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.

Wargaming highlights of 2017

My first ACW unit

Usually I start these posts with the words "it is time for my wargames review of the year", except this year it is three months past the time for my wargames review of the year but that isn't going to stop me.  It was a poor year, in many ways, which started well then got bad and saw a late rallying right at the end (rather like Napoleon at the battle of Marengo, in fact).


Figures Painted

2016 had been a dismal year, with just 10 figures painted. 2017, however, got off to a much better start, prompted by Eric the Shed's planned anniversary Zulu War games.  As my meagre contribution I painted 32 Zulus in January to add to the 40 I had already done. I followed this up in February with 12 Perry plastic American Civil War cavalry.  March dropped to six North West Frontier British but I finished another 17 in April. In May I got another nine ACW figures, three NW Frontier British done and June saw six more NW frontier.  Then I painted nothing until November when I completed my Sikh mountain gun, which finished off my initial force for The Men Who Would Be Kings rules.  So 2017 saw a much better 78 figures completed and an unusual amount of focus with just three conflicts represented.

32 Zulu Wars
21 American Civil War
31 North West Frontier

So why the big fall off after June?  Quite simply my eyesight deteriorated so that I could no longer see properly to paint. In particular, my left eye deteriorated to the extent that I could no longer judge distance in close up work, so I could not aim the tip of my paintbrush.  I have been having laser eye surgery for some time but in November I started a four month treatment of very expensive injections into my retina and this has transformed my vision.  Then, for Christmas, my sister gave me an optivisor type thing and, having sneered at these for years, I suddenly could paint again.  I had actually reached the stage where I was about to call time on painting soldiers which would. for me, have been like giving up women or wine.  Something so incomprehensible as to make life utterly worthless.  It was so bad I was actually considering starting on model railways instead.  Best just to go to Switzerland and have an injection, I thought. Although, that said, I have spent a lot of time in Switzerland and I remember it being full of model railway shops so I would have probably abandoned the lethal injection idea and come back with a load of trains, track and little tiny naked people playing volleyball, instead.


Wargames played 

Isandlwana at the Shed (actually in Eric's kitchen, not the Shed)

A cracking start (actually I hate people who say 'a cracking start'- I am becoming offended by my own use of sixties style cliches) to the wargames year was provided by the peerless Eric the Shed and his epic all day Saturday anniversary Zulu Wars games; Isandlwana in the morning and Rorke's Drift in the afternoon, on the 22nd January, the anniversary of both battles.. After that, though, there was nothing.  I did not get down to the Shed again.   Partly this was caused by the fact that my eyesight problems have damaged my night vision and driving at night is now difficult. I hope to risk it when the evenings get a bit lighter.


Scenics

Unlike Eric the Shed, I am useless at scenic items and I made no further progress on the plastic ACW buildings I started last year.  I did build and start painting the Renedra mud brick house (a truly horrible model to put together which needed trowel fulls of plastic filler). Unfortunately, I have now forgotten which colour I started to use on it, so work came to an abrupt stop.  To build an Afghan/Egyptian/Sudanese village I also picked up a number of other ready made and kit models at various shows.  I have just ordered a couple of vacuform models of houses, too, which will take me back to my Bellona days in the seventies.

I bought the very last model of Grand Manner's fortified house, which I may deploy for some medieval Hundred Years War Lion Rampant games. It is really a Scottish or Borders fort but the conical turrets will make it look more French, as will the pale ochre paint I am planning to use.  The Old Bat called it my Polly Pocket castle and said it would look better pink.  The less said about pink walls from her the better, at present.  Grand Manner, my favourite resin scenery manufacturer, are only going to be selling painted models from now on, which is disappointing.  It will be interesting to see if this gamble pays off for them.  Higher margins but less sales?

Rocks under way

More successfully, I bought a number of aquarium type rocks and started to repaint them for Lost World or Savage Core Adventures.  With more on the way I hope to have enough soon for some attempt at a scenic board for pulp games.  Next I need to stick on some 'follidge', as the annoying Terrain Tutor calls it.

To do this I bravely invested in a hot glue gun and made exactly one piece of scenery by sticking an aquarium plant on a large washer.  I haven't touched it since, though.  The Terrain Tutor did have a good tip in suggesting coating plastic plants with Games Workshop wash which  removed the shiny plastic look very well.  I now have a huge plastic crate full of plastic follidge, which I aim to start working on now it is the spring, appropriately. probably while the Old Bat watches Gardeners' World; the TV programme I detest the most.  Get a proper hobby - not grow your own dump fill!


