"A disease known is half cured." - Irish proverb

I have had Covid. I wasn't particularly acutely ill, but it's left me very washed out, and with a sort of persistent brain fog. So no gaming - board or war - and not much of anything else really. My recent purchases of Irish kern have arrived, but haven't got any further than a heap on the dining table. Also in the pile are various flags which I ordered in to help fill the strange gaps in my complement of Wars of the Roses commanders. Of course, if I have the strength to write a blog post can painting and modelling be far behind?

Illness requires lighter reading material than my normal diet of Wittgenstein, Nietzsche and Proust so I picked up 'Winter Pilgrims', which had been passed on to me by Peter. I think the appropriate word for the main plot line is 'implausible', but the descriptive set pieces of various battles are both entertaining and give food for thought. As I have often observed here, no one knows what happened which means that fictional imaginings are as valid as anything else really. I thought that the passage about the attack on Sandwich was the strongest, perhaps because of the relatively small scale of the affair. By the time of Towton, the author had rather lost me; too many tea breaks in his interpretation for my taste.

The book covers Mortimer's Cross, so the kern put in a brief appearance. I trust that, once painted, my figures will put up a better show.

Back before I allowed myself to get side-tracked into ranting at the incompetents and hypocrites who run the country, one of the last posts on here which actually mentioned wargaming addressed our habit of constantly changing the rules, often in mid-game, a subject which often prompts questions from readers. I have been wondering whether what we do could perhaps be explained in philosophical terms. Allow me if you will to make the sweeping, and not particularly accurate, generalisation that one can divide western philosophers since the middle ages into three types: religious believers for whom the Truth is handed down on tablets of stone; enlightenment thinkers for whom there is an external Truth which can be found by reason and science; and those influenced by romanticism who take the view that Truth is subjective and found within us. I do this because it seems to me that it might be valid to divide wargamers into three portions in the same way, except that instead of the search for Truth, we are talking about the search for the ideal set of rules.

Faith based wargaming is simply to accept what someone else has decided is the case. I went through that phase myself as a teenager; we probably all did. What was written in the book that I borrowed from the library must surely be right. This is an approach is very much still alive, in both historical and fantasy settings, and in the most ultra-orthodox of forms, even to the extent that in some environments one can only play if one has toys from the official supplier. I have no first hand experience, but presumably competition wargaming wouldn't work without starting from this premise. And I would argue that it's also what is being practised by those who succumb to marketing hype and adopt new sets of rules as soon as they are published, albeit probably to eventually drop them and move on to the next big thing.

Readers will no doubt have read rulebooks written by those who take the view that there is a definitive way to play wargames, which can be uncovered by the application of scientific investigation and rational analysis. If one is only precise enough about how quickly troops marched, fired, reloaded etc in real life; about the efficacy of weapons on the battlefield; about the mechanics of command and control; if one can only reconcile ground scale, figure size and unit strength; then one will end up with what is, surely, out there somewhere waiting to be discovered, namely the 'perfect' set of rules. In the introduction to his book 'The Napoleonic Wargame', G.W. Jeffrey explains the approach: "wargames rules should be nothing more than tables of facts, which are referred to in order to determine the result of situations on the battlefield".

I don't often get predictions right (you will recall that a couple of months before the election I forecast that Jezza was about to resign), but I was bang on the money this time last year when I said that 2019 would be even worse than 2018; by and large indeed it was. Perhaps that's why this year I have been unusually reticent in inflicting on you my opinions of all the plays etc wot I have seen, but let's have a quick retrospective summary now; be warned, for some reason this is all a lot more quantitative than it is qualitative.

Opera: I saw twenty six operas this year, plus two ballets and a sprinkling of classical concerts. The operas ranged in obscurity from Pfitzner's 'The Christmas Elf', of which I saw the first ever UK performance, to La boheme, which is - I think - the most frequently performed opera that there is globally. My favourite was Vaughan William's 'Pilgrim's Progress' with a nod to Janáček's 'Cunning Little Vixen' and Martinů's 'The Greek Passion'.






