My weekend didn’t quite go as planned.

I had plans for the past weekend, but in the end, they pretty well came to nought.

It started on Saturday morning. I had planned to spend Saturday sorting out which bits of my Eastern Front/Great Patriotic War collection needed to be worked on first, but over breakfast my wife told me that she wanted us to go the the local branch of Lidl to buy a double air fryer that was on special offer. In the end our ‘quick’ shopping trip turned into something altogether different, and we ended up leaving Lidl with a trolley full of stuff … including the double air fryer.

By the time we had unpacked everything that we had bought and installed the new air fryer in place of our old one, it was time for lunch. After lunch I spent an hour and a half labelling the envelopes that THE NUGGET will be posted out in, fixing second class stamps to those going to UK addresses, and then putting copies of the latest issue on the magazine into them. By then it was time to do some gardening I had promised to do, and it wasn’t until the late afternoon that I began sorting out my Eastern Front/Great Patriotic War collection.

I’d been working on this for about an hour when the doorbell went, and a courier delivered a book about the armies of the Risorgimento that had been sent to me by Arthur Harman. As a result I spent the rest of the afternoon reading the book (which I will review in due course) and did not return to my planned task.

On Sunday morning I attended an online meeting of the Wargame Developments committee, where the details of the forthcoming COW2023 (Conference of Wargamers) were finalised. As soon as my part had ended, I made my apologies and took Sue to Severndroog Castle, where a producer's market was due to take place. We parked our car on Shooters Hill and walked through Oxleas and Castle Woods to the Castle ... only to find that the market appeared to have been cancelled. This rather threw our plans for the day into some disarray as we had expected to buy lunch from one of the market stalls. As a result, we drove to Welling and bought lunch there.

By the time we had eaten, done some shopping, and returned home, it was already after 1.00pm. I still needed to complete some of the gardening tasks I had promised to do over the weekend, and these took me just over thirty minutes, by which time I was in need of a refreshing drink and a sit down. (I'm not as young as I used to be, and working in the garden on a warm day rather takes it out of me!)

The 'short' break for refreshment and a rest turned into a doze, and by the time I woke up, the early afternoon had slipped by and I decided that I really ought to do some of my planned sorting out. However, when I got up to my toy/wargame room on the top floor of our house, it was very hot, and even with the windows open and the fan going I only managed to stick at it for about thirty minutes, by which time I was in need of another drink.

Whilst I had been upstairs, Sue had been finishing off the online check-in for our next cruise, and before I could return downstairs, she called me on our internal phoneline and asked me to log on and print off our boarding passes and luggage labels. This took longer than expected because the printer need to have a new colour ink cartridge installed. I eventually completed this 'simple' task and made my way downstairs ... by which time it was almost time for afternoon tea. For once, afternoon tea did not comprise tea and cakes: instead, Sue and I each had a large bowl of fruit salad. It was very refreshing and a lot healthier.

All the time I had been gardening and sorting out the inkjet printer, I kept thinking about the contents of the book Arthur Harman had sent me. The uniforms were from that period when the Napoleonic shako-and-tailcoat style had gradually evolved into the kepi or helmet and jacket style of the late ninetieth and early twentieth century. Not quite the same as those of the Belle Époque, but not all that different ... and I kept thinking about the RISK figures that I had bought to photograph for THE SECOND PORTABLE WARGAME COMPENDIUM.

The replacement RISK figures that I bought from the United States. They are approximately 15mm scale and are made of hard plastic.

Mark Cordone had used these figures to create some very nice armies and it struck me that I could copy his example ...

Mark Cordone's Waterloo French Army. © Mark Cordone.

Mark Cordone's Waterloo Anglo-Dutch/Allied Army. © Mark Cordone.

Mark Cordone's Waterloo Prussian Army. © Mark Cordone.

The end result of all of this is that I have yet to make very much progress in sorting out my Eastern Front/Great Patriotic War collection and I am in danger of being diverted towards working on a new project. In other words, I'm experiencing a typical wargamer's dilemma!