Shows

Salute!

I did attend Salute, as usual, which I didn't really enjoy for the first time, although I did enjoy the Wargames Bloggers Meet (above- I am on the far left - picture from Wargaming Girl's blog).  I've just got my ticket for this year, though!  Eric the Shed kindly gave me a lift to Colours, which I hadn't attended for a few years and I bought some scenics (the advantage of going by car not public transport).  I didn't attend the other of the three shows I usually do, Warfare in Reading, as I was on my way back from El Salvador


Lead pile and Kickstarters

Lead pile reduction didn't go so well this year and I bought over 150 figures but given I painted 78 figures the net increase could have been worse.  Some figure arrivals came through Kickstarters etc, such as the Peninsular Wars figures with the Forager rules, some more of Dark Fables Egyptian ladies and the early twentieth century Germans from Unfeasibly Miniatures.  I also got some Foundry and North Star Darkest Africa, Artizan and Perry Northwest Frontier, Perry ACW, Victrix EIR, Lucid Eye Savage Core, North Star Muskets and Tomahawks highlanders, Manufaktura slave girls and Crooked Dice female cultists, Biggest figure was Antediluvian's Retrosaurus which is also my favourite of 2017. Apart from the NW Frontier figures I didn't paint any of these because of my eye problems but hope to move some along this year.  I did sign up to the Drowned Earth Kickstater but cancelled it when I found out it really wasn't suitable for solo play.


Wargames Rules

As I said I might in my previous review, I did buy Chosen Men and The Pikeman's Lament.  Pikeman's Lament looks good (although I am still not entirely convinced about small bodies of pikemen in skirmishes) but Chosen Men was just terrible, as it couldn't work out whether it was a one to one game or not.  I sold it on, which is why it isn't in this picture.  As a result of stating my unhappiness with the latter, I was steered towards the Forager Kickstarter.  Death in the Dark Continent was a new glossier edition of some rules I had already played and, indeed, owned but I like to get rid of my old ring bound rules, as they look ugly on my bookshelves!  Battle Companies was also a glossy hardback of rules which first appeared in White Dwarf years ago.  The children and I had some great games using this in the past, so I was happy to get it all in one volume with added companies from The Hobbit.  I picked up the new supplement for Congo, even though I haven't played the rules yet but I enjoy Muskets and Tomahawks, which is by the same people.  The most interesting looking rules are Savage Core, which is very Lost Worldy and I have at least one solo scenario for.


Wargames Blogs and Facebook

My Punic Wars blog; the latest to get the widescreen treatment

I only posted 39 times on my main blog (this one) in 2017, which is the least since 2011.  Mainly, of course, because I wasn't painting very much.  I only posted on five of my other blogs too.  The number of visits is around the same as last year, averaging about 10,000 a month.  The most popular post, with 1082 views, was one of my paint table Saturday ones which also looked at the Spirit of Ecstasy sculpture, not coincidentally, I suspect.

I am still posting on Facebook, although not much about wargaming, admittedly, and now have 151 'friends', up from last year's 107.  I have only had to delete a few because of political content. Why do people assume that their politics is shared by everyone else and write as such? I have joined several more of the very useful Facebook groups; including the one for the interesting looking Rebels and Patriots rules.  I did see a post that seemed to indicate that more people were joining these than using blogs these days and certainly I now only tend to look at other people's blogs if they link to them from Facebook page.

Plans for the this year

I want to finish my Carthaginian war elephant crew and then, I think, concentrate on my Afghan Tribesmen so that I have both forces for the North West Frontier.  More ACW plastics, some Darkest Africa and maybe finish some units which are well on the way (like some of my Indian Mutiny troops).  Also Savage Core, both figures and scenery, will be a priority.

Musical Accompaniment

While writing this post I listened to the extended version of John Williams' The Lost World: Jurassic Park which has made me want to get my Retrosaurus on the go!

Paint Table Saturday: Here's a howdah do!

A bit more of an action shot for Paint Table Saturday, as I get on with my Victrix Carthaginian war elephants.  I hope to finish the howdah's this weekend and in fact the main structures are done and varnished so they just need to be stuck on the elephants and the spear quivers adding.  I have also made a start on the crew.  There was a TV programme about Hannibal taking his elephants over the Alps this week. It was one of those ones billed as presenting 'exciting new evidence' which, as usual, had nothing of the kind, other than they found a valley that was full of horse poo from about the right period of time.  No actual proof of elephants, however.  It looks like his elephants didn't have howdahs but that would be boring (someone makes an undressed one I think).

