A long, hard think about my future wargaming

Long ago I discovered that the act of writing down one’s thoughts helped to organise them into something reasonably coherent, and this is what I have done in this blog post. As a result, the following blog post is undoubtedly a bit self-indulgent as it looks at where I have been, where I am, and what I want to do next. No doubt some of my regular blog readers will find it interesting, but if they don’t, I won’t be mortally offended.

In 2020 I was bowling along feeling that as a retired person the world was my oyster. I was enjoying my wargaming and felt that for the first time in my life I had a set of basic rules – the PORTABLE WARGAME rules – that would no doubt provide me with many years of enjoyment. I had loads of projects I could develop as the mood took me, I was a published author, and I owned several sizeable collections of toy soldiers in a variety of scales … and then I took a bowel cancer test.

The test indicated that there was the possibility of me having cancer in my digestive tract, and a colonoscopy was duly organised for me. This indicated that I had what looked like a cancerous polyp in my colon and several other polyps that might also be cancerous. After a consultation with a consultant colorectal surgeon it was decided that a short, keyhole procedure was required to remove the affected section of my colon, and I was admitted to University Hospital, Lewisham on Wednesday 2nd December 2020 for said operation. At the time, London was in Tier 2 Lockdown due to the ongoing COVID pandemic, but I wasn’t too worried as I expected to be home by the weekend.

I was admitted to hospital at 7.30am, and by 8.30am I was changed into my gown and waiting to be anaesthetised. This turned out to be somewhat problematic as I was to be given both a local and a general anaesthetic, and – due to my scoliosis – the consultant anaesthetist had problems finding somewhere to inject the local anaesthetic into my lower back. After about thirty minutes they succeeded, and that was the last thing I remembered until I woke up twelve hours later in the High Dependency section of the colorectal surgery unit.

Unknown to me, the keyhole surgery had not been successful. In fact, I had been on the operating table for nine hours! It appears that the removal of the short section of affected colon had gone according to plan, but that when they had tried to reconnect the two sections, it proved impossible. Three attempts were made, at which point the senior consultant colorectal surgeon and consultant anaesthetist decided that the safest option was to open me up and perform a colostomy … which is why, when I did wake up, I had a stoma bag.

I stayed in hospital for a week, during which time I was moved to a single room in the colorectal surgery unit and was shown how to change my stoma bag. I was also given some physiotherapy as my body – and particularly the stomach muscles – had been weakened by the surgery that had been performed on me.

The Christmas of 2020 was only marred by repeated problems with the dressing that I had over my large, T-shaped surgery scar on my lower abdomen. I had been fitted with a special type of dressing – a PICO dressing – that used a small amount of suction to keep it in place, but the pump that maintained the suction kept failing, and after several trips back to the hospital it was removed and replaced by a more traditional dressing. At first, this was replaced on a daily basis by a member of the District Nursing team but eventually they passed me over to the Nurse Practitioner at my local GP practice, who changed it three times, then twice, and finally once a week as the wound began to heal. Whilst this was happening, London had moved from Tier 3 to Tier 4 and finally into Full Lockdown.

A few further complications arose during this period. My wound got infected twice, and on both occasions, I had to take a course of antibiotics to help clear it. The wound had finally healed by Friday 5th March 2021, and although I found the stoma inconvenient, it was something that I had learned to live with. (I had been told just after the operation that the procedure might be reversible, but by March it was becoming obvious that this wasn’t very likely.)

The lockdown finally ended in July 2021, and I hoped that my life would eventually return to something approaching normal. Unfortunately this was not to be.

As 2021 became 2022, my health continued to give me cause for concern. I had been warned that the surgery I had undergone might affect me in a number of ways, and it became apparent that my urinary system was not functioning as it should. I spoke to my GP, and he decided that the matter needed further investigation. On Friday 4th March 2022 I had an ultrasound scan on my bladder at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Woolwich. As a result of the scan I was asked to attend a meeting with the consultant urologist at the hospital on Wednesday 23rd March … and she admitted me as an emergency then and there!

