Paint Table Saturday: Back at it

So, having had a varnish disaster with some of my figures I did manage to get some repair work done the other week.  I repainted the British jackets, trousers and black parts.  So I just have the rifles  and the stripes on the trousers to repaint now.  While doing this repair work I got on with the NCO, so hope to move them along today as it is bright and sunny (that means the paint dries on my palette really quickly, though).

This shows my 2nd Afghan War figures under way at present.  Still no sign of the missing mountain gun from North Star, though. Somewhere I have the Renedra mud brick house so maybe I should dig that out so at least I have a backdrop to photograph the figures against.

Baby O.  Intelligent.

Last Saturday I couldn't paint as I went up to Oxford with my sister to see my cousin and his baby.  My cousins emigrated with my aunt to Australia when I was at College in 1980 so I only see them sporadically.  He is a journalist and lately has been the European correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald, living in North London. I haven't been to see them there, as I try not to go north of Oxford Street in London in case I catch a nasty case of Guardian,or corduroy.  His wife has got a job as a lecturer in one of the Oxford colleges so they are renting a house in Oxford.  Much more civilised.  A bonus was that his brother (who works for a well known IT organisation in San Francisco (why is it that all Australians try and leave their country as much as possible?) was there too.  It was nice to have an intelligent conversation with the baby over a very good lunch for once, rather than listening to the Old Bat's inane prattling about her pond (we left her at home, as she has no intelligent conversation).  Guy joined us and is now home for Easter so that will push the food shopping bills up considerably.

Baby O (I won't give her real name as she is probably the only person in England with it - it is a real name, just very, very unusual) was a well behaved delight.  I think she is my first cousin once removed,  She also, unlike my incredibly fussy children, eats everything put if front of her.  She scoffed about three slices of bread, quite a lot of cod and a lot of linguine with crab, chilli and lemon.   Guy won't even eat baked beans as they are "too spicy". She really likes lemon and happily sucked on about five wedges of it, to the extent that the waiter brought her a little plate of them.

The restaurant we went to, Gee's, is just a short walk from their house in North Oxford and is, amazingly, in the next road to the one I lived in in my third year. To get there we had to walk down North Parade Avenue which used to be the site of an Italian restaurant called Luna Caprese where I went quite a bit (I was making money by selling drawings in the third year) with my girlfriend from nearby St Hugh's College.  Most of the tables at Gee's are in a bright conservatory and it really is a very nice place for lunch.  I had actually been there once before, about eight years ago, when I was interviewing a girl from the Oxford University basketball team as my summer intern.  She was very fit and got the job with no problem, partly because she ate properly and didn't pick at salad!

Talking of greenery, I was in Chessington Garden Centre looking at possible ponds for the Old Bat (she sat in the car as she took a job there once but only lasted four days so she won't go inside there any more) when Charlotte wanted to go and have a look at the fish and reptile house.  While in there I got some 'tropical' plans to start some scenic bases for the Lost World.  Now even the most basic scenic item is beyond my hobby skills so I expect they will sit there for the next four years.  I just have no idea how to even start attaching these to a base - or how to make a base.

Oddly, my new favourite TV programme is called The Repair Shop, where carefully selected members of the public bring in various broken objects with a heart warming story attached and very clever craftspeople make them as good as new (except the monkey - that wasn't a total success.  "Failure!" chortled the Old Bat in malevolent delight as the poor monkey's broken mouth opening mechanism defeated the repairer).  The Old Bat is quite clumsy and is always breaking stuff which I then have to repair but other than being able to open a bottle of superglue (and that sometimes defeats me) I have no idea what I am doing.  I think that this is the appeal of the show.  These people are really clever. It's like Strictly Come Dancing.  I will never be able to dance a single ballroom step but enjoy watching experts who make it look easy.  I did, actually, have a ballroom dancing lesson with the Old Bat before our wedding, as she expected me to dance on the day (I didn't).  Both she and the dance instructor were incredulous at my lack of ability.  "Anyone can dance!", he had said confidently, at the beginning of the lesson.  He wasn't saying that at the end.  "Anyone can make a scenic base!" Actually, I have no idea where to start.