The view from my study this week

Nice bright weather helps, today, and it is much warmer in my study,  We didn't get much snow, living in civilised Surrey, as all the exhaust fumes from the 4x4s keep the temperature up, compared with the more primitive parts of the country.  It was quite cold, though.  One morning the temperature in my study was just five degrees before I got the heaters on (my radiator packed up years ago and there is just too much stuff in front of it for a plumber to get access).  The roads were all clear ,although I did have to postpone my visit to the Charles I art exhibition at the Royal Academy yesterday evening.  Good job I did, as Waterloo station shut at 8.00pm. 

Helen of Troy versus the Styracosaurus - just what the BBC series needs to liven it up

On Thursday I had spent twelve hours editing a document for my father in law on mobile magnetic resonance scanners (some of it was a bit beyond me, I admit) so yesterday we went to the garden centre .  Now I hate garden centres, except my wife knows this one has an excellent selection of dinosaur models so she knew that if I went I would end up paying for her oasis.  Anyway, I got a nice Styracosaurus.  It's a bit bigger than it should be but not by much.  When I have finished the elephant and crew I am going to start on my Antediluvian miniatures retrosaurus, as the painting technique will be similar to an elephant.

I also got some more jungle type follidge in little pots so have been pulling it out of the polystyrene to go in my giant follidge box.  Three little pots and one big one of what looks like giant ferns, which will be ideal for The Lost World.  I even started to entertain thoughts of making it into a giant tree fern by attaching it to  a trunk. but then I had a mug of Lifeboat tea and came to my senses.  That would be far too close to actual modelling.

I did pick up another aquarium type rock and this one is full of little caves so it will be ideal as the habitat for the Lucid Eye simians for Savage Core.  I need to remove the plants and paint it to match my other rocks though.  I also ordered some more smaller rocks this week so will paint it when they arrive.

What is the appeal of watching winter sports for the Legatus?

I haven't managed much painting over the last few weeks because of the Winter Olympics (good job by the Koreans) and poor light.  I did spend far too much time watching ladies in skintight lycra skiing, sliding and skating (I didn't bother to watch most of the men's events, so as to save time).  I have more time to catch up on my TV backlog, now, although new series of Nashville and Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.LD start this week.  I haven't seen the second episode of Troy: Fall of a City (I wonder what happens in the end?) yet and the third is on tonight.  Tonight, the Old Bat will want to watch The Voice so I might finish assembling the Carthaginian crew for the elephants.

The reading girl (1886), Roussel

Today's wallpaper demonstrates one of the easiest things to get a model to do, while she endures the tedious process of being captured on paper or canvas, which is to let her read a book. The fact that she is concentrating on a book also distances her from the viewer. There is no opportunity to engage the viewer directly, as her gaze is elsewhere. It adds a voyeuristic quality to the picture. This painting, by French born, but London based, artist Théodore Roussel, is a marvellous composition. Irish painter William Orpen called it the finest nude painting of the time, although its realism shocked many due to its lack of classical justification for the nudity.  The art critic of The Specator wrote:."Our imagination fails to conceive any adequate reason for a picture of this sort. It is realism of the worst kind, the artist’s eye seeing only the vulgar outside of his model, and reproducing that callously and brutally. No human being, we should imagine, could take any pleasure in such a picture as this; it is a degradation of Art."  It's actually a wonderful painting with Hetty's pale body glowing against the almost black background. Only the kimono (a reflection of Roussel's interest in Japanese art) gives any colour to the painting.  Roussel's friend Whistler called it "an extraordinary picture" ,

