Paint Table Saturday: Byzantines, Dutch, Indian Mutiny, some Kickstarters and back to school.

k

It's a very long time since I have written a Paint Table Saturday post but I am indeed, doing some painting, thanks to the ongoing Sculpting Painting and Gaming Facebook Group (although the lack of a comma in the title continues to annoy me). In theory, you are supposed to paint for 30 minutes a day but what with the bad light and four proposals to get done for work since January my output has dropped a bit. I am not managing 30 minutes a day but I have now painted for at least 30 minutes a week for 16 weeks in a row.  Some weeks I am close to, or even over, the required 210 minutes.

So far in 2019 I have completed 29 figures which is not a bad start for me, given that my bad eyesight makes it hard for me to paint for very long. Last month I finished a unit of twenty figures depicting the 64th Foot from the Indian Mutiny (Iron Duke Miniatures).  I will get some more of these soon as I have actually painted all of the ones I own, shockingly. As usual with wargaming flags, for some reason, the standards are rather oversize making it difficult, given I gave them the correct length (scale 9' 10") poles.  I wish flag manufacturers would say that there flags are oversized. 'Oh they look better on the table' say idiots on TMP. Not to me they don't. It's like those people in the past who used 54mm figures on the table to depict their generals. Also, the standard bearer figures' hands are in just the wrong position to easily hold the flagpoles. It took me a very frustrating hour to get them attached, Immediately afterwards I had to go to the doctor and he was concerned about my 'alarmingly high 'blood pressure. I had to explain what had caused it.

My current projects include a unit of Fireforge Byzantine archers and three Byzantine command to go with the nine rank and file I finished in January. I have all the base colours down on these now so hope to push on with them this weekend, In addition, I am working on a couple of individual figures for when L get bored with production line painting. One is a pulp Turk/Egyptian and the other is a Harry Potter figure for my daughter, really just to see if I can do it justice and thereby justify buying the game which my daughter would then play with me, at least.

These six figures are a purchase from this week; six North Star 1672 Dutch. I ordered these at lunchtime on Tuesday and they arrived Thursday morning, which is nearly as good as Amazon.   This purchase was inspired by a new book on the Dutch army of the period which came out this week. I bought some of these Copplestone sculpted figures ten years ago when they first came out and even painted a couple but finding information on the Dutch army of the time proved impossible so I gave up on the period. Hopefullym I will now be able to produce something for use with The Pikeman's Lament.  Compared with the plastics I have been painting lately these big chunky metals are going to be easier to deal with I think.  I just need the book to arrive so I can get properly started.

A big box of a Kickstarter I backed some time ago arrived this week: The John Carter role playing game. I couldn't even remember if I had backed this or cancelled it but here it is. Now what on earth do I do with it? Lots of delicate looking resin figures. Oh dear!  Thirty four figures and a 238 page rule book!

I first read the Edgar Rice Burroughs books in the early seventies when I was enticed by the covers of the New English Library paperback issues which largely featured under dressed ladies, much to the delight of my twelve year old self.  The key painting issue with these is going to be devising an appropriate flesh tone for the Red Martians.

The problem is that the more I paint the more figures I want. When I wasn't painting much I didn't buy many figures. I really, really must sell some I am never going to do!

So absolutely no reason to back another Kickstarter this week, of course. But that is exactly what I did with Paul Hicks' American War of Independence figures for Brigade Games (it's funded with 26 days to go). As usual I am influenced by the sculpts not the wargaming potential but this is a period I have literally toyed with for many years, ever since my Airfix days. I bought a lot of the Perry Foundry figures but although Perry Miniatures comprehensive range is very fine the older Foundry sculpts look rather old fashioned (and small) now,   Rebels and Patriots will be the set of rules for those and I will resist the temptation to do a historical battle (always my downfall) in favour of some skirmishing.  The only issue will be, I suspect the massive customs duty and shipping charges for the 20 packs I have committed to.

I was actually supposed to have a game Sunday week at Eric the Shed's. He is doing one of his big weekend games and this one will be Hastings; a battle I have always wanted to game. Sadly, I discovered yesterday that I have to return to Botswana next Saturday so will miss it. This will be my third visit in thirteen weeks. Never mind it will provide some money to buy more soldiers I will never paint! Also lurking about is another Kickstarter I bought into: West Wind's War & Empire Dark Ages figures. Maybe I can do 15mm Hastings instead!

