Let me take you back to… May 1983

 Traditionally (well, since the early 70s), my family always holidayed in the Tregony Holiday Park in Cornwall during the late May Whitsun week. This is because my dad’s factory used to close for that week (along with the August bank holiday) before they allowed the workers to have a choice, but we carried on anyway because errr…. Tradition? Anyhoo, I was nearing the point of desperately not wanting to holiday with my parents but still wasn’t trusted to stay home alone for a week in case I set fire to the house or just ate chocolate. To be fair, that probably would have happened but it did mean I ended up a tad teenagerish and spent most of the week bored. It didn’t help that May 1983 was wet and dull and Spandau Ballet were rampant in the charts.

But all was not lost because I had brought my own entertainment! I’d found a fishing tackle box for a quid in a discount store (for the life of me I can’t remember where) and had stocked it with my Pony Wars card figures, scenery and other useful wargaming stuff. I was also armed with the Newbury Colonial Rules and the April edition of Military Modelling with Stuart Asquith’s article on Cowpens. Well, what do you think I was going to do? Revise for my retakes? Go to St Mawes again?

So I commandeered the coffee table, sorted my carefully curated card bits and bobs into the two armies and went at it. Very slowly… It soon dawned on me that Newbury rules didn’t exactly give me the Loose Files and American Scramble I’d read about (didn’t stop me buying Cambrai to Sinai, though did it? 🤡) and worse, there was no way I would consider it for colonial actions. I played to the bitter end, the Tax Dodgers were given a pounding and then my mum suggested going to St Mawes.

This was something of a low point in the year, but it did teach me something: avoid complex rules. And St Mawes.

But, I still have the tackle box which now contains all my modelling kit. It’s covered in Milliput fingerprints where I created hundreds of 10mm and 25mm figures and gets a sort out every two or three years, when I chuck out something that I find I need the following week.

Where all the magic happens.

So what next? Can I get Recon to work? Will the weather improve? Will I ever practice my French vocab? Can I remember the chemical equation for photosynthesis without surreptitiously scratching it on a pencil?  Will Clare Grogan ever answer any of those letters I send her on a daily basis?

 Find out in the next instalment…

PS The Tregony Holiday Park was actually very nice and would go there again if it hadn’t been sold and turned into a housing estate. Oddly, if you go to the location now you can still make out the park layout.

PPS Always hated St Mawes. Once you’ve seen the castle, that’s it. Nothing else to do if you are a child and worse if you are a teenager because your parents are with you! Last time I visited was on Honeymoon and it’s just a rich twat’s paradise now. We sat across from one of the swanky hotels, slurping cornets and wondering how money seems to go to the most stupid on earth. However, we had a laugh watching some idiot woman, dressed like an ‘I Dream of  Jeannie’ cosplay, manoeuvre a shaded pram containing two ratty dogs up the hotel steps.

Let me take you back to…. January 1983…. And then to April 1983

 Ok, I’ve bounced backwards and forwards using my heat pump Time Machine (hence the unreliability), but this is a brief interlude before I begin work on the ‘big thing’ of ‘83. There might be another one, but this will do for now.

I must say I’m still a sucker for the shiny cover and paper.

To be more accurate, 7 January (because it was the same day The Fourth Arm started on BBC1). Dad was on 6-2 shift and I finished early from college so off we went to Wickes/Aldershot. With my eye on these shiny rules, I popped into Concorde Models and rifled through the large white drawers at the back of the shop. They stocked a useful supply of wargaming stuff, mostly Skytrex and Minifigs from memory, and on this occasion I left with some Skytrex modern tanks and the Osprey Zulu War book (which I still have). You can see how much I had on the go this year.

I soon managed to paint the tanks up and had a couple of test games but cash flow (more cash spread…), and my success with Pony Wars, had me resorting to card strips to fight my mini-campaign. This was the replacement for my second Pony Wars outing and took place in our conservatory (on the same rickety dining table) to the strains of Let’s Dance during the Easter holidays.

