John Barry 1933-2011

I don't usually post about non-military subjects on this blog, as I have others for that, but just have to note the passing of John Barry who provided the soundtrack to some significant parts of my life. 

I am listening to The Beyondness of Things at present which my particular friend S bought for me when we both visited Vancouver in the summer of 1999.  We were in a suite at the end of the Pan Pacific hotel in Vancouver overlooking the harbour.  It was sunset and she had a CD ghetto blaster in order to preview some music for the conference she was organising.  We looked out of the curved windows over the "sails" of the convention centre, sipping Martinis, which we had ordered at enormous expense on room service, and this glorious music floated out the speakers as the sun went down... She said there and then that she was going to live there, with that view which she now does so, thank goodness, I always have an excuse to go back, drink Martinis and listen to John Barry as we contemplate the sparkling lights (and strange piles of sulphur) across the water from her (very) fancy apartment.

My Martini glass is chilling in the deep freeze as is my Lithuanian Vodka and Bombay Sapphire.

The next one, Mr Prendergast, is for you...

Re-painting, plastics, Sibelius and the Thirty Years War.

The sun is actually out this morning and so I got a bit more done on the Naval brigade

My posts are starting to be, rather depressingly, only monthly.  Partly this is because the figures I have painted come from periods that have their own blog.  Never mind, as I am actually painting regularly again. So, anyway, here is this month's ramble.

Amazingly, I have managed to stick to one project for a month without getting distracted!  So far I have painted over 30 figures for my Darkest Africa Zambezi campaign, which is based on the Gary Chalk article in Wargames Illustrated last April.  Because there are so many different troop types to paint I should be able to keep my attention on this for some time, I hope.  More on my Darkest Africa blog.

The best thing about this project is that the units are often very small. For example, after I finish the Naval Brigade the next unit ready to go are the Sikhs and their unit is only six figures. I had a few Sikh NCOs from the Darkest Africa NCO pack but needed to get one more pack of six from Foundry, so took advantage of their 20% discount over Christmas to get them and a few more DA figures I needed.  Interestingly, and this has happened before, when they arrived they were the old eight figure packs not the six figure ones that have been up on the website for years.  This obviously shows that these are not exactly best sellers if they still have stocks of the old packs.  I also picked up a big job lot of Darkest Africa on eBay which had some porters, as I found that one of my porters has mysteriously gone missing.  They've never left the house except for my first game at Guildford Wargames club (which must be at least five years ago) and I have checked everywhere else they might conceivably be.  I'll have to ask Mike Lewis if he ended up with his Belgians!

Sarah looking dinky as usual

I have had a whole series of evening events to go to over the last week which has taken up any painting time in the evening.  Last night I had a reception at the law firm where Giles Allison works.  It was so boring I nearly called him up!  I did go to the more entertaining leaving party of a former colleague last week, which would have been great (especially as the lovely Sarah was there) except it was Friday night in one of those City wine bars which was so noisy you had to shout to be heard.  I must be getting old because I do not think this sort of environment is fun any more (despite the presence of some very attractive girls).  Part of the problem is that I just can't hear very well when there are lots of people in a room these days.  Added to which there was the inevitable pounding music (not very far) in the background.  Why do they have music so loud that people have to shout?

Sony TPS-L2, my first Walkman

Over thirty years ago, my Uncle Wally, who was a very senior executive at Ford and a friend of Akio Morita, founder of Sony, presented me with one of the first Walkmans (Walkmen?).  Since then, and a whole string of Walkmen and now iPods, my hearing has taken such a bashing that I wander around the trendy places of the world like a zombie whose only vocubulary is "What?", "Eh?" and "Sorry?.  Tragic, really.  Still.  Mustn't grumble.

The notoriously grumpy Sibelius caught off guard in 1939

Speaking of music I have just read a biography of Sibelius, my very favourite composer.  Why I like such stark music I do not know (perhaps it's something to do with my part Nordic DNA) but he has very much the biggest classical composer section on my iPod.  One thing I did know about Sibelius before I read this book was that he was a compulsive reviser of his compositions.  They would be performed and then years later he would go back and fiddle around with them a little.  Or so I thought.  One thing I learned from the book was that there had been a recording of the original versions of my two favourite Sibelius pieces, the 5th Symphony and the tone poem, En Saga.  I downloaded this from Amazon (cheaper than iTunes as usual) and listened to them yesterday.  Having done so I realised that he didn't just fiddle around with them he chopped them up and re-ordered them completely.  The original version of both pieces contains most of the constituent pieces of both works but what now seems like, in the revised works, a coherent progression of ideas is not there at all.  The 5th Symphony, in its original form stops and starts with none of that characterstic Sibelian evolution.  It's a mess, frankly and I realise that the real genius of the composer was to take his original building blocks and reassemble them to make a much more coherent whole; something akin to clever film editing.  It just shows, as Sibelius himself admitted, that these works don't just spring fully formed from the mind of the composer but, even if the inspiration is there, still need a lot of work.