Other than lots and lots of work (although it would be nice if some of our government clients actually paid their bills - not mentioning any names, effendi) not much else has been going on.  The most bizarre day was being invited back to my school to talk to some pupils about working internationally).  One thing I hated when I was young were all the 'Back to School' adverts in shops at the end of the summer. Not something I wanted to be reminded of when i was on holiday.

I really enjoyed the tour of my old school they gave me, although I hadn't really been back properly for forty years. They now have twice the number of pupils we did and the buildings are three times the size.  The first thing I saw when I walked through the main door (we weren't allowed to do  that when I was there) was a group of willowy teenage girls from the school next door (where my daughter and, indeed, the Old Bat, went).  They have a number of joint lessons with the boys from my school now. This would have actually caused a riot in my day. We weren't allowed within 22 yards of the fence between the two schools in order to prevent any fraternisation at all. There was, however, a small area behind the CCF glider hut where you could engage with conversation with the young ladies without being seen from either school building. So I was told.

The school had copies of the School magazine out from when I was art editor and we looked at the pictures I had done for several issues. Mostly of young ladies. I was notorious for being the first person to submit drawings of women to the school magazine.  The food choice at lunch was amazing (whatever happened to beef/lamb burgettes and the spaghetti bolognese that looked like worms in a cow pat) and I was surprised to learn that fifty percent of the staff were now women. We had one lady German teacher and that was it.

Although a lot of the fabric of the school I attended was still there it has been extended and changed so as to be almost unrecognisable. In particular replacing the parquet floor has changed the whole nature of the place. Walls which were external are now internal with additional atria added putting what was outside inside, like parts of Las Vegas. Occasionally there would be an unchanged part, like the school hall and it would take me right back. I told them that my Uncle went to the school and they found his entry details from 1932. They emailed this to me, I sent it to his sister and she sent it to his children and as a result I have reconnected with my cousins who I haven't seen since 1975.

"What one piece of key advice do you have for the boys?" I was asked. "Don't have anything to do with the girls from the school next door!" I replied.  It wasn't just the Old Bat. There had been other stressful interactions with these girls. As my friend Dibbles told me at the time: "you are better off with the girls from Surbiton High, they are prettier, sluttier and less stressful." I wore my old school tie and they wanted it for their museum display case. I felt like a museum piece myself after I left.

In memory of Andre Previn, one of my favourite conductors, I am listening to his recording of Prokofiev's atmospheric Cinderella. It's not as well known, or as melodic, as Romeo and Juliet and takes a bit of time to get into but the more  I listen to it the more I like it. 

William Etty Female nude in a landscape circa 1825

Today's wallpaper is by the English painter William Etty (1787-1849).. He was the first major painter of the nude in England but scandalised parts of the artistic establishment by continuing to paint from life well after his student days and scandalised parts of the rest of society by including ladies' pubic hair in some of his paintings. Out of fashion for a hundred and fifty years after his death, he has recently come back into favour again, particularly after a large retrospective of his work in his home town of York in 2011

Paint Table Saturday: Back from Africa

I had hoped to have finished my Carthaginian war elephant crew by now but, unfortunately I had to work abroad for two weeks earlier this month and when I got back I had picked up a very nasty bug which has left me with a headache, sore throat and cough.  I have had it for over ten days now and it is very tiring.  Nothing to do, therefore but catch up on all the TV I recorded while I was away, including one of my favourites, Repair Shop, which the Old Bat declares is literally watching paint dry.  She claims I would be better off going upstairs to watch the paint dry on the bedroom walls as at least I would then get some exercise too.  I love Repair Shop, of course, because I have no ability to do anything with my hands but these people can do anything. 

Anyway, yesterday and this morning I have got the flesh tones down on my elephant crew, having assembled the figures yesterday.  I have even done the shading on the mahouts, or whatever Carthaginians called them.  The Punic language did survive the fall of Carthage and may have even hung on until the time of the Muslim conquest of North Africa but being a Semitic language, as well, it was likely absorbed at this time.  I am also working on the skin tones of a half dozen Perry Afghan tribesmen (as they share a similar palate) which I picked up at last year's Salute, This week I took delivery of a dozen mounted Afghans, which I will need for my force for The Men Who Would be Kings.  I need another eight, so will get three packs at Salute in two weeks time, hopefully.