The scenario was a small British Battlegroup holding off Red Forces (of the Purple Moon, if you ever read Frontline UK in Bullet) in an unnamed British protectorate. The British were based roughly on what was used in the Falklands (scary to think it was less than a year earlier) and the Reds/Purple Moon were what my Jane’s Armoured Fighting Vehicles book said the Argentines had, so M47s (gorgeous!), Shorlands, LVTP7s etc.

It sort of went OK, and I managed to get a couple of games out of it but I honestly have no idea how anybody ever managed to finish a game with anything more than a reinforced company! Fair enough, I was new to the rules (and a bit thick) but goodie gumdrops it took ages! If only at the time I had a copy of the simplified modern rules that appeared a few months later in Miniature Wargames, things would have been so different.

Anyway, it all went the way of the plucky British and the decidedly oriental-looking foreign hordes were sent packing. No dodgy human rights lawyers around, obviously.*

With that particular boat floated, I parked the rules and my small collection of tanks and set my mind to Newbury rules and cutting card shields for my pipe cleaner Zulus. But that article in the April 1983 Military Modelling on Cowpens looked rather interesting…

*Especially those who have Ukrainian male models setting fire to their old stuff.

Let Me Take You Back To…. February 1983

 ….when I was off sick from college.

1983 was, along with 1977, what I considered a ‘formative year’. I grew up a bit, learned much and did a great deal.

Much of this was down to the radio I got for Christmas which freed me from the tyranny of parental control over what I could listen to without one of them moaning that they couldn’t hear the words. This opened a whole new world of individuality. My wargaming life also exploded, boosted by my dad’s regular trips to Wickes in Farnborough and a quick run in to nearby Aldershot for Esdevium Games and Concorde Models. I would end the year joining the Staines club but at this point I was on my own.

Lastly, there was college. I was on retakes, a result of a nightmare educational experience at my awful skool, but I could relax in college and found it rather easy, so I coasted a bit. This is why I ended up pondering Pony Wars, rather than revising for the mocks I was hoping to avoid if I could spin out an extra week. College may have been better than skool, but I was still happier at home!

In truth I had a nasty virus, so it was a week of coughing my insides out followed by an enforced week of rest. And this, dear reader, was when it all happened…

My original copy!

I had Pony Wars for about 6 months. For those unfamiliar with the rules, it was designed as a show participation game and the amount of gear to play it was well above what I could manage. But the suggestion in the back of the book to use card strips for the Indians… Why just the Indians? I had enough coloured card to represent all the various groups by colour code - buff for Indians, blue for cavalry, etc. But I really needed a table and, as luck would have it, our rickety old folding dining table was exactly half the size of the recommended playing area at 15mm.

All I had to do was halve everything! So, In a flurry of activity, coughing and Laura Brannigan, card strips were cut to half the 15mm base sizes (double thickness, pasted together), terrain was cut from an old cardboard box and all measurements were in cm rather than inches. My dad found a sheet of hardboard of the exact size (probably from Wickes) to cover the table (it was still my parent’s property!) and after three days of chopping, gluing and trial/error I was ready for action!

I chose the Homestead game as it seemed the easiest and I had an absolute blast! I had better eyesight and nimble fingers then, so it wasn’t that fiddly (to all intents and purposes it was 6mm) so it all went smoothly, but it was designed to play indefinitely and the end of the second day I was flagging. Not even Bonnie Tyler belting out Total Eclipse of the Heart (video was filmed up the road in Holloway Sanatorium) could motivate me, and when the drums started beating, signalling massive Indian reinforcement and Lord knows how many more hours, I called a halt.

Running something that size, even in rude health, is hard work but it was a fantastic experience with lots of memorable incidents. My favourite was the homestead that found themselves in the path of a large warband with only one round of ammo. They dutifully used the last bullet on the single female and prepared for the worst, only for the Indian reaction roll to be…. Leave the table! A cavalry patrol arrived two moves later, to find four men and a woman riddled with bullets… 

I also played a bit of this with card strips cut to scale. Not my original, but a pristine copy off evilBay.

I planned another game for Easter, but when it came to play I chickened out. The first game was so good, I couldn’t bring myself to despoil the memory with a poorer game. Plus I had moved on to the Zulu War.  I never dumped the rules and I did play again with the Southbourne group’s massive setup. Again it was a lot of fun, although this time I had nothing more than a single troop of cavalry! I think there is still mileage with the game if you reduce it by 2/3 to make things manageable. But I wouldn’t have missed the experience for the world.

