Real Life (part 9)

I'd set aside sometime this weekend to make some real progress on my CoW game design, and to try to get some more work done on my 16th century 28mm Irish (yes, I know what I've posted previously, but these are Irregular to go with my Elizabethan English and they're pretty much 25mm anyway). This has been side swiped a little bit by our game on Friday night. Phil gave us his domino driven game on the Siege of Harfleur. Well, not all of the seige, - just the bit where Henry V tries to get his chaps through the breach, and this got me thinking.

I've been mulling over a game using Hat miniature's 1/32 plastic Carthaginian elephant, and during the evening it sort of all came to me in a moment of revelation. It'd only take an hour or so over the weekend to get it written up, then all I'd have to do is order the figures and get them painted. Oh, and produce a game board.

And then the weather changed. I ask you, - mid April in England. Where's the snow, rain and howling wind? What's all this sunshine nonsense? No excuse to stay in the house, - there's loads to do in the garden. Plus we just had a mail order delivery of plants to go in, - three cherry trees, loads of raspberry canes, strawberry plants and then some oleanders to round it all off ("the plant that thrives on neglect" the brochure says. My kind of plant). Plus the lawn has gone berserk. I sometimes wonder if wargamers do gardening. I mean it's obvious from some of the display games at shows that many amongst us are very good carpenters and are probably good at interior decorating. Plus anyone who has ever made sense of DBMM or FoG et al can surely understand the instructions for IKEA flatpack furniture. On top of that we sort of thrive on bookshelves and other storage systems to stack our lovingly crafted collections on.

But gardening? You never hear anyone mention it, plus I'm running short on wargaming applications of the green-fingered art. Apart from having a nice flat green area for lawn games (a much underrated and rarely performed branch of the hobby) there isn't a lot of linkage. And when you think of it gardening is a weekend activity mostly, - if you want to put in or dig out a major border it's hard to squeeze it in during an evening so that's going to press in on your weekend convention attending time.

I'm not a mad keen gardener, - but I do like a nice tidy area where I can sit on hot summer days reading my latest research tome with a nice cold drink by my side. And there's a lot of pleasure to be derived from sitting in your own garden with friends enjoying an al fresco meal. (Or in this case sitting in the summerhouse blogging on my notebook). My problem is that when I see what effort that Titchmarsh and his cronies put in (not that I watch a lot of gardening programmes) it seems to me that the amount of effort to get the garden they want hardly justifies the number of days when you can actually sit and look at it. After all, as soon as the nice weather comes you're out there mowing and clipping again. The effort/reward ratio seems to me to be all wrong.

Anyhow I ended up spending most of Saturday putting in the minimal amount of work to get things sorted out for the summer. That meant a trip to the garden centre for several large bags of multi-purpose compost etc. Not a completely wasted morning as it has a remainder bookshop in it as well that turns up the odd hidden treasure. I was also able on the way to pop into the local model shop to buy those Hat 1/32 elephants, only to find out that they'd finally sold them. Back at home a quick search on the internet turned into a long search on the internet as it looks like they did one production run and everyone had sold out. Even Hannants. Luckily I found a company based in Cardiff who had a box or two in stock, so hopefully they'll turn up next week.

That left me the rest of the day to for some heavy weight spade work and so on. Luckily the weather stayed good so we were able to wheel out the barbecue in the evening, so my work/reward ration on the day wasn't that bad.

Which brings us to Sunday. I've mown the lawn and I'm just left now with putting in the trees. That means some more deep digging and all that stuff. Still, I'm sure it'll be worth it.

Final note, caught Doctor Who last night. Any takers on how soon before we see a WW2 "Ironsides" game at a show?

Comments

  1. Ah yes, Victory of the Daleks, the first episode ever where the Daleks win at the end of the episode, though I imagine they will get their come uppence from the good Doctor in due course.

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  2. Actually Spitfires attacking flying saucers might have more mileage than Daleks shooting down Stukas.

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