There was a flurry of emails between myself and Gaborone earlier in the month. We had just won a tender to do some government training in Botswana and the government there had fixed the dates without telling us.  'We'll have a briefing meeting here on Sunday' said our local man.  What?  This was Tuesday!  We tried to get them to delay a week but they couldn't.  Barely time to sort out my washing and ironing, get my Malaria tablets (you probably don't need them at this time of year but I wasn't risking it!) and finish my slides.  Off to the airport on Saturday afternoon.  Shockingly, on the last couple of BA flights I have taken, there have been lots of attractive young ladies working as cabin crew.  Where were all the camp men in dodgy short sleeved shirts?  Where were all the fifty something old boilers who appeared to have escaped from doctor's surgery reception?  'You want a drink, why?'  No, just lightly fragrant young women with amazingly complex hairstyles (do British Airways have new hair design clinics?) enhancing the whole flight.  Lovely.

Travelling is, of course, a series of stress points for me, which means as soon as I pass one the next one is looming. Will I remember everything for my packing ? (no, I forgot my shirt collar stiffeners and my USB plug).  I have a list to ensure I don't forget things but I can't remember where I put it). Will I get to the airport on time? Hope there are no problems on the M25. Will I get on the plane early enough to get my bag stowed in the overhead locker? This is an increasing problem. The number of young women who have a drag-a-bag, a back pack and a vast handbag is starting to annoy me (Me? Annoyed? Surely not).  That's three bags, bitches. One bag.  You are supposed to have one, unless you put the others under the seat in front, which they never do. No, they put them in the overhead locker, next to each other, rather than on top of each other, so they can constantly get at their hand lotion, lip balm, hair brush, eye drops etc. etc. during the flight.  Then. of course, in the morning (it's an eleven hour overnight flight) they all take bags of toiletries into the washrooms.  People are desperate for the loo, women, they can't wait for you to pretty yourself up for landing.  Get a bloomin' move on!  Grr!  At least there were no screaming babies in the cabin (they should have to go in the hold, like dogs). When we land it is a race to passport control to avoid queuing, as I try and count off people I pass.  Will they accept my passport?  It's in a bad state now, at the end of its life and often attracts negative comments from bored immigration staff.  Annoyingly, I have to replace it this year, so will just miss a new blue one, with all its inherent promise of sending a gunboat if Johnny Foreigner kicks up.  At least mine won't be made by the French, I suppose.

The late departing flight kept me stressed the whole way, as it gradually became clear that we were going to miss our connecting flight. Lovely blonde stewardess, with tiny braids set around the back of her head, told me to ask the ladies as we got off the plane and thankfully a South African lady was waiting with my replacement boarding pass for a flight three hours later.  At least I could recover in the nice lounge for a few hours.  SA Express had much better cabin service than Air Botswana, which we were supposed to have flown on. They managed to served lots of drinks and proper snacks on the fifty minute flight.  Efficient! We missed our Sunday afternoon briefing meeting, though, which meant leaving the hotel at 7.00 am the next morning.  Actually, we had to leave the hotel at 7.00 every morning, which was no joke when Botswana is two hours ahead of Britain.  It took 21 hours door to door but I was glad I was back in the Avani hotel.  The course we were giving was in another (very nice) hotel but ours had gardens and a pool and the Pool Bar which we use as our office.   The temperature varied from 25 C to 32 C over the two weeks which helped my mood too. 

Anyway, it was basically eleven days straight working, including a flight up to Francistown, Botswana's second city (population 43,000).  We did there and back in a day on another too small aircraft.  I wouldn't have minded staying there for the weekend, actually, as the training was in a nice hotel where all the accommodation was in individual, thatched lodges and the weather was like a perfect Mediterranean climate.  Indeed, we gave our course in a thatched building too, which was a first.  The locals wondered why I was taking close ups of the outside and the inside of the thatch which was, of course, to do with my recently purchased bunch of Grand Manner African huts.

The River Tati

We also stopped to have a quick look at the River Tati.  Like most rivers in Botswana it is just sand for most of the year but after a lot of rain recently (they really needed it - the first time I went in 2016 they hadn't had proper rain for three years) it actually had some water in it.   A tributary of the River Shashe,which empties into the Limpopo you can't get much more Darkest Africa than that.  Well not with easy access to a nice outdoor terrace which serves Martinis, anyway.

Francistown proudly declares itself an international airport but it became apparent, on the way back to Gaborone that evening, that, in fact, they only have two flights a day leaving from there.  Bustling it is not.  They actually have six gates there, so they were obviously planning ahead for the day when it becomes a bustling tourist and business hub.  Or perhaps the Chinese sold them an airport far bigger than they actually needed.  Surely not?