So, imagine how delighted I was to see a link to a YouTube video, in the Warlord Games newsletter, giving  a link to The Terrain Tutor who has some lovely jungle bases.  Well, I started to watch one of these but I had to stop as I couldn't stand his speaking style.  This is because. yeah? he breaks up just about every sentence, yeah? with the word, yeah?  It is unbelievably annoying. Interestingly, when Darcey Bussell started as a judge on Strictly Come Dancing she had the same annoying vocal tic (or at least the Sloane Ranger equivalent, "yuh?").  However, by the second episode she had stopped this (due to total derision in the press).  The Terrain Tutor also waves his arms around for emphasis like an Orangutan who has been living in an Italian zoo. No more Terrain Tutor for me, unless he sorts this out!

Today's music is the enjoyable contemporary orchestral piece The Seven Wonders Suite, by the Scottish composer Stuart Mitchell,  It's very good painting music and is like the soundtrack to a film

Today's wallpaper distraction is Early Morning by the Irish artist Sir William Orpen, which was painted in 1922.  The story of the girl, Yvonne Aubicque (his mistress), is fascinating and involves a TV show revelation, Grand Prix motor racing, dog breeding, WW2 French resistance, MI6 and an amazing twist. You can read about her on Legatus' Wargames Armies.

Reading Wargames Magazines over Lunch and a scandalous lady.

I have been putting together a big bid (bid leader, so I am co-ordinating two firms and six staff - oh dear, I am sounding like that 'friend' on Facebook who always posts things about what he is doing at work, which are totally incomprehensible because they are to do with IT)) for a project in Africa (which we aren't going to win but which we need to be seen to be bidding on) so haven't had any time to paint or, indeed, go to Eric's Shed for a wargame, despite his kind invitations.  My bit's done now and it just needs to be assembled for couriering off on Monday,  Last week, I had a morning meeting in London, followed by a meeting in the late afternoon.  Given I had a couple of wargames magazines in my bag I thought I would pootle over to the National Galllery cafe to have some lunch.

Now regular readers (are there any others? - I can't imagine so) will know that I regularly have lunch in the National Cafe when I am between meetings or even just after one, when I can't be bothered to go home to the Old Bat without a couple of glasses of wine to desensitize me to the endless monologues about her latest project.  This time she has taken against the rockery "It's so fifties!" she says.

"It's called mid-century, now, and it's very trendy," I claim, to no avail, as she swings the pickaxe (she loves smashing things up).  So out go all the rocks and in will go a pond with a fountain.  Except, the rocks weigh so much I can't get them around to the front of the house (we would need some Stonehenge style rollers) let alone lift them into the car, so they sit, isolated and forlon like crashed meteorites, in the mud.  The dump now weighs your rubble, anyway, and charges you for it. £4 a rock, it would be.  She has dug a big hole for the pond, which 'she' bought on eBay (using my account).  "We can pick it up as its not far!" she says. It's in Winchester.  It's sixty miles! I tell her.  Each way. Four gallons of petrol.  She has no idea where Winchester is.

Last week she bought a floating plastic lily pad solar powered fountain in Chessington Garden Centre (where Eric the Shed gets a lot of his cork bark and aquarium 'jungle' plants) and she put it in another of her ponds, temporarily.  These are all round.  She doesn't like irregular shaped ones..  It emits a desultory spray if it has been in the sun for a few minutes and then stops to recharge.  "That doesn't squirt very far!" said my daughter (I refrained from making a comment about an actress and a bishop).  Both the Old Bat and my daughter love it though; sitting next to it in rapt expectation, waiting for another intermittent squirt like an unreliable version of the Old Faithful geyser.

"It's much more naff than a rockery!" I claim. Dark frown slowly appears.  I back away.  So what she needs now is a bigger fountain, she reasons.  More eBay bidding (on my account of course) and now we have to go to Primrose Hill to pick up, an admittedly charming, little (but metal - 'two of you will be able to lift it', says the man, cheerfully) fountain which cost 14 times what the pond did..  Well its not that little.  It's two feet high.  Now she worries the pond she has bought will be too small.  "Maybe I need a bigger pond!" No wonder I need a drink in the National Cafe.

But, horrors, they have renovated the National Cafe in the six weeks since I was last there.  Now, as the Old Bat would confirm, I hate change, especially of things I like.  It's the same when you buy some food and it says 'new improved recipe' on it.  You know it's not improved, it won't taste better and they are just saving money by using cheaper ingredients.  So what have they done to my favourite cafe?  I think that the technical architectural term is 'ponced up'.  This isn't a sprucing up, this is a complete rebuild inside.  Now it looks more like a restaurant and less like a cafe. They have put in screens which break the room up and make it seem smaller.  I got there at 12.00 when, in the past, it would already have been nearly full of ladies who lunch.  Not that day.  It was almost deserted.  Stop 'improving' things!  Needless to say, the prices had been 'improved' too, no doubt to pay for it all.  It was like when I started College and found my termly food and accommodation  expenses were half what my friend Jeremy's were, as he went to Magdalen and they had just spent millions of pounds on shoring up their tower, so decided to make the students pay for it.