It transpired that I had developed a partial blockage in my prostate, and this was causing urine to back up in my system to such an extent that my kidneys were on the verge of rupturing. I was kept in hospital for a week, during which time I was fitted with a catheter and my system was allowed to recover.

I returned home with both a catheter and my stoma bag, and I must admit that at times I found it rather difficult to think positively about the future. I had begun to feel old and infirm – especially when trying to climb stairs – and the debilitating effect of the situation on my physical stamina was very hard to cope with.

On Thursday 14th April I was officially diagnosed as having prostate cancer, and on 19th of that month I began the treatment that was designed to halt its further growth and spread. A colonoscopy on Friday 29th April confirmed that I had no cancer in my colon or bowel and a bone scan on 12th May showed that the cancer had not spread to my skeleton.

On 1st June 2022 I underwent a TURP (Transurethral resection of the prostate) at University Hospital Lewisham and was allowed home the next day. This procedure meant that I no longer had to wear the catheter and I was also able to urinate normally, although this remained more than a bit painful for some months to follow.

The consultant oncologist who was overseeing the treatment for my prostate cancer was happy that the TURP and my ongoing course of chemotherapy drugs had stopped the growth of my cancer but was concerned that it had spread to two nearby lymph nodes. He was also concerned that my thyroid was not functioning properly, and an ongoing course of Levothyroxine was prescribed.

The spread of the prostate cancer to the lymph nodes was confirmed by MRI and CT scans, and I was referred to the Guy’s Hospital Radiotherapy Unit at Queen Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup. I was initially seen by the consultant radiologist at the unit on Monday 14th November 2022, when the processes involved in radiotherapy treatment were explained to me. I saw them again on Monday 16th January 2022, and finally on Monday 31st July 2023, at which point I was told that my treatment would begin within a month. I then had several appointments at Guy’s Hospitals Cancer Care Unit during August 2023 in preparation for my radiotherapy, and it was at this point that I was informed that I would be undergoing thirty-seven treatment sessions.

My treatment began on Thursday 31st August 2022 (it should have begun on Tuesday 29th August but one of the linear accelerators was being serviced) and nine weeks later – on Monday 23rd October – they came to an end. As yet, the success or otherwise of this treatment has to be determined, but the results should be known by the end of January 2024.

The last three years have drained me emotionally and physically, and I seem to have very little physical stamina these days. I am – however – slowly beginning to recover, and I try to walk at least a mile each day. My ability to concentrate has begun to improve, and over recent weeks I have begun to feel far more positive.

The effect of the above has been to make me re-examine my future. My doctors tell me that if the treatment has been successful – and they gave me no expectation that it would not be – and I continue to take the cancer drugs that I am on, I have at least another ten years of life ahead of me. So, how do I hope to fill those next ten years?

To answer that question, I have to look at where I am with regard to life in general and wargaming in particular.

First and foremost, it has become apparent that our present house is no longer suitable to meet my needs. Climbing the stairs has become a major problem that has not been helped by the arthritis in my knees and feet and the surgery to my abdomen. Sue and I have therefore taken the decision that, once life has become a little more settled, we will move to somewhere that will be more suitable, such as a bungalow or to a two-storey house with a straight staircase that we can have fitted with a chairlift.

I had already begun to downsize my wargame collections after my colostomy. This was partially due to the realisation that I just had too much stuff to use and store and partially because I had already realised that at some point in the future Sue and I were going to have to move house … and our new home was likely to be smaller than our existing one.

So far I have divested myself of my entire 15mm Axis and Allies Miniatures collection, almost all of my 15mm Peter Laing figures, all of my painted 30mm British and French Napoleonic figures, and a large number of books and unmade model kits. What I have left is my 15mm Belle Époque imagi-nation collection, the 15mm Colonial figures I had painted some twenty years ago for my Mankanika, Dammallia, and Marzibar campaigns, a large number of 20mm Eastern Front/Great Patriotic War figures, vehicles, and aircraft, and my 25/28mm pre-painted Del Prado Napoleonic collection. None of these collections is by anyway totally complete, but even incomplete I have enough to keep me going for many years. That said, the last two could easily be rationalised and the second could be rebased so that it is compatible with the Belle Époque collection.