I tried to be good about not eating too much, as a buffet for every meal had the potential to be a disaster.  I did try local delicacy Mopane worms, which were served in some sort of sauce.  These aren't worms, of course, but the caterpillars of the Emperor Moth.  They had no taste at all and were rather like eating a stick with dry rot.  Very high in protein, I was told and they can form 70% of the diet or people in rural Botswana and Zimbabwe.  Personally, I much preferred the goat curry and Kudu steaks.  I also had some excellent (really, really excellent) ribs at the Bull and Bush Irish pub on St Patrick's day.  

The best meal was at an Italian restaurant owned by the Foreign Minister where I had a quite superb fillet steak.  Botswana beef is rightly famous and is exported all over the world (Norway buys a lot, apparently).  I taught the lovely (goodness me there are some lovely women in Botswana) local waitress that as she was in an Italian restaurant she should learn to say 'al sangue' not 'bleu' for correctly cooked steak.  The restaurant even had Santa Cristina chianti, which I used to drink with my particular friend Principessa I in Rome thirty years ago.  Nostalgic!

Speaking of wine, at the weekend I got invited to a South African wine tasting at another big hotel.  A large tent with about two dozen producers serving wine to a predominantly female clientele, largely dressed to the nines and tottering about (increasingly tottering as the afternoon went on) on their ridiculous high heels.  

There was a huge local derby at the football stadium, hence the dearth of men.  'Not watching the football?' increasingly relaxed ladies asked me.  'Don't like football.  Prefer wine and ladies,' I answered, truthfully.  Each group, usually three or four of them, then wanted me to try their favourite wines, as I admired their shoes, to their delight.  I have had worse afternoons.  Well, evening as well, actually, as one posse attached themselves to me for the rest of the day and compared stories of friends having been to freezing England.  Fortunately, I missed the second big freeze while I was away.

On the final night our local contact took us to the tallest building in Botswana (28 floors) which has the highest bar, the relentlessly trendy `Room50Two.  It was a wet and stormy night and the views over the city were impressive. The hills around the capital are oddly wargames like, in that they seem to spring straight up from an otherwise flat landscape.

It had been an exhausting twelve days, so I deserved a Vodka Martini (or two) and they were largely medicinal, anyway.  Later on, after our Italian dinner, I decided I needed a nightcap and to get away from my colleague, whose conversation consists entirely of reading the BBC News political headlines from his phone and then ranting about each story.  I told him that I wasn't interested in politics, didn't know the names of any of the people he was talking about and how would he like it if I read him all the headlines from The Miniatures Page every twenty minutes. Anyway, I went to the Pool Bar at our hotel. 'Hello' purrs a lovely local lady, setting her beer on my table, resting her forearms on the surface and presenting her chest assertively. 'Perhaps you would like a manicure or a pedicure?'  Well, never had that offered before.  I glanced at my fingernails, anxiously.  'Or maybe a massage?' she suggested, hopefully. I instantly realised that she had suggested a manicure or pedicure as the thought of giving me a massage was a step too far, even for cash.  She was lovely, though, as had been the one in the skintight trousers the night before.  Walking death sentences though, both of them,  Unless she really was a friendly beauty therapist.  Not in that blouse, I suspect. 'Haven't seen these types of girls in here before,' I observed to my waiter.  "Ah, it is because there are lots of Chinese staying here at the moment," he observes. I don't look very Chinese, I think. Maybe I do just have bad nails.