Oh well, the only thing to do was order some (more expensive) wine and hope the food hadn't got worse.  I don't drink white wine at home as if I do I drink the whole bottle in one go, so switched to red and drink about a quarter as much as I used to.  Just as I was about to order a glass, however, I was sent an email which said that my three o'clock meeting had been cancelled.  So I ordered a bottle of Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi at the rather usurious price of £26.50. It was organic, I later discovered. I never buy organic wine, not because it is a rip off (which it is) but because do you really think that Italians will be honest about how organic it actually is?  Or do they just call it organic, take the EU subsidy and spray it with DDT when it's dark. Their definition of what is organic is much less strict than ours, or course.  Still, it was actually rather good.  You may think I am being unfair on the Italians but I worked with them for eight years!

Anyway, time for a very good Minestrone with toasted fregola, which are toasted Sardinian pasta shapes (although they would probably call them fregula). In fact, of course, my eight years working with the Italians means that I know that 'they' should be called fregole. One fregola, many fregole.  Sigh.  So,on to the first issue of the 'new' Miniature Wargames which was the March issue. The first thing that caught my eye was a review of Victrix's new plastic Iberians and Numidians.  Who would have thought, many years ago when I first bought some of A&A's Carthaginians, that you would ever be able to get these in plastic?  Amazing, really.  As ever there was no mention of the key thing I am looking for in a review of historical figures which is: are they historically accurate?

Musketeeer/Footsore Saxon Gedriht

Still not very many people had turned up in the cafe.  The main article I wanted to read was by the redoubtable George Anderson and provided some scenarios for Dux Britanniarum, which I don't have (at least I think I don't - I found a copy of Sharp Practice the other day and I was sure I didn't own that!) but scenarios are always useful and he has an engaging writing style.  This is also my favourite Dark Ages period, although I have only painted one unit for it so far.  As I looked for a picture of it to post I discovered I had, actually, also painted ten figures from a second unit (above).  This might be a good 'unit to finish' project if I can work out where the other figures are.  Thirty figures, in this new world of skirmish wargaming is getting on for an army!  I didn't find much else of interest in that issue so it was on to the next magazine.

First off I had Galician bavette with Datterino tomatoes and gremolata.  This really was quite superb although at £22 quite pricey for what was a cafe.  This was last week, though, and I am now boycotting Spanish products, over their sabre rattling over Gibraltar, in solidarity with my neighbour down the road who hails from there.  No more chorizo or Rioja for me!   Take that Diego!

There was even less of interest in this one apart from the Indian Mutiny rules and the Salute show insert (I have now bought my ticket!).  Slightly oddly, in the fantasy facts section, was a review of a figure by Black Pyramid of the Scandalous Lady Worsley.  A 'Victorian lady', said the review.  'I'm not quite sure what makes Lady W scandalous' said the reviewer.  Oh dear. Sighs at another display of complete ignorance from Treadhead's comic.

Seymour Fleming (1758-1818 therefore not a Victorian lady at all) was the heiress daughter of an Irish baronet and married Sir Richard Worsley of Appuldurcombe House on the Isle of Wight. To cut  a very long and torrid story short she and her husband were ill suited and she took a string of lovers (as many as 27 she admitted, over a seven year period).  One of these was one of her husband's best friends and fellow local South Hampshire Militia officer George Bisset.  She ran off with him (abandoning her four month old baby by Bisset) and her husband then sued Bisset for £20,000 (in 1782!) for 'conversation' (which is adultery with a fellow officer).  During the case, Lady Worsley admitted the numerous lovers but said that her husband had 'displayed' her naked to Bisset, which encouraged the affair which made it, by implication, his own fault. Sir Richard won the case but was only awarded one shilling in damages, due to this revelation,  Bisset left Lady Worsley when her husband refused to divorce her so he couldn't marry her.  Relying instead on donations by grateful and 'friendly' gentlemen she had to flee for Paris to escape debts with her French lover.  Trapped by the French revolution she was probably imprisoned during The Terror.  She returned to England in 1797.  Her husband died in 1805 and she inherited £70.000 (about £8 million at today's values).  A month later the 47 year old Lady Worsley married her 26 year old lover, moving to France after the armistice of 1814.  She died there four years later. The Black Pyramid figure is based on a painting of her, in the uniform of her husband's militia unit, by Sir Joshua Reynolds and now hangs in Harewood House.  It says everything about the character of this independent, unconventional, sensuous woman who was, indeed, scandalous.