Theatre: I saw fifty two plays and musicals of which my favourite was 'Wise Children' from the wonderful company of the same name. A very honourable mention must go to 'Tuesdays with Morrie'. My favourite Shakespeare (out of the thirteen that I saw) was a toss up between 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' at the Globe and Northern Broadsides' 'Much Ado About Nothing'. This section seems an appropriate place for the following photo, which I have been looking for a chance to use for some months and which if nothing else illustrates that Chekhov can actually be made interesting:




Music: I only went to twenty three gigs, which is pretty pathetic really. My favourite were The Stumble whom I saw twice. Their live performances do not translate into their recordings, which is often the case and another reason why I should go to more live shows.




By the way, the lady on your bloggist's left in that photo is a regular, and somewhat wild, audience member at blues gigs around here, indeed she is the instrument fingerer mentioned in this previous post; I could tell you some stories about her, but frankly she terrifies me so I won't.

Film: I've seen sixteen films and am going to choose 'Stan and Ollie' as my favourite; what can I say, I'm a big softie. I made a special trip to the Imax in Bradford to see 'Apollo 11' on a big, big screen and am glad that I did. Still today, after fifty years, it's just an astonishing achievement and spectacularly documented in the film.




Talks: The quantity of gigs may have declined, but for some reason the number of talks attended has increased markedly. The best two were both on painting, one on Klimt, the other on Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven. A prize for making a little go a long way goes to Ian Bottomley, Curator Emeritus of Oriental Collections at the Royal Armouries who managed to speak very entertainingly for an hour on the subject of the current whereabouts of those small number of suits of armour which were given as diplomatic gifts to various European royal courts by Japanese trade missions in the sixteenth century. The most irrelevant and off subject question from an audience member - a category that is very keenly contested every year - was the chap who, at a talk about Nietzsche, asked why god had created gay animals in species other than humans. My own unassuming interventions - the incident with the light cavalry sabre notwithstanding - were, of course, always entirely intended to add to the collective enlightenment rather than allow me to show off my own erudition and knowledge.




Books: For those concerned about my apparent compulsion to count things, I don't really; I work it out retrospectively from my diary. The exception is books, where I kept a specific record this year because I thought it would be interesting. Obviously it wasn't in the slightest bit interesting, neither to me nor anyone else, but despite that I now know that I read one hundred and thirteen books, the pick of which was 'Winged Victory' by V.M. Yeates, which of course has a wargamer friendly theme. Another book I very much enjoyed which falls into that category is 'The March' by E.L. Doctorow; the march in question being that of Sherman.





Boardgames: I played fifty eight different games seventy eight times (figures courtesy of boardgamegeek). Top marks for a game I hadn't played previously go to Quartermaster General: Cold War, which I have no qualms in recommending to wargamers, and the same is true of my top solo game recommendation, Maquis. I hope to step up my boardgaming a bit next year, although the Monday night Yew Tree group has become very dull and cliquey so I may have to look elsewhere.




Wargames: I played or umpired in, I think, twenty three games, many of which were played over two or three weeks. They focussed mainly on James new Peninsular war collection plus, it shouldn't be forgotten, his new bridges. In the annexe it was mainly Great War, but there was a smattering of other stuff as well. My favourite game, apart from my one-sided triumph at Fiasco, was the relatively recent Battle of San Winnoc.




Event of the Year: Newspapers and magazines inevitably have to choose their picks of the year early in order to meet deadlines. Your bloggist has the luxury of posting this on the afternoon of December 31st and can therefore make sure that nothing will overtake what he writes. Or so you would think. Last year I was awakened at 23:45 or so - being teetotal I avoid going out on New Year's Eve and therefore retire early - by the younger Miss Epictetus who wished to inform me that she had got engaged, an event which clearly would have merited inclusion right at the top of my round up of 2018 had she told me a tad earlier. So, this year's choice is caveated by pointing out that it is subject to nothing better happening in the next few hours. However, I think it unlikely that anything will beat this:




Finally, let's hope next year is better than we're all expecting, especially for you and yours.

The laser cutter isn't working properly and my boiler isn't working at all. The former is possibly because of floating in the the y-axis belt tensioners, or perhaps because the head acceleration is set too high for vector cutting. The latter may be because the pressure sensor has failed or alternatively because there is a leak. It increasingly seems as if Nietzsche was correct and there are no absolute truths.

