A bit of painting...and where I have been

Argonauts yesterday!

A few days ago Eric the Shed sent me an email asking what had happened to me, as I hadn't been blogging for a while (well six weeks).  A friend of mine sent me a similar missive on Friday too.  I wonder whether it had anything to do with the fact that I am getting lots of adverts appearing on my Yahoo mail asking me if I had made financial plans for my funeral.  Everyone expects me to be dead.  My sister actually sent me a note asking me if I was dead, following the fatality of someone my age on the recent Surrey Ride London event as I had been contemplating (not very seriously) having a go, as it goes past the end of my road.   Only my sister would send me an email asking me if I was dead.  

Coming up the hill in Oxshott

Not dead, exactly, but having taken the Old Bat to work that day we had to park the car on the other side of the course as the main road was closed for the event.  I had to walk back home but first I had to cross the road.  This was not easy given the number of people coming along the A244.  In fact, that morning, "an older person like you" as the helpful but faintly insulting marshalette had said to me, had been hit by a bike trying to cross in the village and had to be taken to hospital.  I was now trying to cross the road at the same point and had been waiting for fifteen minutes for a break in the traffic.  The problem is that this is not like the London to Brighton Bike Ride, which I have done four times (admittedly twenty years ago).  These are good club cyclists from all over the country and they are bowling along at 25 mph.  However. I used to be a good sprinter, or at least, 400m runner (admittedly forty years ago) so, glimpsing a short break in the peloton I took off from the kerb in the direction of the The Victoria pub opposite (not a pub I have ever been to as A) I don't like pubs and B) it is often full of Premiere League footballers).  Ping, went my calf muscle two thirds of the way across but I couldn't stop, as plunging down the hill towards me, shoulder to shoulder like the Light Brigade, was a pan-highway frontage of rapidly approaching wheels.  I know that at this point on the road, as I have to follow pelotons of cycles every weekend as they all have a crack at the Olympic road race route, they are pushing 30 mph.  My leg was so bad by the time I reached the other side that I couldn't even attempt to walk for fifteen minutes.  It then took me twenty minutes to cover the half mile home.  Well the result of all this was that I was in considerable pain for about a week and by the time I got back from work I was too tired to paint or blog.  When you are an "older person" you don't recover as quickly.

Just before this at the end of July we had had a week in the Isle of Wight for the Royal Yacht Squadron 200th anniversary.  As Guy was busy being a marshal it meant the Old Bat and I had to talk to each other and we went on a walk around Carisbrooke Castle.  March's Miniature Wargames had a Lion Rampant scenario set around the French invasion and siege of the castle in 1377.  

We have been to Carisbrooke many times but it is only when you see it from a distance that you realise how it is built up above the surrounding landscape.  Worth bearing in mind if trying to recreate this action (as I would like to do) as it really sits on top of a substantial mound.

We took the Old Bat's parents to Ventnor Botanical gardens which is really not my thing but just above the cliffs they have a small planting of hops.   They are tucked in a little hollow between the coastal path and the cliff edge (above).

I hadn't noticed when visiting previously, but now they make a beer, Botanic Ale, from these hops.  I bought a bottle for my friend Bill but decided to keep if for myself in the end.  What a meanie!   I haven't tried it yet but will do very soon.

Charlotte's costume for the Tattoo took over forty minutes to get on for every performance

Anyway, after that it was off to Edinburgh for a few days, to watch Charlotte dance in the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo.  I have watched it on TV a few times as I really like military band music and it was a great show live.  We were also lucky with the weather. Charlotte had got soaked on at least one occasion as, unlike some of the performers, they didn't have waterproofs for inclement weather and umbrellas are banned in the arena.  It was nice to see her, as she left for Edinburgh in January and we hadn't seen her for more than seven months.

We all went round Holyrood House, which we hadn't been to before.  It was quite spooky to see the site of the murder of Mary Queen of Scots private secretary, David Rizzio, which I remember reading about when I was studying History A level at school.  Just as impressive for me was visiting the ruins of Holyrood Chapel.  Felix Mendelssohn visited the place on 30th July 1829 and wrote home: "In the deep twilight we went today to the palace were Queen Mary lived and loved...The chapel below is now roofless. Grass and ivy thrive there and at the broken altar where Mary was crowned Queen of Scotland. Everything is ruined, decayed, and the clear heavens pour in. I think I have found there the beginning of my 'Scottish' Symphony."   He even enclosed, on a piece of paper, what would become the opening theme for the symphony.   It is my favourite Mendelssohn symphony and it was wonderful to stand in the place that directly inspired it.