She was portrayed by Game of Throne's star Natalie Dormer in a BBC film in 2015, who recreated the pose of the Reynolds painting for a publicity still.  Shaun Evans (young Endeavour Morse) gave a creepily brilliant portrayal of Sir Richard Worsley although Dormer, while certainly looking the part, was not quite up to it (except in the sex scenes, which she handled enthusiastically).

The shell of Appuldurcombe House today

I have visited Sir Richard Worsley's Appuldurcombe House on the Isle of Wight, of course, although now it is a picturesque shell.  A Dornier 217 dropped a mine very close to the house, then being used as a barracks, in 1943, which  blew a hole in the roof.  It wasn't repaired and gradually the house fell into disrepair and the interiors and roof were removed and sold.  Recently, several rooms have been re-glazed and restored.  When I last went there, coincidentally, a group of re-enactors were demonstrating late eighteenth century uniforms, drill and weaponry from the time of Sir Richard and Lady Worsley.

Hopefully, on Saturday, without a last minute panic on the bid, I might actually get some painting done!

Paint Table Saturday: Trouble on the North-West Frontier

So, I am back doing a paint table Saturday after a week off. I had a very good paint table Saturday the week before last.  I got the four figures I needed to nearly finish my next unit of 70th Foot.  I just needed to varnish them, do the metalwork and finish the bases which I could do on the Sunday.  I varnished them with my usual Humbrol matt varnish (No 49) and then something horrible happened.  The varnish dried with a horrible white 'frosting' over everything.

I got another tin out and tried it on my first Franco-Prussian War Frenchman and the same thing happened. You can see it on the red trousers (I had repainted the jacket by this stage). I have never had this before,  Sometimes, at the beginning of a pot, if you don't stir it enough, it can dry with a silk finish but more stirring sorts this.  This however, was a disaster.  I had spent hours getting these nearly completed.  I searched online and about two years ago there seemed to be a problem with a particular batch (too much matting agent, it seems) and my two tins were from that batch.  Fortunately, I have found another tin but I must get to Addlestone Models and get some more, particularly as ModelZone in WH Smiths in Kingston has closed so you can't get Humbrol paint in Kingston any more.

The next day, looking at them in the daylight, I saw that the pale parts of the paint weren't effected, so I just needed to tidy up the dark trousers and black parts.  I repainted the trousers and then  re-did the black bits.  The problem was it was dark outside, I wan't concentrating and I accidentally painted the black bits dark blue. Unfortunately, I decided to start the black bits on the Sikhs too and also painted them dark blue. More work! 

I was so fed up with them by this stage that I decided to open a bottle of wine instead, listen to some Sibelius and read some of my backlog of wargames magazines.  This didn't help my mood much as I am getting really tired of the tiny type in these (and printing on non white backgrounds).  I can really only read them if the sun is out now, even with my glasses on.

Today's project

One figure I needed, to get on with the unit, was an NCO.  I ordered a pack of these, with some other items, from North Star a couple of days after my last order on 23rd February.  However, they didn't turn up for weeks and only arrived on Thursday.  I opened them up only to discover that the Sikh artillery crew were there but the mountain gun wasn't.  I rang up a very nice lady at North Star mail order who said that they had been having trouble with artillery generally (interestingly when I looked at their website again I noticed that both artillery packs had been removed from the listing) due to problems with resin casting.  She said the gun would follow in due course.  It's not like I don't have anything else to paint! 

I decided to get the one NCO (TMWWBK rules don't actually require them, although they are covered by some recent additional rules) painted with the repainted four infantry today. One thing I noticed is that the NCOs carry the correct Indian pattern leather water bottle which the infantry don't.  Another historical mistake corrected from the early releases.  This is one thing you don't have to worry about with Perry figures!  I haven't seen the Perry plastics for this period but am just assuming they won't be compatible with the Artizan figures, although the Afghan tribesmen are.  I might get a box at Salute (next month!) anyway.

Guy came home from university on the Thursday so we could do him a birthday lunch and so I didn't get any painting done last weekend as it was too busy, which was very annoying as the sun was out much of the day.  Also, I was so disheartened by my varnish disaster I didn't feel like painting anything anyway last week.