And what has all this to do with painting model soldiers?  Well, the question of revisiting old work is very much on my mind on this Darkest Africa project.  The Foundry DA figures were the very first 28mm metal figures I bought and painted and, frankly, I wasn't very good at painting in those days (ten years ago).  When I look at them now they are a bit, well, blotchy. I later discovered that I needed glasses for reading and as soon as I got these the faults in the figures were all to apparent.  I wear 1.5 x magnification for working on the computer and reading in bad light (I don't need them most of the time) and use 3 x magnification reading glasses from Boots for painting.  I looked at one of those optivisor things but found that the glasses were just as good and you didn't end up looking like a character from Blade Runner.  So now I will be repainting quite a few of my DA figures to sharpen them up.  I first did this a few years ago and was pleased with the result.

Foundry Darkest Africa Princess.  Painted 1999, revised 2007

Also, at this time, I had not discovered static grass so just painted the bases green and bunged a bit of sand on them. Some people turn their bases (especially the element basing people) into little works of art but, on the whole I can't be bothered, unless it is a character figure.

Khurusan Cuirassiers

Now, I am notorious for starting new periods but am making some effort to get rid of figures I am never going to paint. However, I still have this hankering to start a Thirty Years War army.  This is patently ridiculous as I still have hundreds of ECW figures I haven't painted but I was thinking about it again when I saw a new range of 15mm figures from Khurusan appear on TMP.  I don't like 15mm figures but these looked good and, given the size of many of the battles of the Thirty Years War 15mm would be a sensible way to go.  it's a new range, though, so you never know whether it will get completed (still waiting for those Swedish Cavalry from Musketeer!).

A small part of the model Swedish Thirty Years War Army in the museum in Stockholm

At the very least it would give me a good excuse to go back to Sweden and stay with my particular friend A, who has a lovely apartment in the centre of the old town in Stockholm.  I could then visit the Swedish Army Museum again which has quite a few Thirty Years War Exhibits, as you'd expect.  Most impressive is a model of a Swedish Army from the Thirty Years War made with what looked like 20mm figures.  It was about twenty feet across.

Other than the 15mm figures, however, I have also been very tempted by the Warlord Games Thirty Years War boxes; which are their ECW figures with some extra metal bits.  I really like their ECW range but they are too small to be compatible with my Renegade and Bicorne figures.  Now I know that the clothes of the Thirty Years War and the ECW were different and for historical accuracy I should go for The Assault Group's range.  I bought a few of these but Nick Collier, the sculptor of Renegade's figures as well, has gone for much smaller figures but with big heads.  The Warlord figures are much more anatomically correct.  I  actually had a box in my hands at Warfare last November but put them back.  I think that one of the issues is that I have never painted more than one or two figures from any of the boxes of plastic figures I have bought over the last few years. I don't think its their plasticness per se, as I have happily painted dozens of GW Lord of the Rings figures, but the fact that you just end up with an overwhelming number of figures in one go.  Given that I paint six figures in a good week a box with 47 figures in it engenders a feeling of utter helplessness.  Even so...

Finnish Thirty Years War Hakkapeliitta

One interesting snippet from the Sibelius biography I read is that one of my favourite Sibelius pieces, the central movement, Scena, from Scenes Historiques No 1, actually depicts the activities of Finnish Troops in the Thirty Years War.  Originally a four movement piece written for a Finnish Press Pension Fund benefit concert in 1899, the fourth movement, Finland Awakes, became so popular that it developed a life of its own as Finlandia, Sibelius' most famous composition.  Scena has one of the most rousing climaxes of any Sibelius composition and is appropriately martial.