We couldn't avoid shopping (I wondered why Charlotte had asked us to meet her in the Edinburgh Tattoo shop when we arrived - that was expensive) but at least in Edinburgh they have the wonderful old style department store, Jenners.

However, Jenners was the site of my biggest disappointment of the trip.  On the top floor they have a branch of superb Italian-Scottish delicatessen Valvona & Crolla (this is the firm who FedEx fruit and vegetables from Italy direct to my foodie friends in Bath so they don't have to eat supermarket vegetables).  There were many tasty looking things in the shop but they would have been out of the fridge too long to get home.  Even worse was the fact that we had hand baggage only so I couldn't buy anything from the tantalising display of Scottish beers there.  I really want Orkney Porter!  I want to try Kelpie!  But I couldn't. We had already checked out of the hotel.  Grr!  First stop on my next trip! 

We were back on the Isle of Wight a few weeks later but this time with Charlotte who had actually decided to leave the delights of Edinburgh to come home for a fortnight.  While Guy went out in a RIB to watch the powerboat race starts she and I watched them from dry land and then headed across the Island to Freshwater Bay (adjacent to Freshwater, home of Fighting 15s).  It was low tide and we found a pirate cave (well that was what it looked like) although Charlotte decided it was actually the Cave of the Sea Pigeons as they seemed to be the main inhabitants.  Even at low tide we had to wade through eighteen inches of water to get in.  An easy place to get cut off in.

Freshwater Bay

Actually, in retrospect, it probably wasn't a brilliant idea to go inside the cave as on this, the south side of the island, bits of cliff are constantly dropping into the sea which is how they keep discovering dinosaur fossils there.

In fact, when we got back from the Isle of Wight we watched a rather bizarre TV documentary called Dinosaur Britain where they visited this very same bit of coast and even recreated it as it looked in the time of Iguanodons! 

The real reason for going to Freshwater Bay, though, was to restock on the sand I use for basing my figures.  It is quite coarse but not too coarse and the lot I picked up should keep me going for a year or more.  I also got another hundred washers from Hurst (or "Urrrst" as the locals call it), the ironmonger in Cowes, for my skirmish figures.

Even better, although the RNLI shop has replaced my favourite Lifeboat tea with inferior Lifesaver tea, Charlotte spotted the original in Waitrose in Cowes and. of course, we got 15% off with the Old Bat's discount.  I stocked up on that too!

Anyway I was determined to paint something this past weekend even though I haven't had many free weekends lately.  So I finished the two Foundry Argonauts at the top of the post and this Warlord Games slave girl who reminds me of a Greek girl I used to work with.  When I told my friend (the one who gets the air mail vegetables) about how lovely she was he didn't believe me, until he met her with me in Leadenhall market!  Anyway, although these slave girls are supposed to be Roman and are due to serve with the legions in the Marcomannic War, she will probably turn up in the Jason and the Argonauts campaign Eric the Shed and I are planning for 2016.  The Greek ruined temple in these pictures was an uncharacteristic present from the Old Bat off eBay.   The grey paint offends my sensibilities though so I intend to repaint it in a more Mediterranean shade.

The Russian Frigate Shtandart

Recently I went on board this replica early eighteenth century frigate.  See more on my Great Northern War blog.

A Pulp game, a Playmate and some very big yachts

A belated account of the superb game I played at Eric’s Shed is now on my Pulp blog.  Rather more conventional accounts are on Eric's and Alastair's blogs.  When I first started collecting Mark Copplestone’s Back of Beyond figures, many years ago, I could only dream of deploying them on the sort of truly spectacular Egyptian lost city board that Eric had constructed for the first in his The Scales of Anubis campaign.   It was a true wargaming wonder!

I managed to complete the two characters I needed for the game the weekend before.  They are (left) "Copper" Cooper (Foundry Darkest Africa figure) formerly of the King's African Rifles and (right) Professor Bevis Marx (Lead Adventures figure).  They flank my previously painted Lord John Roxton, this time acting as Granger Stewart, big game hunter (a somewhat politically insensitive appellation these days).

They were joined by my previously painted six inter-war British from Copplestone Castings, to make up my small unit of nine. 