One intriguing bit of news this week is that the solicitor has done the probate form on my mother;s estate and we have found out that she had several bank accounts we didn't know about.  It means that there just might, if I am rash, be enough money to rebuild my study to make it big enough to take a wargames board.  Or I could buy an Aston Martin but, as the Old Bat said: "you are too old for a mid-life crisis!"  Heh, heh.

Speaking of which, I was in London a couple of times this week for meetings and had the opportunity to meet up with my lady friend, A, While waiting for her to arrive (punctuality is not one of her many other estimable qualities) I was looking at the new Miniature Wargames (Salute guide issue!) and saw one of those sets of figures which I just have to have, even though I have absolutely no reason to get them.  These are Crooked Dice's new female minions.  Girls in polo neck tops,  pleated miniskirts and boots.  Perfect.  They are all very In Like Flint/Matt Helm/Casino Royale (the David Niven one, of course!).  I already have their not Captain Scarlet range and there must be a skirmish in here somewhere!  I'm torn between the sixties hairdos and the berets, though!

Having been very disappointed with the Chosen Men rules I spotted these on Facebook, which appear to be much more what I am looking for; no stupid requirements to keep in close formation, for example.  They are going to the subject of a Kickstarter later in the year but unfortunately I can't remember where I saw them!  If anyone knows...

Today's music is a double bill of the soundtracks to Our Man Flint (1966) and In Like Flint (1967) by Jerry Goldsmith.  The cover of the CD features the groovy poster art for In Like Flint by Bob Peak, who was one of the most influential film poster designers of all time, producing posters for West Side Story (1961), My Fair Lady (1964), Rollerball (1975), the first five Star Trek films, Superman (1978), Excalibur (1981), Apocalypse Now (1979), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and many others.  Apropos of the Crooked Dice figures, In Like Flint has an international feminist conspiracy aiming to replace the ruling American patriarchy with a feminist matriarchy.  Now who makes a 28mm sized Hilary Clinton?

In Like Flint.  When men were men and women were decoration

Goldsmith had already worked in the spy genre, having already produced the themes tune and early episode scores for The Man from U.N.C.L.E. on TV. Both of these Flint scores are wonderful sixties confections of electro jazz, go-go dancing music, Henry Mancini type cocktail slink, big band, samba, Russian pastiche and pretty much everything else. Perfect, I would imagine, for painting figures in miniskirts and boots to.

Sleeping Bacchante (circa 1885)

Today's wallpaper distraction is by Hungarian painter Károly Lotz (1833-1904).  The Legatus first saw one of his sensual nudes in the Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest and was so taken with it I bought a very nice reproduction of it, printed on canvas, which the Old Bat got framed for me when I returned.  Lotz studied in Vienna and did most of his nudes early in his career, before shifting focus to frescos.  Many of the major public buildings in Budapest, such as the parliament, the supreme court and the opera house have frescoes by him.  The depiction of Bacchantes always gave nineteenth century artists a good excuse to depict enticingly sprawled women under a classical cloak of acceptability.  This is one of a series of similar paintings he did in the mid eighteen eighties.

Right, the sun is out.  Time for painting!

Something for the Weekend: Saucy Pulp covers by Norman Saunders

Some saucy pulp covers for the weekend over on my adults only Legatus' Wargames Ladies blog.  They aren't really adults only (I would have loved them when I was eleven years old!) but that is how we have to classify them for repressed, puritan Blogger!  

Paint Table Saturday: Thoughts on France and Egypt

I got up early today as the Old Bat has the builders coming around, as she wants a patio door put in so we can access the garden more easily.  Now, while I like looking at the garden from where I sit to type and paint I don't particularly like being in it.  This is largely because if I even venture into it it involves the Old Bat trying to make me do something awful, like lawn mowing or fixing the back fence (the horses in the field keep knocking fence rails out). Looking at the garden is like looking at a whole list of tedious jobs to do, especially pruning and cutting.  Having a garden is just grow your own rubbish, which then has to be taken to the dump (sorry, waste reclamation and transfer station) at regular intervals during the summer  It's all such a waste of time!  So increased access to the garden is not a high priority for me.  Charlotte wants us to put in a cat flap for Harry the cat from next door but that isn't going to happen, especially given the amount of scratching he has been doing on the Old Bat;s living room carpet. So I am not interested in which new radiator, windows, paint etc she wants.  She always asks me what I think and then always ignores it.  "Do what you want," I say. 