Hetty Pettigrew (1889) by Sambourne

The model in this painting is nineteen year old Hetty (also variously known as Bessie, Harriet or Nettie) Pettigrew (1867-1953) who. with her sisters Lily (b. 1870 and Rose (b. 1872), modelled for Whistler, Millais, Godward, Poynter. Leighton, Holman Hunt, Burne-Jones and others. Hetty was born in Portsmouth but the family were originally from the West Country. Millais said that the sisters were gypsies (although they themselves claimed aristocratic antecedents) and her sister Rose described Hetty as having a "cruel wit". They were generally considered, by those who painted them, as a bit of a handful. The  penniless Pettigrew sisters came to London in 1884 and their artist brother suggested they could make a living as models. He was right and they became the most sought after models in London, with painters offering them bribes to pose for them instead of other artists. The Pettigrew sisters commanded fees for modelling of no less than half a guinea a day, about twice what a housemaid would earn in a week.  Hetty became Roussel's mistress and bore him a child in 1900.  When Roussel's wife died in 1914, Hetty was shattered when Roussel married another woman and she never posed for him again.  Hetty was photographed, at the age of 23, by Punch illustrator and amateur photographer, Edward Linley Sambourne (1844-1910)  (Lord Snowdon's great-grandfather and furniture designer Viscount Linley's great-great-grandfather) and the photograph shows how well Roussel caught her features.

Today's music is another purchase this week and adds to my pulp playlist.  It is the soundtrack to The Phantom (1996) which I rather enjoyed but, like The Shadow (1994) and The Rocketeer (1991), it failed to kick start the pulp genre in Hollywood.  Composed by David Newman (son of Hollywood golden age composer Alfred Newman) it hits all the requisite adventure buttons and will become a pulp figure painting favourite, no doubt.

Non-wargaming highlights of 2017

Reconnecting with my old College friend K after 20 years was the best thing about 2017

Many of you (well, one or two) may have been thinking that you have escaped the dreaded Legatus reviews of the year, as it is now the end of February (although I started this post in January).  I have been working on a report for the government which has taken all of my time for months, even with five other people working on it too. It's still not quite done but it is on the way enough now that I can pause (and the light is too bad to paint, again) for a thrilling non-wargaming round-up..  My (rather sparse) wargaming highlights will follow later (probably about May).

Best Foreign Trip 

I had thought that I had got away with having no foreign trips this year but then two came up on successive weeks.  Firstly, I had to go back to Botswana for a long delayed follow up to my trip of 2016.  This may well engender more trips this year, as we attempt to help the future president sort some stuff out. They had ponced up the Avani Hotel in Gaborone which meant it had lost some of its faux colonial charm and there were no Miss Botswana contestants this time, although the restaurant waitresses were as lovely and efficient as ever.

Free wine in the Hotel Zaza

I got back from Botswana and just had time to run the washing machine before setting off for Houston on my way to El Salvador. This would have been a long journey, undertaken in one go, so I decided to stop off at the relentlessly trendy Hotel Zaza for a night, to recover my equilibrium.  I was joined by my particular friend Sophie which, as a result, made this my best trip of the year.  I hadn't seen her since 2013 and she seemed very pleased to see me, as was I her. The people at Hotel Zaza were so appalled by my travel schedule  that they kept supplying free glasses of wine.

Best UK Trip

This has to be the trip I made back to Oxford in June.  One of the many peculiarities about Oxford University (and a few others in Britain) is that every seven years after you start there you get invited back to a formal dinner called a Gaudy (from the 13th century song known as Gaudeamus Igitur - Let us rejoice, therefore), which your college pays for.  If you have ever watched Inspector Morse (where my college was known as Lonsdale College) or Lord Peter Wimsey you will know that these are usually occasions for much port-fuelled drunkenness, academic scandal, illicit affairs and murder. 

My first Gaudy in 1986.  Oh what cozy fun you could have in front of a college gas fire.  Health and Safety has now seen them all removed,  meaning you can' t cook your lady toast for breakfast the next morning, either.  Spoilsports!

Now I think I have attended every Gaudy except one and that was the one seven years ago (I was abroad, I think), so I haven't been back to one for fourteen years.  Invariably I go with my friend Bill who lives just three miles away and was best man at my wedding (twenty five years since the Day of Doom in July 2017).  Bill doesn't have much to do with College (as you always call it and with a capital 'C') as he is a Champagne socialist (the worst kind) who sort of feels guilty for attending Oxford.  Also attending the first three were my ex-girlfriends J and V.  Like all of us, they were very fond of port and the abiding memory of previous gaudies was waking up the next day with splitting headaches and trudging to Brown's to fill up on the most absorbent food possible.  Oddly, I never went to Brown's when I was at College (the one in Oxford was the first one, I think) despite the alluring prospect of waitresses in short skirts (no other women wore short skirts in 1979) and fishnet tights.   This was because there was always a queue and then, as now, the Legatus does not queue for restaurants or pretty much anywhere else unless he is going through security.  This is why I always arrive at Salute an hour after the doors open!  One of my girlfriends at St Hugh's did dress up in a black miniskirt and fishnet tights (this was when I learned that to make fishnet tights look good you have to wear them over a pair of normal tights) when she cooked me spaghetti Bolognese (their signature dish at the time) once, to provide an alternate Brown's experience.