To help me to assess what further downsizing I can undertake, I have looked back over the past three years to see what has given me the greatest wargaming pleasure and to use that as a guide to the choices I will make.

So, what has given me the greatest pleasure? In no particular order, the answers are as follows:

• The Franco-Prussian War of 1810 Napoleonic Campaign that I fought online with my good friend Professor Gary Sheffield. The simple campaign system I devised using the game board/map from Waddington’s old CAMPAIGN game and the Fast-Play 3 x 3 Portable Napoleonic Wargame rules that we used made it possible to fight a fun campaign with lots of battles and minimal recordkeeping.
• Developing my Belle Époque imagi-nation collection. As I get older, I seem to be drawn more and more to the period of history when the European empires were at their height, both within Europe as well as in Africa and Asia. If one can distance oneself by making these imagi-nations (or should that be imagi-empires?), it becomes easier to circumvent the more unsavoury aspects of the period. The period also appeals because the technology that was used was basically similar across the powerful nations, thus making it possible to write relatively simple wargame rules that will give me enjoyable battles and campaigns to fight.
• Rebasing my Eastern Front/Great Patriotic War collection. I began this project during the long COVID lockdown, and it was part of an unfulfilled ambition to emulate Lionel Tarr’s the long-running campaign. In fact, I think that I have nearly as much in the way of figures etc., that he had … and I still have boxes and boxes of figures and models that remain to be renovated, painted, or based. Truth be told, I could probably dispose of at least 50% of what remains and still have more than enough to last me a lifetime.
• Building my 009 narrow gauge model railway. This has been a long-standing ambition and has almost come to fruition. Although it is not directly a wargaming project, it draws heavily upon what I have learned as a wargamer (e.g. terrain modelling skills and extrapolating from historical examples to create reasonably realistic backstory) and has given me many hours of enjoyment.
• Helping other wargamers to develop their own versions of the PORTABLE WARGAME system. This is partially down to my having been a teacher. I always wanted my students to ‘get it’ and to then make the knowledge they had gained their own … and this has certainly happened with the PORTABLE WARGAME.
• Discovering SHAMBATTLE and developing the concept so that it worked with the PORTABLE WARGAME rules. This is the most recent of the above and – to my mind – has lots of potential.

I have been mulling what my future wargaming priorities should be for some time. Until very recently I was still very undecided … and then I read an obituary about the late John Ruddle’s garden wargaming, and things began to fall into place.

In the obituary, the wargaming part of John’s garden was described as being L-shaped, with a long left-hand border that was split into Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, and Italy. At right-angles to this and across the bottom of the garden were sections that represented Africa and the Northwest Frontier of India. At the join of the two section was Turkey, and the lawn represented the oceans. My immediate reaction was ‘I’d love to do something like that, but my garden isn’t suitable.’ However, after some thought, I decided that an indoor version of something like it might be possible.

My current thinking is along the lines that I could create a terrain board for each of my Belle Époque imagi-nations using the game board/map from Waddington’s CAMPAIGN game as a guide. These terrain boards could be stored in my future wargame/toy room and be brought out and used as and when required. It would allow me to exercise my terrain modelling skills (something that I have recently rediscovered and that I really do enjoy!) and become the basis of an imaginary wargaming world where nations – both large and small – are constantly vying with each other.

If I were to go down this route, my Eastern Front/Great Patriotic War and Napoleonic collections would be relegated to being second rank collections, but as they are probably going to be downsized anyway and my Belle Époque collection plus a few other bits and pieces that I have in storage are probably big enough for project I have outlined, it answers some of the conundrums I have been facing.

Having written all this, I have yet to make a firm decision, but it is a plan of sorts, and it will give me hours of fun just thinking about it. Will it come to fruition, or will I change my mind? I have no idea, but whatever happens, you can bet your bottom dollar that I’ll blog about it!