"You don't care about the house!" she wails.  I don't, actually. Whereas she spends hour watching house restoration and interior design programmes on TV.  Houses are just containers to hold my stuff.  I don't care what colour the paint is, what the furniture looks like and what the light fittings are.  I am the same on cars; they are just transport.  I don't care what make they are, what colour they are or anything else regarding perceived status.  It's a car.  It says nothing about your worth as a person, actually.  My father-in-law is always telling us off for not washing the car.  What's the point?  It just gets dirty again!  The Old Bat thinks she needs another car (not a new car - how on earth do people afford those? - all my money goes on those waste of time and money children) as lots of things keep going wrong on hers (I don't own a car, of course) so now than man next door (a car dealer, conveniently) keeps coming to the door with cars he has found.  "This one has alloy wheels!" he said yesterday.  Even the Old Bat said, "so what?".  Do these make the car more economical or more reliable?  No.  Pointless, therefore. I don't think people in other countries are as car obsessed as the British.  I wonder whether it is something to do with Britain's company car culture (although these are less prevalent than they used to be), where what model of car you had was indicative of your position in the company.  My uncle, who used to be Chairman of Ford Europe, said that they had to have many more different price banded models in the UK because of company car buyer requirements.

Anyway, while she bombards the builders with questions which I have already failed to answer (does that have a straight or corner valve?) I will get on with my NW Frontier figures.  Not really close to finishing any but it is shading on jackets and trousers today, although the light isn't brilliant again.  I have ordered some NCOs for the British from North Star but they haven't turned up, even though the figures I ordered the day before them arrived over a week ago.  I will have to decide at what point I will chase them.

Some more figures (I hate the way Americans call them 'minis') did arrive, though.  Just when I am focussing on a couple of projects I do something mad and start a whole new period.  The Franco-Prussian War is one of those conflicts where my primary interest is because of the uniforms rather than the history.  Actually, I think that is always the case.  I can't imagine buying figures for a period with ugly uniforms (Spanish Civil War, for example)!  I had high hopes that Footsore Miniatures would complete there range but, after a few (very nice) releases of French infantry, they stoppped dead.  Instead I have got some figures from the relatively new firm Eagles of Empire.  So far, there are two types of infantry for each side available in the range.  

They come in unit packs with a card of statistics for forthcoming rules but whether these are big battle Black Powder type or TMWWBK skirmish type I don't know.  They are of the Perry type, are anatomically correct (sculpted by Ebor (Bob Naismith?), I believe) and are at the top end of 28mm figures in height (if not bulk).  These are carrying a lot of kit and are not going to be quick to paint, especially as I don't have any reference books for the period.  I like them, however; there is something Old School about their proportions and they also look, well, nineteenth century!  More on these another time, although it does mean that I am now at a neutral point on the lead pile for this year.  I need to paint and sell more figures.  I opened one of the little drawers I keep my unpainted figures in the other day and had no idea what the figures were that were inside.  I really need to do a big audit and start selling!

One of the other colonial conflicts I have been interested in for some time is the Anglo-Egyptian war of 1882.  Although suitable Egyptian figures are available in the Perry Sudan range (and I have even painted some) suitable British were not.  Now, however, by combining the Perry plastic North West Frontier (heads) and forthcoming Zulu war (bodies) figures you will be able to make appropriate figures for this. 

I was thinking about this the other day, when looking at pictures of Mark Hannam's splendid Alexandria game.  I already have some British Naval Brigade painted plus some Egyptians and this would male a good TMWWBK game for the future.

It's not a popular conflict for wargaming because there was only one big battle, which was very one sided (the British lost more men to heatstroke than enemy fire). I first read about it in a novel by Richard Hough called Buller's Guns which features land actions in Alexandria as well as the bombardment, which saw much of the city burn to the ground.

The music I listened to while writing this post was the complete set of piano concerti by Saint-Saëns (1835-1921).  These days he is largely remembered for his organ symphony and the Carnival of the Animals but he composed a lot of really melodic music.  His Aquarium, from the Carnival of the Animals, was one of the first bits of classical music I fell in love with at the age of about nine, when it was played in school assembly one morning.  His second piano concerto is the best known and is a Classic FM favourite (not that that is necessarily a good thing).  I prefer his fifth piano concerto (the Egyptian), composed for his own  jubilee concert to celebrate his fiftieth anniversary as a performer (he was a child prodigy).  It was composed in Luxor in 1896 and is full of exotic Egyptian colour.  Perfect for nineteenth century adventures in Egypt.  Saint-Saëns served in the National Guard during the Franco Prussian War, it should be noted.