The next day we didn't have to leave the hotel until 3.00 pm so I spent it in the Pool Bar, writing my report and enjoying the outrageously shaped ladies by the pool who were there to organise a jazz festival at the hotel for later in the year.  Everywhere they went they were accompanied by promotional balloons, oddly.  Debbie was particularly nice and we happily shared lunch and, companionably, a plug socket for our laptops.  Safe sex, anyway, even if my fingernails remained tatty.  I had dinner in the lounge at Johannesburg so I didn't have to eat on the plane and could try to sleep from early on.  Fortunately, the two people inside me settled down for the night and didn't move for eight hours.  The man had those horrible thick, blonde hairy forearms I usually associate with Australian men but he was South African.  Wifey was rather fine, however. Across the aisle I had whining fat vegetarian woman, who complained loudly when there was no vegetarian option left when the food trolley reached us (we were in the very last row). "Did you order a special vegetarian meal?' asked yet another lovely stewardess, patiently.  Of course fat vegetarian hadn't (boy, she must eat a lot of nut cutlets.  Most vegetarians I know are thin).  She moaned about everything else too (they had run out of pretzels by the time they reached her, before this, which started her off).  She was wearing a weird looking orange puffy jacket with vertical ribs; like a lilo.  When she fell asleep she looked like a collapsed pumpkin that had been left on the front step a week after Halloween. In front of me I had Mr Elephant Man hair, whose strange wavy (and badly dyed) hair seemed to have been glued to his head in three strange asymmetrical clumps like three giant walnut whips. He was one of those people who has to open his locker every twenty minutes.  Maybe he was looking for his moisturiser.  Opposite him was Miss Nice Leggings who kept making little videos of the inside of the plane.  When she started filming the emergency exit the stewardess got anxious and asked her what she was doing.  She claimed she worked for a company that made interior sets of aircraft for films.  Hmm.   She was up and down to the locker, too, rooting around in her three bags but I didn't mind her, as she had a top that was just a bit too short when she stretched up to the locker. Anyway, back home now and, hopefully, no more overseas trips for a bit and more figure painting.

Today's rather sumptuous wallpaper is by the Polish painter Wojciech Gerson (1831-1901).  Born in Warsaw he worked and studied there most of his life, except for a two year period of study in St Petersburg.  Well known in Poland today for his landscapes and patriotic paintings, many of his works were stolen by the Germans in World War 2 and have disappeared, so often only black and white photographs remain.

Today I am listening to the annual four day Classic FM Hall of Fame, which isn't a Hall of Fame at all, of course, but a top 300.  They are up to number 164 now and I have got more than ninety of these on my iTunes; the missing ones being largely choral works as I am not a big fan of those. I usually hear one or two things during it which makes me want to add them to my collection and so far it has been Strauss' Four Last Songs and Max Bruch's Scottish Fantasy.  My mother used to love Bruch's violin concerto but I find it one of those pieces that I have just got sick of over the years.  I am the same with Beethoven's fifth and sixth symphonies, Mozart's clarinet concerto, Tchaikovsky's piano concerto and some others.  Some of the first classical pieces I got on record, when I was eight, and inherited some of my aunt's collection when she got married, like Dvorak's New World and Beethoven's 3rd I never tire of, though, so I can't work out whey some have grown stale.

Paint Table Saturday: Elephants, Danes, Afghans and Zulus!

It was a little brighter this morning, so I told the Old Bat that our Saturday morning 'run' (well, more a sort of jog with fast walking bits) would have to be postponed until this afternoon.  The light went at about two, which meant we had to go out in the rain but (and I would never admit it to the Bat) I do feel a bit healthier now that I have returned.  We actually cut our time for our normal route from 38 minutes to 37 minutes today.  I wish I had a giant crumpet to celebrate. 

Guy gets some political tips from Miss Lewinsky

Speaking of celebrations, both the children passed their exams at the end of last term. Guy got a first in his politics paper so perhaps Monica Lewinsky gave him some top tips.  Or perhaps not.  Charlotte was so ill when she did her exam that the invigilator asked her if she wanted to leave, she had to finish early and had to delay her return from Edinburgh at Christmas as she was too ill to pack and get to the airport.  She didn't get home until 23rd December.  However, amazingly, she told us yesterday she had passed.  Miracle.  She was so ill she could barely stand up for over a week. She bought herself a toy Porg from Star Wars The Last Jedi to celebrate.  She is a nerd.  The Old Bat was not impressed.

I was actually able to get a couple of hours painting done this morning; the most for months.  Now, of course, I am supposed to be concentrating on my Victrix Carthaginian war elephants but that would be far too focussed.  Given I was already painting two elephants I thought it was a good opportunity to paint one of my Copplestone ones for Darkest Africa too, so that is now base coated.  I have, at last, after two previous attempts, got the colour right on my Danish 1864 infantry;  a very, very dark gray which is almost, but not quite, black.  In the background you can see the horses for the Danish dragoons which I picked up in North Star's end of year sale.  I am struggling to find uniform details for them however. I also did a little bit on a pack of Perry Afghan tribesmen I picked up at Salute.  This lot will keep me going for months.

At the front right are five of the new Perry Miniatures plastic Zulus which came out this week.  I actually have 72 painted Zulus and a lot more under way (Wargames Factory, Warlord, Empress, Foundry) but these are anatomically, as you would expect, by far the best.  They are, however, a right fiddle to put together, as they have a lot of parts, as you can see on my post over at my Zulu blog.  The arm/shoulder joints will need some filling too but mould lines on them are almost invisible.  Now, how about some plastic Afghan tribesmen?