So, instead let's talk pub rock again. I've only just heard that Larry Wallis died in September. Although he was at one point a member of Motorhead, I always think of him in the context of the Live Stiffs tour. He was Wreckless Eric's producer, Dr. Feelgood recorded at least one of his songs, and on the original studio version of the following number he was backed by the rhythm section of Eddie and the Hot Rods. Here's 'Police Car' from the album of the Stiffs tour:




And let's have another obscure but brilliant track from a live album of the time 'Live at the Hope and Anchor'. This is Phil Rambow with 'Underground Romance':




Fun fact: Rambow co-wrote 'There's a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis' with Kirsty MacColl. Here's a different take on that song from the Tex Pistols featuring Rambow:




That track also features Martin Belmont on guitar. Belmont is, of course, a pub rock stalwart and was in the original Rumour. I am hoping to see Graham Parker (sadly without the Rumour) next week. I've twice had tickets to see Parker in recent years and failed for various reasons to get to the gigs. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

I gave the impression yesterday that I might struggle for subjects to write about. But, of course, I am British and so there is always the weather. And as it happens the weather is absolutely glorious.


I took the opportunity to head off into Upper Wharfedale, a place that, as far as I am aware, has no wargaming epicentre, but does have a suspension bridge.


And here, after a long gap, is a new entry in our series of the bridges of the dales; this one is over Linton Beck.

And so to the theatre. "Opening Skinner's Box" is not so much a play as a dramatisation of a non-fiction book about psychology or, as far as I could tell from the two hours, a book by a narcissistic female American author about herself with a bit of psychology and psychiatry to pad it out. It doesn't matter - I shan't be reading it.




I found the second act far more interesting than the first. I suspect that's because I knew far less about the experiments portrayed. Both Skinner and Milgram are on every managerial psychology course going, and believe me I've sat through a few of those. They made a big deal of the latter in particular, presumably with the hope of shocking the audience. But any feelings of surprise and disturbance that I once had have faded away through repeated exposure to the original studies and to having lived in the world as it is for so long; all of which is perhaps somewhat ironic. But the in the second part, there was much with which I am far less familiar - such as the work of Loftus on false memory and of Alexander on addiction - and so I found it more stimulating.




As a theatrical experience it was fairly ordinary. The cast rotated the parts without regard to age, sex or ethnicity (because there are those among you who have disgraced themselves previously by displaying an overfondness for woman in male military uniform I shall not mention that they all wore men's business suits), which worked well enough for the scientists, patients, participants in experiments and religious nutcases featured throughout, but less so for the rats, monkeys and sea slugs. So, a mixed bag, but it did draw my attention to Bruce Alexander's (admittedly disputed) theories on the links between addiction and societal fragmentation and inequality, which together with the work of Festinger are probably the most relevant to my life and how I live it of all the issues discussed in the play.




In other theatrical news I note that Northern Broadsides are to stage 'When We Are Married' in the autumn. J.B. Priestley is of course one of this blog's big heroes and I love this play because above all else it is very funny. Bazza has form in playing and directing the self important bourgeois so I am looking forward to this immensely. Lah-di-dah!

And so to the opera. I have been for a bit of bouffe, in the form of an amateur production of Offenbach's 'Orphée aux enfers' by the Leeds Gilbert and Sullivan Society. There are many musical excerpts from opera that have entered the popular consciousness: Nessun Dorma from 'Turandot', the Toreador Song from Carmen, Figaro's aria from 'The Barber of Seville' and many more. But I would wager that this operetta contains the best known; a piece of music that everyone could hum (after a fashion), name (wrongly) and do the dance (badly). These, on the other hand, dance it well:

"If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint', then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced." - Vincent Van Gogh

Your bloggist at work

A bit of a landmark today as I put brush to figure for the first time since August 2012. Some Bavarian infantry for the War of Spanish Succession (my period not of choice) got the honour of having their leatherwork and neckerchiefs added whilst some others received a coat of matt varnish. The world wide web can't seem to agree on uniform colours for the Kurprinz regiment and I therefore chose the one with the splash of red.


On the other hand I didn't like that blue so I went with a lighter one. As Nietzsche said "there are no facts, only interpretations".