An interesting day … of sorts

Today has been a day of fits and starts. It started with a visit to the local cash-and-carry to buy lots of bulk items for the home (toilet rolls, kitchen towels, washing liquid etc.) followed by a trip to the bank to pay some money into the company account.

When I got home the post was being delivered, and amongst it was this year’s edition of WARSHIP. This annual is published by Conway, and has been going for thirty one years. I have a complete set on my bookshelves, and they are resource that I frequently consult.

This year’s annual includes the following articles:

• Fuelling the Victorian Steam Navy
• The Royal Navy and the evolution of the ‘True Submarine’, 1945 – 1963
• Italian Coastal Forces: Development, Doctrine & Campaigns 1934 – 1986
• Monarch and Captain
• The Training Ship Jadran
• Ise and Hyuga: The IJN’s hybrid Battleship-Carriers
• The Soviet Light Cruisers of the Kirov class
• A shipyard at war: John brown & Co. Ltd., Clydebank, 1914 – 1918
• Mutsu: An exploration of the circumstances surrounding her loss
• Weather and Warship Casualties 1943 – 1944
• Warship Notes
• Naval Books of the Year
• Warship Gallery

After having a quick look through the book I made some lunch, after which I watched my newly acquired DVD of VALKYRIE. My wife and I had intended to see this film when it came out as part of my birthday celebrations, but it did not stay on general release for more than a couple of weeks at my local cinema and I missed it. She therefore bought it for me when it was recently released on DVD.

Whilst it is not a great film, it is a very worthy film, and in my opinion it is worth seeing. The film makers seemed to have taken great pains to get things ‘right’, even down to casting actors who bore a more than reasonable resemblance to the people they were playing. The problem is that I knew that they were going to fail, and unlike DAY OF THE JACKAL (the original one, not the later Bruce Willis remake) where I also knew the assassin was going to fail, I could not suspend my belief and think that they could succeed.

And finally … I have managed to do some redrafting of my latest rules. They are not quite finished yet, but with luck they should be completed tomorrow. I will then make them available as a PDF, along with an explanation of the changes I have made.