Another day, another hospital …

Yesterday I had yet another hospital appointment, this time at the Guy’s Cancer Centre at Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup, Kent. The Centre opened in mid 2017 and has two new linear accelerator machines for radiotherapy treatment, fourteen chemotherapy treatment chairs, and the Dimbleby Macmillan Support Centre.

I was expecting to have a face-to-face meeting with the oncologist to see if I am suitable for radiotherapy, but due to an admin mixup, I had to have a telephone consultation.

This wasn’t as bad as it sounds, as the Centre organised it to take place in a private office using a loudspeaker phone so that Sue – who had accompanied me – could also take part. As a result, I will be having another MRI scan in the near future to help the oncologist make his assessment.

In the meantime, I will be referred to a dietician to help me lose weight as my current BMI is too high for radiotherapy to be effective. I am also being put on a course of treatment to correct my under-active thyroid as this may be contributing to my recent weight gain as well as exacerbating some of the side effects of my existing hormone treatment.

Things are still moving forward, and with luck I will be able to undertake a course of radiotherapy in the not-too-distant future.

Back home

A couple of hours ago, Sue and I got back from a cruise to Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. We really needed a break after coping with my health problems for nearly eight months, and although we have arrived home feeling rather tired (we had to get up at 6.30am to be ready to disembark at 8.00am), we both feel much more relaxed and ready to deal with what life throws at us over then few months.

On Monday I have an appointment with an oncology radiotherapist to be assessed as to whether or not they think that radiotherapy will be the best way to deal with the cancer that is in my lymph nodes now that my prostate cancer is pretty well dormant. If they do opt for this treatment, I may well have to undergo radiotherapy five days a week for four to eight weeks, and this will dominate my life whilst it takes place …so I’ll carry on blogging as best I can, when I can. In the meantime, I have two-weeks-worth of other people’s blogs the read (thank God for a Feedly!) as well of loads of other things to catch up with!

PS. I will be writing a ‘I have been to’ blog post as soon as I can as well as two photo reports of the military museums in Coruna and Cartagena.

More additions to my Axis & Allies Miniatures collection

I have been making the occasional foray onto eBay in the search of extra bits and pieces for my burgeoning collection of Axis & Allies Miniatures, and here are the most recent additions:

They fill a few gaps and expand a couple of others. When I am feeling a bit better, I hope to start pushing them around on the tabletop as I have several ideas as to how to use them either for fighting World War II PORTABLE WARGAME battles or for developing a second edition of HEXBLITZ.

Making my 10cm hill, river, and road terrain squares

I made my hill terrain squares using pre-cut 2.5mm-thick 10cm plywood squares, brown felt, PVA glue, Araldite two-part epoxy resin glue, and thick cork sheets (in my case, IKEA cork pot stands).

I made some brown felt covered terrain squares using the method outlined in my previous blog post but did not seal the felt using PVA. Instead I glued a smoothed or rough-edged piece of cork to the top of each terrain square using Aradite epoxy resin glue. These were held in place using a number of heavy objects whilst the epoxy glue cured.

I then glued suitably trimmed pieces of brown felt to the top of each hill, and when the PVA glue was dry, I sealed the whole terrain squares using a coat of PVA glue.

The river and road terrain squares were standard green terrain squares on which were painted 3cm-wide rivers or roads using craft acrylic paint, cerulean blue for the rivers and yellow ochre for the roads. Each river and road entered and left the terrain squares in the centre of a square’s side.

A 3 x 3 grid made up of various 10cm hill, river, and road terrain squares.

Making my basic 10cm terrain squares

Over the past weeks I have been making a number of 10cm terrain squares. I began by buying a number of pre-cut 2.5mm-thick 10cm plywood squares online from Belle Vous and pieces of A4-sized green felt from Hobbycraft.

To glue the plywood squares to the felt, I ‘painted’ a very liberal coat of PVA glue onto each square, which I then placed glue side down onto the felt. I used a variety of heavy objects to press each square firmly into the plywood and to hold them in place until the glue was thoroughly dry.

I then cut around each square using a rotary cutting tool.

I then sealed the edge of each square with PVA glue, and once that had dried, I did the same to the back of each square. (This also helps to reduce the amount of warping that inevitably takes place.

I then finished off the basic green terrain square by sealing the felt side of the terrain square with a coat of PVA glue.

The East Africa Campaign 1914-18: Von Lettow Vorbeck’s Masterpiece

In yet another example of apparent synchronicity, a copy of David Smith’s THE EAST AFRICAN CAMPAIGN 1914-18: VON LETTOW VORBECK’S MASTERPIECE was delivered. This campaign was one of the main inspirations for Eric Knowles’s Madasahatta Campaign and coming so soon after Carl Luxford’s wonderful gift of Askaris, Arabs, and African Colonial figures, I have an urge to set up and fight a mini-campaign set somewhere in a mythical version of Africa.

The book nine sections and an index:

• Origins of the Campaign
• Chronology
• Opposing Commanders
• British
• German
• South African
• Opposing Forces
• Orders of Battle
• Opposing Plans
• The East African Campaign
• Part I: The British offensive
• Part II: The railway war
• Part III: The South African offensive
• Part IV: The Germans withdraw
• Part V: The final stage
• Aftermath
• The battlefield today
• Further reading
• Index

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THE EAST AFRICAN CAMPAIGN 1914-18: VON LETTOW VORBECK’S MASTERPIECE was written by David Smith, illustrated by Graham Turner, and published in 2022 by Osprey Publishing as No.379 in their Campaign series (ISBN 978 1 4728 4891 8).