The elephants are moving along now and I only have to finish their eyes, varnish them and do the metal tusk caps.  Then it will be the dreaded Little Big Men transfers.  I am amused by these elephants as although they are, rightly, smaller than the equivalent bush elephants (Loxodonta africana), being the extinct North African Forest elephant (Loxodonta africana pharaoensis), they do remind me of the old Britains baby elephant (Loxodonta plastica).  

Inspired by Terence Wise's use of these for Carthaginian war elephants in An Introduction to Battle Gaming, when I was about ten I stole my sister's baby elephant and made it a cardboard (I had no access to plasticard as that would have necessitated a trip to Teddington Model Shop) howdah, to hold a couple of Airfix Red Indians for my Carthaginian army.  I asked my mother for a piece of ribbon but she looked horrified and said she didn't do needlework.  My mother did buy me for Christmas, at about this time, a metal 25mm Carthaginian elephant from Under Two Flags, a model soldier ship in St Christopher's Place in London.   She actually made a trip up to London specially. It was a Miniature Figurines one I think and I did paint it, although I have no idea where it ended up.  It is nice, 48 years later, to be working on another one.

Today's wallpaper is a rather languid rendition of Venus by French Painter Henri-Pierre Picou (1824-1895).  Picou came rather later to classical and mythological subjects, so this was probably painted in the 1870s or 1880s. He was a great friend of Jean-Léon Gérôme and, although largely forgotten today, he was probably the most fashionable French painter of the eighteen fifties and sixties.  This depiction of Venus in her shell is unusual compared with the more usual, Botticelli style, upright pose.  Painted from this angle it is much more redolent of the vulva, which it symbolised in ancient times (hence why Venus was born from one).  I don't like much seafood but I do enjoy a nice plump scallop, as did Picou, obviously.

Today's music is my most successful music purchase for some time.  My friend Angela introduced me to the Danish String Quartet and their two remarkable albums Wood Works and Last Leaf.  I don't usually like chamber music (I always think that it is more fun for musicians to play than for audiences to listen to) but this is so good I have played it 12 times since I bought it last week. It is modern but not atonal, folk song based without being 'folky' and is minimalist but tuneful.  It's also quite addictive and doesn't sound like any other music I have in my collection.

Paint Table Saturday: North West Frontier, Rolls-Royce cars, their famous mascot and some young ladies

Well, it always cheers me up when I finish a few figures, although it's nothing compared to Eric the Shed's complete French Chasseur brigade this week!  The six figures I finished yesterday completes the two 12 man units (plus the Sikhs which I have done already) of infantry I need for my initial The Men Who Would Be King force for the North-West Frontier; with just a mountain gun and crew to complete.  I have painted 82 figures this year. so far, which is my best total since 2014 and equals the amount of figures I did in the whole of 2013.  I hope I can keep the momentum up.

The question, now, is what do I do next?  I should really paint some more Confederate Infantry and I have some already started but as I only have the three Sikh gunners and the mountain gun to finish to complete the British force I am going to do them, I think.

 One of the Facebook groups I belong to is The Great British Hobbit League and looking at everyone else's Lord of the Rings figures is making we want to have a go at painting some more, if my eyes are up to it.  What I need to do is find some part painted figures to finish, which I know I must have somewhere (Men of Gondor?) but sitting behind my monitor for years are the trolls from the first Hobbit film.  One of these is well on the way so I may do something on that.  Talking to Guy today, I told him that they are releasing the Lord of the Rings Battle Companies rules in a book this year (they were only previously available on download).  Guy and I had a number of good games using these rules but I was amazed when he said that maybe we could have a game over the summer.  It would be fun to play some of these again! 

On the left the Director of Brooklands tries to recruit Charlotte into the team of volunteers at the museum while my mother in law and the Old Bat both know she is too lazy to get up in the morning

I've got a tricky work situation (don't worry I'm not going to go into tedious details) which means that I am waiting to do something but can't proceed until the client gets their contract signed.  So having expected to be working flat out this week I had rather more time than expected and could go with the family and the parents in law to the start of the Rolls-Royce Enthusiasts Club 60th anniversary tour of Britain, at Brooklands.  