However, my friend Bill was due to start a ludicrous bike ride from Caen to Cannes (via Mont Ventoux!) on the Saturday morning so couldn't attend.  This was very disappointing, as a gaudy is definitely something which is easier to attend if you go with someone.  My ex-girlfriend J hadn't attended since 1993.  I would just have to go on my own.  As a sort of training I attended the College summer party in London  but not a single person from my year attended.  There were some people from the two years above but I never got to know them, really.  In my first year I was in a very intense relationship with one of my fellow lawyers (the one who liked Scotch Woodcock) and when we weren't in the law library we were...doing other things.  In the second year my attention was focussed on the Oxford Union (my son has been on the committee since October, which is something of an honour) and so I never really got to know that many people in my College very well.  As my friend pointed out once, apart from three men the only other people in College I kept in touch with were ex-girlfriends.  This can, of course, be the source of some delicacy (or even a little excitement in a couple of cases) when meeting again years later.

Then, some weeks later, I was contacted out of the blue by another old College girlfriend K, who was the best friend of my first red-headed girlfriend, C, (maybe I need a diagram for all this).  C always thought I was having an affair with K (which I wasn't - well not at the time) and, indeed the Old Bat didn't like me going to see K for dinner when we lived in Chelsea and K lived in Battersea.  K and I never did have a fling (well, not really - maybe a flinglet.  Or three.) but although she was one of my very best friends, I hadn't seen her for twenty years.  Now the mother of three strapping boys she said she was not going to the gaudy as she was a small, grey, middle aged Jewish housewife and everyone else would be very grand.  However, we met up in London shortly afterwards and it was like there had been no intervening twenty years at all. She didn't seem to have changed appreciably in the interim and was very fit looking indeed.  Anyway, almost immediately after we met up, K said that she had changed her mind ad had applied to go to the gaudy after all.  She couldn't get a room in College so would be staying in a bed and breakfast miles out in Cowley. 

Having had a horrible drive via the M25 which took two and a half hours instead of an hour and fifteen minutes I turned up and picked up my room key.  They try and put you in your old room, if they can and this happened to me once but it is quite spooky and that room from my first year had some bad memories of C and our Hindenburg like disintegrating relationship (like when she poured a kettle of boiling water on my leg during an argument, leaving a scar that I would have for twenty years).  They did, however, put me in the same staircase, in the converted eighteenth century houses at the unfashionable end of College known as the Arab Quarter, for its dark, arched access and generally seedy atmosphere.   I went up to look at the door to my old room on the top floor and was appalled by the presence of carpet instead of red lino on the floors.  The old wooden stairs were still there though, which we used to jump down three at a time to the annoyance of the other inhabitants of the staircase. 

In my day, the bathrooms of my male only staircase were in the unheated basement and my room was on the top floor necessitating long, tedious descents to the freezing facilities but I saw, as I approached my guest room for the night, that there was a modern  bathroom.   There was no bath of course, the lovely one on Heberden staircase, which C and I would inhabit in candle lit luxury during the evenings after a tutorial, having been replaced by a utilitarian shower, sadly.  The real shock was the rather lovely room I had been assigned.  It had a huge double bed and a sofa and a strange keyboard thing.  I've stayed in much worse hotel rooms (especially in the Baltic States and Poland).

"This is lovely!" said K, bouncing on the bed like her eighteen year old previous self, rather than her fifty-six year old present one.  She immediately cancelled her bed and breakfast and decided to bunk in with me; thus solving the worrying problem of how she was going to negotiate the cobbles in Radcliffe Square in her high heels.  Good job my friend Bill was preparing to cycle across France as he would have been appalled by such disreputable behaviour; he is a very moral person and and I am...less so.  We got changed together and K immediately proved her worth as she could still tie a bow tie; something that always stressed me out and used to take me endless attempts.  She always tied my bow tie for College events and exams in the past. I struggle with shoelaces and never undo mine but jam my feet into already tied shoes with a shoehorn so I don't have to retie them.  It often takes me four or five attempts to deal with my normal tie, too.  I am not good at hand to eye co-ordination, hence my inability to make wargames scenery, play ball games or do DIY.  K managed my bow tie  in about eight seconds despite me doing my best to distract her as she stood there in her stockings (the fact that she still wears these being another nice nostalgic moment).  