Finally, talking about plastics I have been following, with increasing disbelief, the utter nonsense (much of it slanderous and much of it racist) being talked about Wargames Factory on TMP.  Its always sad when a company with good ideas runs into trouble and it seems the issues that they have had with their suppliers are very much akin to what Airfix suffered when its French suppliers were unable to deliver a few years ago, which ultimately led to them going bust.  For my part, I just ordered a few packs of their Zulus off eBay, just in case.  Plastics really do have a role in building mass armies like this which is why I am sure that I will get over my aversion to painting boxes of plastics when the Perry Miniatures plastic Mahdists come out.

Year End and plans for 2011

I did manage to get a bit of painting done over Christmas and finished these 26 Foundry Darkest Africa British Askaris (for more about them see my Darkest Africa blog). This sort of makes up for the fact that 2010 was my least productive year since records began, with only 148 figures completed compared with 212 last year.  29 of these were Darkest Africa figures of one type or another and if you add on the 25 Zulu Wars and 14 Sudan figures I completed it was very much an African themed year.  Other than these, Lord of the Rings, Carthaginians and Wars of the Roses were the only other periods where I got into double figures.

Looking back to my plans for 2010 I did predict my main efforts would be for the Zulu War, Sudan War, Darkest Africa (although I didn't get any Masai done), Punic War and Lord of the Rings. The real period I failed to progress was WW1  but Keith at the club is keen to do some WW1 games this year so that may encourage me a bit. 

Looking forward it will be more of the same but I would add that I would like to get more Indian Mutiny figures done.  I have a unit of 20 well on the way so if I lose my current enthusiasm for Darkest Africa I will do some of those (and some Normans) as a change.

This years travel starts up again in a couple of weeks time with a visit to Turkey.  I will try to restrict my travel a bit more this year.

Now I have to take down Christmas as my wife and children tend to go a bit mad on the Christmas tree front.  It usually takes about eight hours to dismantle!

Some catching up...

Who needs turkey?

Well, I am back from my final trip of the year and I didn't get eaten by a lion, catch malaria, pick up a tummy bug or get carjacked.  More on my trip on my Darkest Africa blog here.  It's not been too bad on the travelling front this year; only nine countries (USA, Colombia, Mexico, Canada, UAE, Switzerland, Lithuania, Zambia and Turkey for the record) but next year may be worse again.

I actually got some figures finished this month!

 

Unfortunately, having been away for nearly two weeks (including last weekend down at my friend's house in Bath) my wife now has an appallingly long list of jobs for me to do so if I so much as pick up a paintbrush I get shouted at by the evil old harridan.  I am managing to sneak in some painting when she is out of the house but that isn't giving me much time.  I am trying to finish off some part finished figures at present but the trouble is I keep preparing more!  I have now finished my batch of Zulu War British and am very tempted to fast track some more which I started some time ago.  I will try to be good, however, and move on to another small group which are well on the way instead.  Which group, is a the crucial question!

It was good to get down to Aquae Sulis again.  My friends are great cooks (they import all their fruit and vegetables direct from Italy by courier!) and have a wonderful, real cellar.  We had some nice Dom Ruinart 1996 Rose, some good claret (Gruard Larose), a fine Barolo and bottles and bottles of other stuff fom the cellar (I think the four of us drank eight bottles with dinner on Saturday!).  One blast from the past was Coteaux du Tricastin which used to be a favourite from Sainsbury's years ago.  I used to drink it with a former girlfriend V in the early eighties.  It was a very nostalgic bottle, especially as my hostess in Bath (she later married one of my best friends) was my girlfriend  immediately before V.  All very complicated.  Not the wine; that was as rustic as ever!

One disappointment is that Bonapartes, the model soldier shop, which was literally a hundred feet from their house, has closed.  It sold mostly 54mm and up figures but they also had a very good second hand military books section and I usually managed to pick up something there.  It has moved to Westbury and can be found here.  Somewhere I have got a 90mm Roman legionary I bought there a few years ago but I never get around to starting it as I always feel I should be painting 28mm figures.

From this...

...to this.

Also, the very large Games Workshop in Bath (the biggest I have ever been other than HQ in Nottingham) has now been replaced by a normal sized shop.  This is a shame as they often had things in there that the smaller shops didn't.  I resisted the urge to buy something on the basis that I have hundreds of GW figures to paint.  When I got back I started to assemble some more Rohan riders which I aim to paint at the same time as my new plastic Normans as they will share a lot of colours.  Something for Christmas time I think. I also finished off an Orc tracker which had been sitting on my desk for far too long.  No idea where the other two from the pack are, though!  Talking of Normans I finished another metal Crusader figure this week as well so at least there is some progress on the painting front.