I played the part of the British P.I.T.H. organisation, trying to gain three clues to reveal the location of the fulcrum, the first part of he lost scales. I successfully gathered the three required clues and set off to retrieve the artefact from the tomb. Right at the end of the game my parlous dice throwing (the worst I have ever had in a game and that is saying something) continued, mainly, I am convinced, because of the malign influence of Eric’s cat Sooty (really a reincarnation of the Goddess Bastet) who hexed my dice caused defeat to be snatched from the jaws of victory.  The Nazis (or Germans as we are now no longer allowed to call them by Angela Merkel) stole the artefact at the last moment.  Lets hope they all melt and their heads explode when they try to activate it.  

Sooty the cat seemed to take a liking to me during the game and spent a lot of time sat up next to me on the edge of the table getting in the way and casting spells on my dice.  

Mrowl!

I had dreams, sadly unrealised, that Sooty would magically transmute into Victoria Vetri from the Star Trek episode Assignment Earth where a black cat, Isis, reveals itself to be a (very) beautiful woman.

An uncredited Victoria Vetri (right) as the cat Isis in Star Trek episode Assignment Earth with Teri Garr, who would go on to play Richard Dreyfuss' wife in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

Vetri is best known for starring in Hammer dinosaur epic When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970).  Her controversial nude scenes were cut by the American censor when the film was released in the US and later on DVD.  Fortunately for the Legatus, as a collector of cavegirl material, I managed to get an uncut DVD which was released accidentally before it was subsequently withdrawn by the distributor.

Growl!

Under her early stage name Angela Dorian (chosen by her agent based on the name of the doomed liner Andrea Doria) she was Playboy Playmate of the Month for September 1967 and pulled herself into some remarkable sculptural shapes for her pictorial.  She became Playmate of the Year for 1968.

Angela Dorian as Playmate of the Year 1968

Sadly, Vetri/Dorian was arrested for shooting her boyfriend in the back during an argument five years ago.  Things got worse for her because she initially lied and claimed it was an intruder that pulled the trigger so her attempt to have the charge deemed assault with a deadly weapon failed.  Sentenced to nine years in jail for attempted murder in 2011 the seventy year old is still in prison.

Vetri in court in 2011

A nineteen year old Dorian also appeared (right) with a hoplesessly miscast Shirley Anne Field (left) in the Yul Brynner Mayan epic Kings of the Sun (1963). I well remember the climactic battle around the pyramid in this from when I first saw it on my uncle's colour TV in the sixties.

Coincidentally, the next episode of The Scales of Anubis campaign took place on an equally amazing jungle board, complete with pyramid but I missed that as we went down to Cowes for the Royal Yacht Squadron bicentenary regatta as Guy was working as a marshal for the RYS. There were some truly spectacular yachts competing in this although, initially, racing, was curtailed by the high winds. 

The classic J class yachts, which fought for the America’s Cup back in the thirties, are not allowed to get their sails up if the wind is above 25 knots due to the fact that their 152 foot masts would be at risk and it was gusting fifty on Monday. Eventually they got some racing in and it was the first time they had had a class race series at Cowes for eighty years. More Isle of Wight news (I know you can all hardly wait) including some thoughts on Carisbooke Castle soon.

Paint Table Saturday July 18th 2015

Well, unusually I am going to focus on just one figure this weekend.  This Lead Adventure figure will be a British archaeologist in Eric the Shed's pulp campaign opening game on Monday.  

Of course, as a (hopefully) newly painted figure he will undoubtedly die in the first turn.  I want to get his skin and clothes done today and his complex backpack and equipment done tomorrow.

Tour de France food on my food blog

Back to looking at some French (and Dutch and Belgain) regional fare as the Tour travels around for three weeks, on my food blog.  Stages 1 to 4 were in the Netherlands and Belgium, stages 5 to 9 in Normandy and Brittany.  There is a military connection with Normandy (no, not D-Day!).

Paint Table Saturday July 4th

Today

Last Saturday

Well, I did manage to get on with some base colours last weekend as you can see if you compare this with last week's shot.  Unfortunately, it is far too hot in my room to paint at present so I will have to hope it is cooler this afternoon when the sun moves around (although then you lose the light, of course).  Big artistic decision today is as to whether I paint the shirts of the 64th Foot white (quick) or an off white (slow).  I can then paint their belts plain white so they show up better against the shirts.  Of course the belts were buff and then pipe clayed white so buff might work for those too with white shirts.   Hmm!

Hot in the city...but only for men!

Yesterday at Waterloo

So, it was the hottest day in London for nearly ten years yesterday and it highlighted yet another inequality between men and women in the workplace. 