We went to chapel before the pre-dinner reception, which is something I never did when I was there (except at Christmas) but K was in the choir.  We sat there and tried to identify the people sitting opposite.  'He hasn't changed.' 'He has really aged'.  'Who is she?' etc.  People on either side helpfully identified those we didn't know.  It was a hot day and warm in the chapel and half way through K kicked off her high heels, took her stockings off, rolled them up into a ball and gave them to me to put in my pocket, somewhat to the surprise of the lady sitting next to her (a chemist, I think).  The drinks reception took place in the small quad known as the deer park; an ironic reference to Magdalen College which has a real deer park.  The small patch of grass there used to be inhabited by the college tortoise but I have no idea what happened to him.  Eight out of twelve lawyers from my year attended, surprisingly, and it was nice to see my old friend A who now lives in Hong Kong.  Fortunately and not surprisingly, my ex girlfriend C was not there, as ever, as that would have been really difficult. Neither were my other four ex-girlfriends from College, fortunately.  K would have soon seen them off anyway. 

The old benches had given way to chairs in Hall and none of those sitting against the wall risked the old technique of climbing over the table to get to their seats. The food was very good although the red wine with dinner was not really up to College standards, I have to say.  It did get hotter and hotter inside and was the usual torture for the men while many of the women got away with floaty dresses and remained cool.  Fortunately we all escaped into the quad while they re-laid the table for dessert.

I think it says something about modern times that a (much, much better) red wine was also offered with dessert and the Port was hardly touched.  In fact it didn't even circulate as far as me as two women sitting further down the table didn't pass it on.  They would have been sconced (made to drink a quart of beer in one go while standing on the table and apologising in Latin) in my time.  I suspect not so many people drink port these days. 

Eventually getting to bed much earlier than in previous gaudies, K asked me when the last time was we had shared a bed. The Principe di Savoia hotel in Milan in 1988, I replied.  Before I met the Old Bat of course.  I think, anyway.  Maybe not. At least we woke up the next day without port induced headaches and could have a nice walk in the Botanical Gardens again. The next gaudy isn't until 2024 (a science fiction sounding date) by which time I will be dead. 


Best encounter with very large piece of military hardware.

Sailing around the USS George W Bush in the Solent.  Many years ago we sailed around the USS Dwight D Eisenhower, anchored in the same spot.  With the 'Ike' my father in law sailed behind it and dipped his white ensign, which means that technically any naval ship has to respond.  We were all amazed and impressed by the fact that the US Navy crew dipped their ensign (which was bigger than our yacht) in reply.  

Best Book (non-military)

I bought a lot of books in the second half of 2017 and I got quite a lot from the Folio Society, including their splendid Ian Fleming James Bond edition (four published so far).  Mostly I got art books, though, including ones on Boucher, Renoir, Klimt and one of my favourites, Anders Zorn.  Although I sorted out my large art books I have now run out of space for them, hence my current wargames magazines cull. 

In addition, I bought the remaining three books I was missing from the Don Lawrence Trigan Empire edition.  The only comic strip I ever read, from Look & Learn magazine, a Dutch publisher put this luxurious and limited (500 copies) edition together ten years ago but at about £70 for each of the 12 volumes it has taken me some time to collect them all.  If I had lots of money and didn't have to pay £17,000 a year for my children's university accommodation (grrr!) I would commission a series of figures based on the illustrations for The Trigan Empire.

I have not done so well on reading books with just words, except Victorian erotica, which my friend Angela keeps recommending to me (she is an erotic sort of woman).  I read The Lost World again, which is one of the few books I can read over and over.  I started it again when I took delivery of my Antediluvian Allosaurus.

My favourite book which I bought in 2017, though, has to be The Libertine, which is 500 pages of eighteenth century illustrations coupled with racy literature from the time. It won an award as best hard backed trade book at the New York Book Show and is one of the most beautiful books I own.  You could stick four legs on it and call it a coffee table, though.  I still haven't quite worked out where to put it, however.