On the plane to Zambia (a ten and a half hour flight) I started the third Clive Cussler novel about detective Isaac Bell.  Clive Cussler is one of my guilty pleasures and I can still re-read his early novels: especially Raise the Titanic, Deep Six, Vixen 03 and, probably my favourite, Night Probe.  After this his novels seemed to deteriorate and become more hackneyed, formulaic, stodgy and just juvenile (there were even the odd raunchy sex scenes in the early books but now they seem to be aimed at 12 year olds).  Part of the problem was that he seemed to be writing with one eye on a film option so they became full of completely unbelievable, Roger Moore-period James Bond-type action sequences.  Adaption of his books has not been a happy affair and I can't think that anyone else would bother now.  Like many successful US authors he has now become a franchise churning out multiple volumes in different series "with" other authors.  The quality of these depends, of course, on the actual author.  His colloborator on the Isaac Bell books, Justin Scott, writes at a level or so above some of the other writers attached to his series and they are now very much the most enjoyable of his current output.  I think the interesting period they are set in (early twentieth century pre-Great War) helps and the novel I read on the plane, The Spy, features the pre-war dreadnought race. 

I am still reading multiple books and started the the first Garry Douglas Killworth book about the Crimean War, The Devil's Own, (which I bought on ebay as they are out of print) on the flight back.  It really is Sharpe in the Crimea and I whilst I found it a bit stodgy at first it is now rattling along nicely. 

I also finished some Darkest Africa British, which I started years ago, inspired by a recent Wargames Illustrated article by Gary Chalk.  I also have a batch of British askaris, which I might now fast track, to go with these.

This week looks quiet on the work front so I may get some more done this week.

Blood of Honour by James Holland

One of the problems with travelling a lot is that I often end up with multiple books on the go at a time.  There is no point in packing a half finished book so I inevitably start a new one on a trip.  Inevitably, I tend to finish it half way through and then move on to one I've bought at the airport.  So when I get back I have yet another half finished book.

Currently I have five novels on the go and the gap between starting and finishing can be so large I often have to go back and re-read parts of them!

At present I am trying to finish Blood of Honour by James Holland, the third novel about Sergeant Jack Tanner of the fictional Yorks Rangers.  This is not to suggest it is a struggle.  Far from it, but, rather like my "in progress" section on the workbench I am determined to tie up a few loose ends.  I enjoyed the first novel in the series, The Odin Mission, with its unusual setting of the Norwegian campaign. It was, as others have said, very much a Second World War Sharpe, with a small band making a trek through enemy controlled territory. The second novel, Darkest Hour, set during the French campaign which led to the evacuation from Dunkirk, was not nearly as successful.  Rambling, muddled and with characters that float in and out for no discernable reason it also suffered from what looked like a horribly rushed ending.  It may well have been rushed as, about the same time that The Odin Mission appeared we also got Michael Asher's The Last Commando, a similar, although bloodier and grittier, attampt at a WW2 Sharpe.  Whilst the second book in that series is scheduled to appear in a couple of weeks Holland has since produced two more novels in his World War 2 series. 

His third book, Blood of Honour, is set during the Crete campaign, about which, other than the island was captured by German paratroops I knew nothing. As you would expect from a World War 2 historian the "big picture" stuff is handled well and informatively without it holding up the action.  Others have said that the characterisation in the novels is a bit weak but I wasn't expecting Sebastien Faulks, to be honest.  For me what I wanted was some inspirational battle scenes that could be turned into a wargame.  In this, Blood of Honour succedes much better than the previous two books.  There are assaults on a town, ambushes and battles through vinyards; all good stuff.  One of the reviewers on Amazon said that Holland conveyed no sense of place and that the action could have happened anywhere.  I have to disagree with this as I think that he gets the feeling of being on a Mediterranean island in the summer very well.  His fourth book featuring Jack Tanner is due out next summer.  I'll certainly be picking it up when it comes out

My second hand Eighth Army

Meanwhile, I picked up a batch of undercoated Eighth Army, LRDG and commando figures via someone at Guildford. They need rebasing and undercoating in white before I can work on them but now I'm thinking of getting German paratroops to oppose them rather than Afrika Korps,  So maybe I should add my half dozen part-painted Eighth Army figures to my finish before Christmas pile

Warfare

I went to Warfare briefly on Sunday. My main reason for attending was to visit Mutineer Miniatures but, although they were listed on the programme there was no sign of them and the organisers hadn't a clue about them. Maybe they only attended on Saturday.