Sleeping Bather (1850)

Today's wallpaper is  by Théodore Chassériau (1819-1856) and is a remarkably frank nude portrait for the time. It was a body that the artist knew well, however, as she was his lover, Alice Ozy (1820-1893), born Julie Justine Pilloy, the daughter of a Parisian jeweller. Julie worked as an embroideress in Paris and then Lyon.  Returning to Paris, the sixteen year old Julie caught the eye of an actor at a dance hall in Montparnasse. He suggested she become an actress (he suggested several other things to her as well) and got her some small roles. She got her first real role in vaudeville at the age of seventeen and took the stage name Alice Ozy (based on her mother's maiden name). For the next five years her roles and acclaim increased until by 1845, she was one of the best regarded young actresses in Paris.With this fame came wealthy male admirers.  Like many actresses of the time she became a courtesan, being paid by wealthy men for ' companionship'. One of her lovers left her a large legacy when she was still young, which she invested wisely.  In 1843 she started a relationship with the novelist and poet Theophile Gautier and in short order also 'entertained' the writer Nestor Roqueplan, the Emperor Napoleon's son, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (the future Napoleon III of France) as well as Henri d’Orléans, duc d’Aumale, the son of the then King of France, Louis-Philippe. She was never short of suitors and later had an affair with Charles Hugo, the son of the novelist Victor Hugo.  Charles, fed up with Alice's other lovers asked his father what he should do about the situation, whereupon Victor bombarded her with erotic poems and took her as his (additional) mistress instead, much to his son's annoyance. All this ended in 1848, when she fled the revolution in Paris for London.

Portrait of Alice Ozy (1848) by Chassériau

When she returned to Paris, later in 1848, she started a two year, tempestuous relationship with the painter of this picture Théodore Chassériau.  Their relationship ended when she asked him for one of his paintings which he intended for his family. He refused but she insisted and eventually, in order to end the arguments, he agreed to give it to her (so to speak). It just happened that he was enjoying breakfast with Alice at her apartment when the painting arrived by carriage from his studio. In a fit of remorse at giving the painting to Alice, he slashed it to ribbons in front of her and walked out on her for good.  She retired from the stage in 1855 and reverted to her birth name of Julie Pilloy. using her friends in the banking world to increase her fortune. She bought a house outside Paris and kept a lavish apartment on the Boulevard Haussmann.

Time Slaying Love

Another lover of Ozy's was the artist Gustave Doré, who designed a special clock for Ozy's apartment in Paris, where it was displayed in the entrance hall. Called Time Slaying Love it shows Time slaying cherubs with his spear. The message from Ozy was that any relationship with her was going to be fleeting, as time is the enemy of love (how very true). Julie Justine Pilloy remained unmarried (although far from without male companionship) and died, a wealthy woman, in her apartment on March 3rd 1892, at the age of 72.  Chassériau died many years before this, at the age of 37 after years of ill health

A men's magazine location, some Roman ruins and an African steamboat

Yesterday I had to go over to my sister's house to sign some papers to do with selling a flat we had bought to provide income to pay for my mother's care home bills.  As it was, despite the typically gloomy BBC weather forecast, a nice afternoon we went over to Virginia Water which is part of Windsor Great Park.  We have both been going there for as long as we can remember (at least fifty years, we thought) and my sister runs there most weekends but I hadn't been there since the children were little.   

My favourite part when I was small was the waterfall (or cascade as they call it) which is a splendid but artificial structure.  It is at its best when, as yesterday, there has been a lot of rain. Originally built in 1750, it was washed away in a storm and was rebuilt into its current ten metre high form in 1788.

More than fifty years ago a pictorial and the cover shot were done here for the second issue of a brand new men's magazine.  Scottish girl Linda Richie, Penthouse's second Pet of the Month, was photographed by Bob Guccione, cavorting around the cascade in rather less clothes than she wears on the cover.  For an undressed, NSFW shot you will have to go over to Legatus' Wargames Ladies!  This issue, Volume 1 number 2, appeared for  April/May 1965. The two month issue was caused by having to find a new printer for issue 3, as the first two had sold so fast the numbers required had overwhelmed the original printer.