Best Film

I went to see two films at the cinema this year: Star Wars: Rogue One and Blade Runner 2.  I didn't enjoy either very much and wouldn't watch them again on DVD.  The world is depressing enough at present without watching more depressing stuff.  I did buy quite a few films on DVD but haven't watched any of them yet.  I did start to watch The Lost City of Z (I bought the book some years ago in Borders in Washington DC), for some South American Lost World inspiration but Brad Pitt was hopelessly miscast and could never act anyway.  He seemed to be putting all of his effort into maintaining his English accent and sleepwalking through the rest. I gave up half way through,as it was so widescreen and was filmed in such a way that all the action seemed to be taking place in a tiny area in the centre of the screen. I couldn't see what was going on, basically.  I need a bigger TV!  I nearly bought one on Black Friday in John Lewis in Edinburgh but the Old Bat is very anti.  We need a new cooker basically, first, she maintains (Charlotte dropped a very heavy saucepan on the ceramic top).  The Old Bat is a depressingly practical person.

Best TV Show 

I very much enjoyed the second series of Versailles, which was better than the first and actually contained a battle scene in one episode (I still haven't found my 1672 figures, though) as well as a rather splendid naked pregnant lady, which you don't get on TV that often (not even on the horrifically fascinating Naked Attraction).    Having discovered that I had Eurosport, I watched the live coverage of the three big cycling tours, which took nine weeks of evening viewing, so there wasn't a lot of time for the many boxed sets (not box sets! Grrr!) I bought.  The Old Bat and I both enjoyed the soapy The Halcyon, set in a big London hotel at the beginning of World War 2 but ITV cancelled it.  I quite enjoyed the production design of Genius, about Einstein, the second season of The Last Kingdom but wasn't so convinced by Jamestown. I did enjoy the second series of bodice ripping Forty Five rebellion DVD boxed set Outlander. 

A deliciously young and fresh Polly Walker in Poirot

My biggest discovery was in buying the complete set of Poirot at Sainsbury's.  I was aware of it, of course and had even watched the Death on the Nile feature length episode but I hadn't seen any of the others.  What a revelation!  It must have cost a fortune.  Fantastic interiors, wonderful cars, motor yachts, foreign locations, car racing at Brooklands (just up the road from here) lovely actresses in thirties clothes, vintage planes (even a seaplane in one episode and a Dragon Rapide), liners (filmed on board the Queen Mary)  and the best TV series title sequence ever made!.  

Best Music

Actual CDs!

Film and TV music

Lots of iTunes purchases this year and even a few actual CDs.  Soundtracks included: Star Wars: The Last Jedi,  Star Wars: Rogue One  (which was really quite a good pastiche of the John Williams style by Michael Giacchino (a last minute replacement for the otherwise engaged and overrated Alexandre Desplat)), Harry Potter: the Prisoner of Azkaban, The Mummy (the Tom Cruise one), The Mummy: The Tomb of the Dragon Emperor,  the extended version of Starship Troopers, The Right Stuff, the extended version of The Rocketeer, Jurassic Park 1, 2 and 3 extended versions and Alexander.  Classic scores included Max Steiner's The Adventures of Don Juan and The Charge of the Light Brigade, Salome, the extended version of The Wind and the Lion (even though I haven't see the film) and the The Man who Would be King (which I still haven't seen either),.TV music included Agent Carter, Inspector Morse and Tutankhamun

Jazz

Big band music from Ted Heath and Ivy Benson, a disc of German dance band music from the 192os an Edith Piaf compilation, several albums by Canadian singer Sophie Milman and Turn up the Quiet by Diana Krall

Pop and Folk

Mike Oldfield's rather disappointing Return to Ommadawn, Vittrad from Swedish folk band Garmana, Two Steps from Hell's Unleashed, Rick Wakeman's Piano Portraits and Seven Wonders of the World, some Steeleye Span, Sky 4, Illumination by The Medieaval Baebes, Wilde Roses by two of the Baebes, and Encore! by Barachois (a French Canadian folk group I saw live in Prince Edward Island once).

World Music

A couple of albums (do they still call them albums) from oud player Simon Shaheen and Qantara. and several more albums of belly dancing music,

Classical

Lots of opera this year. Wagner's The Flying Dutchman, Tristan und Isolde, The Valkyrie and Siegfried , Rameau's Hippolyte Et Aricie and Les Indes Galantes. Also Minkus' Don Quixote, Richard Strauss' Don Quixote and Sinfonia Domestica, Mozart The Symphonies, Stravinsky chamber suites, Forkladd Gud by Larsson, Neilsen's 4th Symphony, some Brahm's, D'Indy's Symphony on a French Mountain Song and quite a lot of piano and organ music by various composers, including a great suite of music from Star Wars played on the organ, which wins the prize of the most played of my 2017 acquisitions..  More contemporary stuff included Australian saxophonist Amy Dickson's Philip Glass CD, John Adams Harmonielehre, Elizabeth Hainen's, Home solo works for harp and Claire Jones' latest harp disc.