I was amazingly restrained; buying a few loose (!) Foundry elf nymphs, some Musketeer Miniatures Saxon slingers and their "not Jack Sparrow" from the Gripping Beast stand for my daughter (who has shown some interest in a Legends of the High Seas game). Disappointingly, Warlord Games didn't have any of the new Paul Hicks sculpted Crimean War figures and didn't sound very excited about them when I asked.  I have heard that their are big plans for the range and I hope so because the figures I am working on at present are superb. 

I did look at the Great War Miniatures Crimean figures for the first time and they aren't quite as gnomic in real life as the photographs might indicate.  What was obvious, though, was that they are by different sculptors so some, to me, are better than others (just like their Great War range).  At a push I could team them with the Warlord ones in seperate units so all is not lost.  I also recently ordered an Osprey on the British army in the Crimea but their main Men-at-Arms ones on the conflict seem to be out of print.  Certainly they are selling for silly prices on eBay (circa £45) and with book sellers at Warfare.

I also got a box of the new Norman cavalry from Conquest Games which I have started to review on my Dark Ages blog.  I think I will be getting a lot of these.

I looked at a lot of tempting stuff, such as Empress Miniatures new Boers, but realised that I have so many figures I really don't need any more yet; not when my desk is covered in half-finished miniatures!

Next up: more Normans, Zulus, 1879 British and Indian Mutiny.  Oh, and I need to do another artillery piece.

Back from the desert...

There is nothing like a nice light starter

So, I've been back from Abu Dhabi (and one or two other places in the Middle East) for ten dys or so, and while it is not one of my favourite destinations it was nice to be able to sit outside and have dinner at an Italian restaurant in November! I don't go to the Middle East that much and am not that inspired by the UAE because of the lack of history about the place. Of the places I have been in the region I prefer Jordan and Oman and am indifferent about Qatar (which is still nicer than Dubai, however). So much for that being my last trip of the year as I have just booked my next flight today to somewhere rather more exotic...

Speaking of exotic I know that Matt likes to see the people I have to put up with on my trips so here is the lovely S in Aqaba!

I've been wondering what figures to try to finish next after my Beja cavalry (see the Sudan Blog) and I've got a few Zulu War British half done so will have a go at them next. I am pleased to see the new Empress Miniatures Boers which will also be good for the First Boer War. My first ever game of the Sword and the Flame was a First Boer War game and I have been keen to have another go at this.

Even though I really don't need any more figures I think I will go to Warfare this weekend just in case I spot something interesting. Actually. there is one thing on my list and that is some Mutineer Miniatures Gurkhas. I was in the City just after I got back from the Middle East and the British Legion had deployed, to sell poppies, a whole load of servicemen (and women I bought my poppy from a very fetching lady sailor (I don't think they are wrens anymore). They were all in uniform and were doing very well in attracting people to buy poppies. In Leadenhall Market they had the band of the Gurkhas playing which made for an unusual accompaniment to tapas!

My Norman army so far

Basically, I only get to paint on Sundays at present and if I do go to Warfare I won't get much done this weekend so my annual painting total looks like it will be well down. Next after the Zulu War British will be some Norman cavalry which are also well on the way. I have been painting a few Crusader Normans this year and have some more lined up. They are really quite quick and easy to paint. Then it's Indian Mutiny British and Mexicans. Hopefully, I will also be able to fit in some work on my Crimea British; especially as much of the uniform colours are similar to the Zulu War period troops.

I recently picked up the new Airfix Model World magazine for Guy but it had a couple of interesting articles inside I enjoyed as well. One was a very good piece on weathering a WW1 tank and the other was on how to paint the Airfix Saturn V kit. I have had one of these up in the loft for years and Guy keeps asking me to build it for him but I remember from when I built one in the early seventies that painting it was a nightmare, so this article should be useful. All in all I was quite impressed with it and will definitely pick up the second one. It seems to have a good distribution and I have seen it in Sainsburys as well as Smiths.

I'm very envious of all the painting everyone esle seems to be getting done!