My parents in law with Prince Michael of Kent 

My father in law has an old Bentley, of course, but is also a member of the RREC as he used to have a Rolls-Royce.  Anyway, he gave a speech to the members at their dinner this week, along with Prince Michael of Kent, who was there on Wednesday to send them all off to their first stop in Dorset.

The first Silver Ghost starts up the hill climb.  The lady in the passenger seat is frantically hand-pumping fuel to give the car the required boost.  They just made it!

Rather surprisingly, given some of these cars are more than a hundred years old and they are due to make a two week tour of Britain, they had a hill climb competition for the Silver Ghosts.  The Brooklands (it was the world's first purpose built motor racing circuit) test hill is very steep indeed but more than a dozen Silver Ghosts got up it.  

You're not going to make it!

The only failure was a lovely car driven by an American.  "Don't change gear on the hill", advised my father in law.  The American changed gear on the hill.  The car stopped,  He threw his wife out and tried to get going again. The car started to slide backwards.  They had to undertake a controlled backwards descent on the brakes (Silver Ghosts only have breaks on the rear wheels).  

Prince Michael of Kent drives R562 to Beaulieu

One of the Silver Ghosts, R562, had done the 2000 km Alpine Challenge back in 2013 (a hundred years after first completing it) which involved going over a host of Alpine passes including the dreaded Stelvio Pass (the second highest pass in the Alps, at 2757 metres) which the Giro d'Italia riders had struggled over a few weeks before.  Prince Michael of Kent drove it down to Beaulieu Motor Museum for lunch.

Eleanor Thornton with a tiny model of herself

It was the mistress of the second Baron Montagu of Beaulieu. Eleanor Thornton, of course, who was the model for the Spirit of Ecstasy radiator ornament.  Lord Montagu met Eleanor in 1902, when she was a secretary at the motoring magazine he edited.  

One of four bronzes made of  The Whisper by Sykes

In those days Rolls-Rovce cars didn't have an official radiator ornament so Lord Montagu commissioned his artist friend Charles Robinson Sykes to design one for his Silver Ghost in 1909.  Sykes used Eleanor as the model and produced a figure of her holding her finger to he lips.  It was dubbed 'The Whisper' in reference to their illicit affair. 

Sykes Bronze of the Spirit of Ecstasy

These ornaments were becoming more and more fashionable so in 1911 Rolls-Royce officially commissioned Sykes to produce an (optional at first) ornament for all their new cars.  Sykes again used Eleanor Thornton (in rather more clothed form) for the model and the Spirit of Ecstasy (originally called the Spirit of Speed) was born.

Charles Sykes drawing of Eleanor Thornton

Thornton didn't live to see herself becoming a global icon, sadly.  She was travelling with Lord Montagu on the P & O liner SS Persia, bound for India, in December 1915 when it became the first passenger ship to be torpedoed (by the German submarine U38) without warning during WW1. 

The ship sank off the coast of Crete in less than ten minutes and 343 of the 519 on board drowned.  Only fifteen women on board survived and Eleanor Thornton was not one of them, although Lord Montagu did survive (he had his own custom designed life jacket) and his son, born nine years later, founded the National Motor Museum at the family home of Beaulieu Abbey in Hampshire.

Today's music is an example of my collection of limited edition extended versions of some of my favourite soundtracks.  Last week I added the two disc version of James Horner's soundtrack for The Rocketeer (1991), one of my favourite pulp films (although Disney originally wanted to set it in the present day).  The Rocketeer is one of Horner's best soundtracks and the extended version includes his excellent pastiche of Korngold for the scene at the film studio. where villain Neville Sinclair (Timothy Dalton) performs on a set largely inspired by The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) (for which Korngold won the best soundtrack Oscar).

September Morn (1912)

Today's wallpaper distraction is from the same period as The Spirit of Ecstasy and is by French painter Paul Émile Chabas (1869-1937) who was born in Nantes and trained under William-Adolphe Bouguereau.  He first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1890 and was awarded a gold medal at the Exposition Universelle of 1900. Although he painted many portraits, he was best known for his pictures of women and girls bathing in lakes and pools.  Chabas took three years, working during the summers, to finish his most famous painting, September Morn.  The setting was Lake Annecy, in the mountains of Savoie and Chabas painted the background on location.  He finished the painting one morning in September 1912, hence the name. Who the model for the painting was has never been clear and several women claimed to be the subject.  In is possible the figure is actually based on two girls; one for the body and another for the head and it is likely that she was drawn in the studio not on location.