 Best Artistic Discovery

Reclining nude on day bed (1900)

I have discovered lots of minor orientalist painters this year as well as many new painters active in the first part of the twentieth century.  Of these,  I really liked Giovanni Boldini (1842-1931), who was known as 'the master of swish' for the active way he used paint to produce sensuous pictures of women.

Best Exhibition

I went to a number of excellent exhibitions this year with my various 'art mistresses'.  The Lord Leighton one was superb, bringing together nearly all the the paintings depicted in a famous photograph of his studio, taken the week after his death, back to his studio for the first time since.  I also enjoyed the Modigliani exhibition which had around twenty of the thirty or so nudes for which he is most famous in the same room.  Overall, though. it had to be the Alma-Tadema exhibition (also held at Leighton House) which was the biggest exhibition of his work for a hundred years and included many of my favourites as well as an excellent film show on how his paintings have influenced the depiction of the ancient world in the cinema,.

 Best meal 

This was, perhaps surprisingly, at the Monarch restaurant in the Hotel Zaza in Houston, despite severe jet lag. When asking for steak in the US you usually have to accept some overcooked lump with the same consistency as a hockey puck.  I like my steak so blue that is is still moving about.  In a restaurant in Las Vegas once I actually had to sign a disclaimer to the effect that if I was ill afterwards I couldn't sue them.  The chef at the Monarch, however, pulled off the best fillet steak I have ever had in the Americas.  It was meltingly soft, red in the middle but still hot (the real trick with blue meat). It being Texas it was also huge too.  Lovely garlic mash and Madeira and mushroom sauce as well Delicious crab cake to start too!

Best wine 

I don't drink a lot of white wine these days, as my doctors (a lovely new Iraqi doctor at the medical practice this year) don't like it but, because of a stage of the Giro d'Italia, I tried Peccorino for the first time and it was particularly nice.

Best Beer

I have had to cut down on beer too but enjoyed the York Brewery triple pack my sister bought me back from a weekend in York.

Best Breakfast

I haven't had any really outstanding breakfasts this year. but the most unexpectedly good one was in the Plaza Premium Lounge at Terminal 2, waiting for my flight to Houston.  The curse of most restaurant breakfasts in the UK are poor quality catering sausages but the ones in the breakfast buffet in the lounge were outstanding.


Best new cheese

I got some of the Isle of Wight Cheese Company's imaginatively named Isle of Wight soft in Comes.  It  is like a a cross between Brie and Camembert except it has the advantage of not putting my money into the French economy. Very nice with cornichons. Alright, for these you have to buy French, I admit.


Best new food discovery

When I was out in El Salvador someone told me that there was somewhere in London that sold spreadable chorizo.  What genius, I thought.  It is like topless swimsuits or magnums of claret.  It turns out it hails from Majorca and is not exactly cheap but for a World Health Organisation taunting snack is perfect.

Most unexpected postal delivery

A big box of stuff from the New York Bakery Company (actually based in Rotherham) when I mentioned on their Facebook page that I couldn't find their wholemeal bagels (due to 'production difficulties').  Bagels, a mug, a pen and Tesco vouchers.  Top customer service, chaps!

Most unexpectedly complicated thing

Having, for the first time, to work out how to operate a lock on the Thames to enable my father in law to get his river launch into the boatyard for winter storage.  My father in law, who was ninety last week, is a very clever man and depressingly able with his hands,  He was a heart surgeon and was number two on Britain's first heart transplant.  He is also an engineer who built a portable kidney machine and restores cars and boats.  He finds my inability to do practical things quite baffling. It took me twenty minutes to work out how to operate the lock, despite the presence of (not very clear, I thought) instructions on the machines.

Second most unexpectedly complicated thing and best improvement to my study

My desk chair had broken earlier in the year which meant that I could only sit in it by leaning forward awkwardly, which meant the blood to my feet got cut off.  Eventually, I went to John Lewis for a new one, where the nice lady said that the chair came in four parts and was easy to assemble.  What a lie!  It took me well over an hour but has transformed my sitting (and therefore blogging and painting) experience!

The even less anticipated wargames review next!