Another trip to Aldershot resulted in a set of Newbury Colonial rules and an order to Peter Laing for some Zulu war figures, although the first game I played was a refight of Cowpens (using card strips…) on our chalet’s coffee table whilst on holiday in Tregony. Little did I know what that would start…. However, the summer was approaching and as the weather improved my thoughts turned to the garden and what I could do with all the 1/32 figures I still possessed. But that’s another story.

Not my original but still as complicated.

PS I passed all my exams.

I wonder what this can do…?

There is a name for this kind of horror…

Submechanophobia!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submechanophobia

As a kid visiting museums (with varying degrees of interest), I began to notice that I had an increasingly uncomfortable reaction to model sailing ships. Sailing ships only, mind. HMS Hood = no problem.

This grew over the years to the point where I now get a physical reaction. The Airfix classic ship size I can cope with, but as the models get larger I suffer anything from shortness of breath to feeling sick. It’s not only models: things underwater and boat hulls in general (especially water lapping against them) can set me off.

This has led to some rather embarrassing situations as I have worked in a number of navy buildings that often contain a model or two. In one location I was somewhat taken aback to find they had plonked a huge model of Victory next to the Gents. Caught short one day, I had to close my eyes and be led by hand to blessed relief by a bootneck, who I think is still laughing now. Of course, this was after I got married which may well have been different had the Mem not been similarly amused: our third date was a visit to the Mary Rose…

I’ve not met anybody with a similar problem, apart from the occasional agreement that stuff underwater can be a bit creepy, so it’s nice to know it’s not that unusual and there is a name for it.

And you never know - I might even be able to claim a PIP on day and get some of my tax money back. Every cloud, an’ all that.

Wild, Wild, Wild, Wild, Wild, Wild, Wild, Wild, Wild West.

 As a favour to John who messaged me on LAF, here are the fast play rules from TTG’s Once Upon a Time in the West.

My Top Ten Christmas Films

 I’ve noticed there is a regular discussion on various forms of media about whether Die Hard is a Christmas film or not. This all seems to be based on whether a film set in Christmas, as opposed to being about Christmas, is a bona fide Christmas film.

Frankly, I couldn’t care less if a film has snow, Santa or is some shite from Raymond Briggs as I have my own way of rating Christmas films. In my mind, something that I’ve seen for the first time reminds me of the season I’ve seen it, rather than the subject matter, and Christmas is treated in the same way.

So, as I’ve only four working days left and am just starting to get in the mood, I thought I would post my Top 10 Christmas Films, many of which are as Christmassy as July in Torremolinos.

Take it away, Fluff….

10 The Dirty Dozen

Ridiculous plot only someone with the mind of child brought up on Commando books can love. I love it! “You’ve seen a general inspecting troops before, haven’t you? Just walk slow, act dumb and look stupid!”

First viewed: 26 December 1977

9 The Wizard of Oz

It might have nearly killed most of the cast, but at least none of them were frightened by helicopters or look like they’ve holidayed in Belsen. A genuine film for all the family where everybody can be a friend of Judy. “There’s no place like home!”

First viewed: 25 December 1975

8 Dr Zhivago

Plenty of snow here! David Lean doing what David Lean does best. A bit of a surprise entry, considering my other choices, but it’s a film with quality you can just wallow in. “Strelnikov!”

First viewed: 1 January 1981

7 The Guns Of Navarone

The original ‘men on a mission’ which I replayed the following day with my Action Men and with whatever suitable figures I had to hand thereafter. If you have a few toy soldiers you have the men from Navarone. “Heil, everybody.”

First viewed: 26 December 1977

6 Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines

I watched this cradling a box full of Airfix 1/24 Hurricane! A bit on the long side, but I could watch Terry-Thomas do his thing for hours. “What do y’think y’doing? Frightened the life out the Memsahib!” 

First viewed: 25 December 1974

5 Waterloo

Should be called “Warts an’ All”, but a magnificent spectacle matched only be the battle of the Deetail soldiers in ‘Quincy’s Quest’ 😁. If you are not moved to buy Napoleonics, you have no soul. Or hum La Victoire Est A Nous while you paint them. “What are your plans?” “To beat the French.”