In every job I have had, it has been a requirement for men to wear suits, long sleeved shirts (my friend Bill wears short sleeved shirts to work in the summer but he is an actuary) and ties. Now, admittedly, people in my new office are not wearing ties during this hot spell but as soon as we have a meeting with external clients, inside or offsite, the tie has to go on and the jacket has to be worn. So we trudge out onto the baking streets this week to find what? Women dressed as if they are off to the beach! Now, I admit that I am now across the river from the City but hot pants and cotton vests (tanks for North Americans) as appropriate work wear? Thigh, shoulder and back revealing sun dresses? Plunging necklines? It is not only inappropriate it is, much more importantly, not fair! 

Episode 3 of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.  The first depiction of the Peninsula War on TV since Sharpe

Why can’t I wear shorts to work instead of sweltering in wool trousers? Except I would not, as shorts should not be worn by any man over the age of 25 and by no men with really hairy legs, on account of the fact it looks disgusting. As a wargamer I often look at the clothes soldiers used to have to wear in hot climates in the past and think: What on earth made their leaders think that this heavy clothing would contribute to an efficient fighting force? But a suit, shirt and tie is, in effect, the uniform of many men working in Britain. Not IT people, of course, who seem to have managed to gain an exception on the basis of being the possessors of arcane knowledge. They are like your curiously dressed wizards in your otherwise conventionally clothed fantasy army. Yet women, somehow, have managed to get an even more relaxed exception, merely by dint of being women.

Women are quite capable of wearing a suit to work, although I will even grant them an exemption from wearing a tie, which really is a ridiculous historical throwback. Interestingly, when I worked in a City law firm it was notable that the more formally dressed the woman was the more junior she was likely to be. Lady lawyers tended to wear plain skirts and blouses. If you saw a woman in a pinstripe suit (sometimes with trousers, sometimes even with a tie) she was almost certainly going to be junior support staff. But the point is, if men are expected to wear suits then women should do as well! 

Lloyd's Underwriting Room

When I worked at Lloyd’s of London, the Underwriting Room had a strict dress code of suits and ties. One summer, just after moving in to the new building in 1986, we had a particularly hot spell. The Room, at the heart of Richard Roger’s iconic building, was, to all intents, a greenhouse in design. There was a problem with the air conditioning. It got hotter and hotter. Now, of course, instantly, all the lady brokers (known as brochettes) appeared at work in tiny, wafting dolly dresses. The lacy tights (then very much de rigeur) all disappeared and we were presented with acres of bare legs. As an aside, how is it that women always know when the weather is turning hot, and adjust their clothing for work accordingly, even if the heat suddenly comes on half way through the day? The answer, of course, is that they look at the weather forecast on a daily basis. I don’t look at the weather forecast because the result makes absolutely no difference as to what I have to wear. Anyway, back at Lloyd’s a memorandum from the Chairman was circulated immediately, reporting complaints from Underwiters (all male at that time) about the abbreviated clothing and pointing out that the Room had a dress code which was, and I quote, “suits with ties for men and the equivalent, whatever that is, for women.” The Chairman was totally baffled about how to define what women should wear. It should have been clear. Suits for all. Case closed. But, no, women got away with it again. The next day a few flimsy jackets or lightweight cardigans appeared over the tiny sundresses but the bare legs and (often) low cut tops remained. At the time I wondered to my girlfriend (who also worked at Lloyd’s) why anyone would complain about underdressed women? Her answer was that it depended on the women; some of whom (like her) looked better underdressed than others. Really, though, I feel the reason was jealousy by the male underwriters. Jealousy caused by women being able to wear much more temperature appropriate clothing which happened to be business inappropriate.  Also, it is not so much the situation regarding what they wear at work that gets men frazzled so much as what they can wear to work as we struggle in 100 degree heat on the Underground, slogging along baking streets and overcrowded trains on the way home.  Having walked the one mile from my office to London Bridge station last night I found it had been closed due to a fire alarm.  I then had to walk nearly another mile to Bank Station when the temperature was still around 34 degrees (94F). Waterloo station (which has a glass roof) was appalling too but not for women in tiny shorts and tops.

The corollary of all this is, of course, that women say: “Well it’s easy for men you just have to wear a suit you don’t have to choose different outfits every day for different seasons.” Just wear a suit then! No one is forcing you to carry on having to put yourself through aesthetic agonies every morning. You do it because you want to. You can choose to wear a tiny pair of shorts, sandals, or a sundress to work. Men cannot. IT IS NOT FAIR AND IT IS SEXIST!