I took this picture yesterday of the area where Miss Richie posed for the cover.  It's the top corner of the general view in the third picture up.  I am sure that the Crown Estate didn't give Penthouse (which was already notorious before it even launched - Guccione having been fined £600 for distributing flyers containing pictures of naked ladies in the post to advertise the magazine) permission to shoot here.  However, he later wrote of a shoot he did in Richmond Park (people forget Penthouse was originally launched in Britain and only went over to America in 1969, when Guccione found out he was outselling Playboy to US troops in Vietnam) where his model just wore a raincoat which she had to remove for photos and rapidly put on again if they heard people approaching.  No doubt Miss Richie had to do something similar!

Moving along the shore of the (equally artificial) lake from the cascade you come to an impressive set of Roman ruins.  Now, nearby Staines (or Staines-upon-Thames as it has now been pretentiously rechristened) is an old Roman town, originally called Pontes (and referred to as such in one of Bernard Cornwell's Last Kingdom books) as it was the site of the Romans first permanent ridge over the Thames.  In fact, it is also the Legatus' original home town (my sister still lives there - having previously lived in Sussex, Belgium, Toronto, Islington and Northern Ireland).   These ruins are not from the area's Roman past but were transplanted from the Roman city of Leptis Magna in Libya 

The columns and stones were organised as a gift to the Prince Regent by the British Consul General in Tripoli in 1816.  They spent some time in the British Museum before being transferred on gun carriages to their current site in Windsor Great Park in 1826. 

Since I was last there they have restored and opened to the public another small section of ruins the other side of the road which runs along the back of the site.  This section also includes some stones taken from Carlton House, the Prince Regent's residence in London.  When the Prince Regent came to the throne, as George IV, in 1820 he decided that Carlton House, which was on Pall Mall, was too small and so commissioned the expansion of Buckingham House into Buckingham Palace and the demolition of Carlton House.  The two expensive terraces of town houses put up on the site of Carlton House were sold and the proceeds used to help pay for Buckingham Palace.

I never went to Leptis Magna when I travelled to Libya, sadly, as it is some way from Tripoli and not something you can do in a spare afternoon.  It is very unlikely I will ever get to the country again, given the terrible state it is in.  I really liked the Libyans who, unlike most North Africans, didn't hassle westerners when visiting.  You could walk around the souk untroubled.  I did get out to another Roman City in Libya, Sabratha, nine years ago.  I went with some colleagues and the four of us had the city to ourselves.  The locals did see us coming, though, and upped the entrance fee to a rip-off 15 pence each.

The lake, which is Virginia Water itself, gives its name to the local town of the same name (Virginia Water, that is (although it does sound like the name of a suffragette) not Lake, which is in the Isle of Wight and features in their dreadful postcards of 'Seven Wonders of the Isle of Wight': 'needles you cannot thread, Cowes you cannot milk, Lake where you don't get your feet wet etc.  Dismal).  Virginia Water is almost entirely populated by golfers and along with Cobham (my local town) became the first towns outside London where the average price of a house is more than £1 million.  Originally there was a stream called the Virginia there but the Duke of Cumberland, when he was the Ranger of the Park, had an ornamental lake dug, reputedly by prisoners from the Jacobite rebellion who were imprisoned nearby.   The lake was much expended after the storm that destroyed the original cascade and is now about four and a half miles around the perimeter.  This makes a nice walk, as we did yesterday, or a good run as my sister does every week in the summer.  Three laps are excellent  training for a half marathon.  I have run the Windsor Great Park half marathon twice (a very long time ago, needless to say).

On location in Virginia Water

While we were walking along the shore my sister mentioned that she had seen a steamboat moored on the lake a couple of years ago when out for a run.  There are no boats on the lake, it was a film set.  Yes, Virginia Water was standing in for the Congo for the Legend of Tarzan back in the summer of 2014.  About a third of the way from the left, on the treeline in the top picture above, you can see the top of the obelisk which is a monument to the Duke of Cumberland.  "The butcher!"  I remember my mother telling me he was called.  "The only way to deal with the Scots," my father used to say.  

In the finished film

I thought that the steamboat was the best thing in The Legend of Tarzan and it made me want to get on and finish the model one I started to make years ago, based on a Gary Chalk design in Wargames Illustrated.

This was the first piece of wargames scenery I had tried to make since some papier mache hills in the early seventies and it says much for Mr Chalk's plans and instructions that it turned out looking reasonably boat like, especially as I changed his design to make my one longer.  It actually doesn't need very much work to finish it and I really should get on with it, as it has been lurking around in this unfinished state for at least ten years.  Basically I just need to do the canopy and dirty it down a bit.  Perfect for Congo!

Unfortunately, there is no place for paddle boats in the North West Frontier and that is what I will carry on focusing on for the next few weeks.