First viewed: 25 December 1976

4 Carry On Up The Khyber

Along with Cleo and Screaming, this was Carry On at its height with brilliant gags and everybody playing to their strengths. It just all ‘works’. Those who sneer at Carry Ons can just “Fakir: off!”

First viewed: 23 December 1977

3 On The Town

I was allowed to stay up late to watch the BBC2 Gene Kelly Season as my dad was a fan and this absolute banger just blew me away. A boisterous rollercoaster, with great songs and stellar cast. “My place!”

First viewed: 23 December 1979

2 Zulu Dawn

I now look at it in the same way as They Died With Their Boots On, but it’s a cracker nonetheless with enough accuracy to make it worthwhile. Kick-started my interest in the Zulu War and has many of the cast of The Wild Geese to boot! Best stiff upper lip scene ever: “Carry them to safety, Mr Melville.” “Sir.”

First viewed: 26 December 1980

1 Lawrence of Arabia

No surprise here! One of, if not the, greatest film ever made. I watch this on the same days every year (it was originally split over two nights). My mum and sister had gone to pick my grandparents up for the holidays and me & dad were left to do bloke stuff. We popped into Staines for some last minute Christmas shopping and I managed to score the brand new Airfix Multipose 8th Army. I made them up whilst watching O’Toole & co doing their thing. I now try to get something equally deserty to make while I’m enjoying my annual film fest. Who needs snow? “No, Dryden. It’s going to be fun.”

First viewed: 22 & 23 December 1975

History is Closer Than You Think

 Just for interest, I wrote this on Bob Cordery’s blog post on the 1914 battle of the Falklands. I’ve strained the memory a bit, as we are talking over 40 years ago, but the key point has stayed with me all these years

Just down the road from us in Cabrera Avenue, Virginia Water (now you know how I could buy books from Bryan Forbes) lived Mr Amlott, a lovely, elderly gentleman with poor eyesight. This didn’t phase him, however, as he was very independent and my folks would often chat to him as he took his daily constitutional to the local shops.

One day, I was returning home from college (it would be 1983 or 84) and met Mr A outside the community centre (where most likely he was entertaining the old dears). It was a lovely sunny day, but he told me it was a bit too bright for his eyes, so I walked home with him just in case he tripped. I cannot remember how the conversation took this turn (he may of asked me how old I was, so 16 or 17) but he told me he had fought in the Falklands. I thought he was pulling my leg, until he said it was 1914 and he was a boy bugler in the Royal Marines. He said it was all rather exciting and was glad he wasn’t older as he would have been petrified.

At that age, and being slightly to the softer side of Walter the Softy, I could not fathom how anybody could join up, let alone be under fire. My own grandfather saw action for the first time the following year, at Loos with the Royal Field Artillery. The only ‘action’ story he told me was that when the guns opened up for the first time he messed himself. Chatting to one of my RM colleagues about a new TV series on RM training, I remarked that I would be in the corner crying after 15 minutes. Most bootnecks are somewhat blasé about their trade, and he told me it’s amazing what people can achieve under the most difficult circumstances. I agreed. “20 minutes, then” I said.

I wish I had the brains to ask more questions of my grandad and Mr Amlott, but we very much understood it was best not to ask and let them drop little hints and stories when they were ready. For many years my grandad was friends with a lively and very funny man we always called ‘Uncle Billy’. They had been colleagues on the buses since the 1920s, had served in the Home Guard together and ended their days together in the Busman’s home in Wembley. Billy’s daughter, Jean, is my Godmother. We got them together after my nan died (1981 or thereabouts) and I listened as they bantered away on the sofa. Suddenly, this came out:

Billy: I was on the Somme.

Sid: So was I.

Billy: I was in the West Kents. What about you?

Sid: Field Artillery.

Billy: I wondered who was shooting at us.

Sid: Lucky we missed.

They then moved on to arguing who had the biggest half of the Double Decker bar my grandad had snapped in half.

Incredibly, they had known each other for over 50 years and never mentioned it.