Napoleon's War: The 100 Days

As I have written many times before, it took me a long time to get really interested in the Napoleonic era, and after several failed attempts to put a figure collection together, it wasn't until Del Prado published their WATERLOO LIVE series of magazines and associated 25/28mm figures that I finally began to put a proper collection together.

Once the bug had bitten, I continued to acquire more figures and a few relevant board games, and now I have added a copy of NAPOLEON'S WAR: THE 100 DAYS to my collection.

I did this on the recommendation of David Crook, and to be frank, it was not cheap (a nearly new copy cost me just under £60.00) ... but now that it has arrived and I have unpacked it, I think that I certainly got my money's worth!

The game includes:

• 120 plastic figures in three colours (red, blue, and grey to represent the Anglo-Dutch, French, and Prussian armies)
• 1 Counter Sheet
• 4 Gameboards (one each for Wavre, Ligny, Quatre Bras, and Waterloo)
• A book of rules
• Two D6 dice

The figures are very reminiscent of those found in some of the more recent versions of RISK, and the figures (which all seem to be wearing British Army uniforms) are about 12mm.

I am looking forward to playing the battles featured in the game, and now that I have a copy, it may well be possible to fight a remote face-to-face one with David Crook.

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NAPOLEON'S WAR: THE 100 DAYS was designed by Grant and Mike Wylie and produced by Worthington Games in 2010.

Nugget 348

I collected the latest issue of THE NUGGET on Thursday, and I will post it out to members later today. In the meantime, members can read this issue online.

IMPORTANT: Please note that this is the third issue of THE NUGGET to be published for the 2022-2023 subscription year. If you have not yet re-subscribed, a reminder was sent to you some time ago. If you wish to re-subscribe using the PayPal option on the relevant page of the website, you can use the existing buttons as the subscription cost has not changed.

A wonderful gift

Yesterday I mentioned that Carl Luxford paid me an all too fleeting visit to give me a gift. It consisted of a card with a wonderful picture of Whitby on the cover ...

... and a sealed metal box with ‘Hotel Chocolat’ on the lid.

When I opened the card, it contained a ‘Thank You’ for some books that I sent him and included a cryptic message that hinted at what the box contained … and when I opened it, I was gobsmacked! It contained what Carl described as an African Colonial playset … and in my opinion, this was a massive understatement!

As the following photograph shows, the ‘playset’ consisted of a number of Askaris and European officers, native and Arab troops (including cavalry), and native bearers. They are all beautifully painted and based … and my first thought was that these figures cry out to be used for a Madasahatta-type game.

Thank you, Carl, for your wonderful gift!

Running to catch up with myself!

After Monday’s day of ‘excitement’, I had hoped that by today life would have settled down to a somewhat more pedestrian pace … but that was not to be!

The courier delivering the fridge was supposed to phone us thirty minutes before he was going to arrive, but the first we knew that he had arrived was a heavy knocking on our front door. (For some reason, he ignored the doorbell.) He deposited it in the kitchen and left me to unpack it and dispose of the packing material.

I had just done this when the front doorbell rang, and our regular postman was there with a pile of post to hand over to me. As I hadn’t seen him for a couple of weeks, I asked him if he had been on holiday … and it turned out that he’d been in hospital for two weeks with a serious chest infection. Apparently, he had suffered intense chest pain and been ‘blue-lighted’ to the local hospital with a suspected heart attack. His heart rate had been over 200, but once they had stabilised him, they discovered that it was being caused by a serious chest infection.

(Our postman is a real character who collects American Civil War memorabilia and books, and we often have a chat about nineteenth century military history. During one of these I discovered that one of his relatives had served with the Berkshire Regiment at the Battle of Maiwand.)

Whilst I was conversing with the postman, our cleaner – whose great uncle was Colour Sergeant (later Lieutenant Colonel) Frank Bourne of Rorke’s Drift fame – arrived, closely followed by one of my regular blog readers, Carl Luxford from Whitby! He is currently visiting relatives in Plumstead and took the opportunity to pop round to drop off a very nice gift for me ... which I hope to write about tomorrow.

Once the fridge was plugged in and working, Sue and I refilled it with the food we had been storing on cool bags. We then paid a hurried visit to Dartford to collect some things that we had ordered and to have a snack lunch.

We got back at 1.30pm ... and I had just enough time for a quick drink and a rest before I got changed and set off to drive to Cheshunt for a meeting of my Masonic Mother Lodge.

My journey to Cheshunt should have taken about an hour, but actually took nearly two thanks to roadworks in the Blackwall Tunnel approach road. I finally got to Cheshunt at 5.15pm, got changed into my regalia, and entered the Temple at 5.25pm. Luckily, I had not missed much, and was able to spend the next ninety minutes watching a candidate Passed to the Second Degree.

After the meeting, we had a drink in the Masonic centre's bar before we went into the dining room to eat our after-meeting meal (which we call the Festive Boad). That finished at 9.00pm, and after saying goodbye to the other attendees, I drove home.

I was home by 10.00pm … and then sat down and wrote this blog post.