Chabas

The painting was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1912 where it won the Medaille d’Honneur, to critical acclaim. What happened next, however, was completely unprecedented and led to the picture playing a significant role in an early American censorship battle. In those days, popular paintings were often reproduced as prints. In March 1913 one of these reproductions of September Morn was being displayed in the window of Fred Jackson’s Art Store in Chicago.  A passing policeman saw it, decided it was obscene, and ordered Jackson to remove the picture from his window. This he did but soon put it back.  Spotting this, the police returned, bought a copy of the picture and presented it to the Mayor, Carter Harrison Jr.   Harrison was a reformer and in 1911 had established the Chicago Vice Commission.

Mayor Harrison and his wife in 1913 

Mayor Harrison agreed that the picture violated the municipal code, which banned the exhibit of “any lewd picture or other thing whatever of an immoral or scandalous nature.”  They prosecuted Jackson, much to the outrage of the local artistic community. Despite testimony from local worthies that the picture was immoral and shouldn’t be viewed by children under fourteen the jury, after only thirty minutes deliberation, unanimously acquitted Jackson who immediately presented each juror with a copy of the painting, which they all gratefully received. This decision led to numerous shops displaying the picture so that the city then had to specifically forbid the display of “nude pictures in any window, except at art or educational exhibitions.”  Needless to say this just increased interest in the painting. The city appealed but in May 1914 the First District Appelate Court ruled that the picture was not indecent, although they made cutting comments regarding its exploitation. Only two months after the initial Chicago controversy, in May 1913, a similar furore took place in New York. Tipped off, it is said, by a school teacher, Anthony Comstock, the head of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice entered the Braun & Co art dealers’ showroom where September Morn was on display in the window. He ordered the removal of the picture. James Kelly the salesman on duty, informed Comstock that the picture was “the famous September Morning”.  Kelly allegedly replied that “There’s too little morning and too much maid.”  Kelly’s boss then later ordered the picture back into the window where it remained for five days, whilst the gallery expected the return of Comstock any day. In the end Braun & Co took the picture down themselves as the crowds it was drawing were interfering with normal customers and they'd sold all their prints anyway. The manager of the gallery wrote an incensed letter to the New York Times and arguments raged about the picture all over America.  In December 1914 the students of a college in Ohio publicly burnt copies of the picture, along with other erotic literature and other questionable (by their standards) pictures.

Ann Pennington 

All of this just generated huge publicity for the picture. Millions of prints (some estimate as many as seven million) were sold and it was reproduced on postcards, bottle openers, cigar bands, umbrellas, watch fobs, chocolate boxes and many others. A song was written about it, there was an onstage recreation of it in the Ziegfield Follies (by the petite, 4’10”dancer Ann Pennington) and it was even the subject of a Broadway musical. It is also generally believed to have been the first nude picture on a calendar to go on sale.  Chabas himself never made any money from all these reproductions, although he did sell the original to a Russian collector, Leon Mantacheff, for the not inconsiderable sum of $10,000. It is now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York because the Philadelphia Museum of Art had turned the picture down because it had “no significance”.

Hugh Hefner prepares to test his 'It's all art' argument using the Playboy Playmate of the Month for January 1958 and September Morn

Twenty-one years after Chabas’ death, September Morn was set to be involved in another indecency trial, oddly, also with a Chicago connection.  Hugh Hefner had been publishing Playboy there for just over four years and the authorities had constantly tried to stop him. His Playmate of the Month for January 1958 gave them another chance to have a go at him. Rather naively, Playboy thought that because a mother gave permission for her daughter to pose and because she accompanied her to the photo session, no-one would care that college girl Elizabeth Ann Roberts was only 17 at the time (some even say 15 or 16 -it does look like her mother claimed she was 18).

Roberts.  Not very old at all, really

Her pictorial's title of "Schoolmate playmate" probably didn't help and a local newspaper wrote a column condemning Playboy for having someone so young appearing in the magazine.  As a result, both Playboy and Roberts' mother were charged with 'contributing to the delinquency of a minor'. Hefner planned to defend himself using the fact that the model for September Morn, which had been deemed not indecent in Chicago some forty years before, was also believed to have been a teenage girl (fifteen years old, Chabas once said, although his comments were not necessarily reliable). In the end ,Hefner didn't get the chance to rail against censorship in court, as the case was dropped for lack of evidence. Playboy had learned its lesson, however, and immediately insisted all its models had to be 18 years or over (at least when the magazine appeared on sale - several more seventeen year olds were photographed for the centrefold in ensuing years) from then on.