returned from Edinburgh) and this involved two hours at two different supermarkets this morning (because the two of them are so fussy about which particular food has to come from which supermarket).  

Then, after a quick mozzarella and prosciutto sandwich with the start of today's Giro d'Italia stage, I had to take a load of garden rubbish to the dump and there was a huge queue. The Old Bat loves the new shop at the dump where, instead of taking rubbish out the house, you give good money to the French for someone else's rubbish. Today she reserved a garden umbrella stand.  Except we don't have a garden umbrella so now she is bidding for one on eBay.  This will now destroy any chance of us having a nice summer.  It looks like I may have to go back to Botswana between now and the end of August, which is annoying as I have to fit it around my week's holiday in Cowes but can't control when I go as that is up to the President of Botswana.  

This week, after thinking about it for some time, I have decided that I am finished with The Miniatures Page.  This week the editor posted this as a topic:

While I'm in a pensive mood (grin) what's with the small but vocal minority of British wargamers who resent sharing their hobby with anyone else? They sneer at wargamers from other places and their contemptible views. They act as if the hobby belongs to a single country. I've never seen this from any other nationality. Australians, French, Germans, Canadians, Americans? Happy to share. This applies to TMP, in that I get a steady line of criticism that TMP is 'not British' or 'anti-British' or 'should use GMT' or just somehow unacceptable because we're not headquartered in the U.K. If you're from the U.K.: Do you see British wargamers who are like this? How common are they? What causes this?

I was so incensed about this I did actually post a reply (above) and found myself unexpectedly supported by John Treadaway (I only discovered this from the poisonous Frothers, when someone pointed it out to me).  It seems to me that dissing (to use an American term) British wargamers, who make up the second largest national group on TMP is akin to budget jewellery boss Gerald Ratner saying his products were 'crap'.  British wargamers reacted with polite incredulity but that didn't stop the increasingly wayward owner/editor of the site deleting people's accounts (some two dozen have been terminated).  I won't go into the peculiar personality traits displayed by the editor but I have now removed TMP from my bookmarks bar and replaced it with the Lead Adventure Forum.  I already feel more relaxed.

I didn't, in the end, buy in to The Drowned Earth Kickstarter, despite some really lovely miniatures and instead will concentrate my energies on the imminent Lucid Eye Savage Core rules by Steve Saleh, to support his miniatures line.  This will give me all the jungly fun I need, without the need to spend a fortune on SF buildings, and it seems that forces will be quite small too (less than ten) a side.  The rules are imminent, it seems.  

I now have a big shoe box full of potential jungle scenery and all I have to do is work out how to attach it to the CDs I am going to use as scenic bases.  I like the CDs as they are thin and avoid the 'big step' look of MDF or hardboard.  I still haven't bought a hot glue gun yet (I try to avoid going into B&Q as it makes me feel uncomfortable) , although at least the Old Bat knows how to use one.

I didn't buy Crooked Dice's female minions at Salute but now they have previewed something even more desirable - female cultists,  These will work with my In Her Majesty's Name cultists, provided I paint some Victorian style laces on their boots!

Having discovered that my cable package includes Eurosport (I had no idea) I have been enjoying the Giro d'Italia and with it some appropriate food and wine.  It's actually quite difficult to get a good selection of Italian wine in supermarkets these days but I have matched regional wine with many of the stages.  I need to plan for the Tour de France in advance.  With Eurosport I will be able to watch the Vuelta too, although that will be tricky to match food and wine as I am boycotting Spanish produce.  I did write a piece on one of my favourite Spanish  recipes during last year's race but didn't quite finish it, so I will hold it over until August.

Italian music today. too. with Charles Dutoit's excellent recording of Resphigi's Pines of Rome, Fountains of Rome and Roman Festivals.  All very nostalgic of the long periods I spent in Rome in the late eighties and early nineties, where I lived in either the Excelsior Hotel (as featured in the film La Dolce Vita) or the Grand Hotel (designed by César Ritz in typical restrained style).  The opening piece of the CD is I Pini di Villa Borghese.  The Borghese Gardens were a short walk up the Via Veneto from the Excelsior and contain the Borghese Gallery which is full of the work of my favourite sculptor, Gian Lorenzo Bernini.  I used to spend a lot of time in the Borghese Gardens (there was a big gym underneath it which my gym in London was a reciprocal member of) and I used to go running there when I was training for the 1987 London Marathon.

A very thin and fit Legatus, photographed by an Italian princess in 1986

I knew several lovely Italian princesses at the time and one of them was a Borghese, who I first met when I sat next to her at a dinner party, where the host served spring onions (which appeared to be something of a novelty to the Italians) as a starter.  She picked one up, looked at me and crunched the head off.  "I like strong things!" she growled.  Splendid girl.  She was a direct descendant of the man who was married to Paulina Borghese, Napoleon's sister.

The fourth piece of the Pines of Rome is I Pini della via Appia Antica and on my longer weekend runs I used to run out of Rome along the old part of the Via Appia Antica, which still has its Roman stone surface.  This piece is a depiction of the marching of a ghostly Roman legion, so is excellent for painting Romans to!  I haven't started my Victrix EIR figures yet, as I know if I start them I will get distracted from the ones I should be doing.  I might take them to Cowes.

Nude (1873)

Today's wallpaper is also Italian and is a painting by Vito d'Ancona (1825-1894) who specialised in portraits and landscapes.  He also fought as a volunteer in Garibaldi's army in 1848.