Waiting for news

At 10.00am this morning I was supposed to be having a telephone conversation with a doctor from University Hospital Lewisham about the results of my recent CT scan and blood test. This was arranged so that I didn’t have to go to the hospital and to help them maintain their COVID-19 prevention regime.

It is now just after 10.30am ... and I’m still waiting for the telephone call.

I’m sure that there is a good reason for the delay, but it is not helping Sue and I to remain cool, calm, and collected whilst we sit here waiting. Perhaps no news is good news ... but some news would be better still!

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It is now 11.45am ... and I have just had my telephone consultation with the surgeon who is dealing with my case. It seems that as a precaution, I will have to undergo keyhole surgery at some point before Christmas. I'll explain more once I have had achance to absorb and process all the information I have been given.

At least forty years on ...

Many, many years ago (at least forty!), I decided to refight the Chaco War (1932 to 1935) between Bolivia and Paraguay. To this end I amassed and painted two sizeable armies of 15mm-scale Peter Laing figures ... and they have been sitting in storage pretty well ever since!

Part of the problem was that I had very scant information to go on, and painted the armies in completely the wrong colours! As a result, they saw the light of day only once in a Chaco War battle (the Battle of Nanawa) that I put on at SALUTE in the early 1980s. The figures have been used to portray Russian and Japanese forces during the Russo-Japanese War ... for which their paint schemes were not too inaccurate. By the time I got married in 1982, the figures were in storage, and other than being culled very slightly some year ago, they have remained unused, but no unloved.

To give my regular blog readers some idea about how big the collection is, here are some photographs of it in its REALLY USEFUL BOXES storage trays:

You will not that the collection included three very badly scratch built Vickers 6-ton tanks. (They were made using the bottom half of Airfix Bren Gun carriers and bits of scrap plastic I had to hand.)

I 'found' the collection during a bit of a sort out over the weekend, and I've been mulling over what to do with it. I could put it all back into storage (which seems a bit of a pity) or I could sort some of the figures out and fight a campaign with them. The latter does appeal to me, and even though it is not currently on my list of short-term goals, it would be a waste not to use them. After all, they've been sitting in storage for the best part of forty years waiting for their big day to come ... and it would be a shame to disappoint them!

(I know that toy soldiers are inanimate objects with no feelings, but ...)

Achieving my goals

Just over a fortnight ago, I set myself a couple of short-term goals. These were:

• Organise some more of the figures and equipment in my Eastern Front/Great Patriotic War collection into ‘formations in boxes’
• Complete the text of THE PORTABLE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY WARGAME book

I didn't set myself a specific timescale to achieve these aims, but I hoped that I could achieve them in about three weeks.

As regular blog readers will know, I am well on my way to achieving the second of these, and I am awaiting the feedback from one of the contributors before I can complete the text of the book. Whilst I have been waiting, I have managed to achieve the first, and here are the results:

4th Rifle Division

5th Rifle Division

6th Rifle Division

At present, this Rifle Division is made up of Worker's Militia units, and lacks any artillery or anti-tank assets.

Corps/Army Artillery assets

More artillery units will be added in due course, and this should allow me to create at least two Artillery Divisions.

A different sort of Remembrance Sunday

For the first time in my life, there will be no large Remembrance Sunday parade at the Cenotaph in Westminster. In fact, due to the various COVID-19 restrictions in place across the UK, the ceremonies traditionally associated with this day will be muted.

In some ways, this seems to be appropriate considering the situation we currently find ourselves in. We are at war with this virus, and the country needs to be on a war footing if we are going to win. Being in lockdown or living under restrictions is irksome ... and getting more so the longer it goes on. However, the alternative is worse. The prospect of the NHS being overwhelmed - and the death rate rising - is unacceptable ... so we have to learn to live with the restrictions just like our forbears had to live with far greater restrictions in order to win their wars.

I’m hoping that besides remembering the dead of the two World Wars and the other conflicts of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, today we will be able to remember those who are in the frontline in the current war against COVID-19, some of whom have paid the ultimate price. I‘m not just including the people working in the NHS, but also those who are supplying food and essential services, everyone working to care for the elderly and vulnerable, the members of the emergency, transport, and armed services, the scientists striving to find a cure or treatment for the virus, the country’s educators, and those who are providing these people with support. If I’ve missed anyone else who is working to help defeat the virus and its effects, it is an error of omission rather than commission, for which I apologise.

I hope that next year we will see a return to a traditional Remembrance Day parade, and that our leaders decide to include representatives of those who have helped to defeat COVID-19 within the ranks of the people who take part in the march past.

Going round in circles

I have had feedback from two of the contributors to THE PORTABLE PIKE & SHOT WARGAME book, and I have made the necessary changes to the draft text. Whilst waiting for the final feedback to arrive, I thought that I’d begin to design the various editions of the book.

That is when my problems began.

Previously, the process used by Lulu.com was slow but I understood the logic behind it. Now it is tedious and pedantic ... and distinctly un-user-friendly. I seem unable to set out the cover the way I want it to look, and when I make a change to the design, it either refuses to let me see the changes I’ve made or flatly refuses to implement the changes.

Furthermore, when I think that I can move on to the next stage of the process, I get an error message to the effect that I’ve missed out or not completed an earlier stage, and cannot go on until I’ve dealt with my omission ... even though I cannot work out what I’ve missed!

Part of the problem seems to be to do with the mechanism that calculates the cost of printing a book. I select the book's size (e.g. A5, US Trade), whether I want it to be printed in black & white or colour, and the type of binding (e.g. hardback, paperback) I want to use ... and then a little animated circle goes round and round for a time ... then it stops ... and nothing has been calculated. This then either blocks further progress or allows me to carry on adding more information about the book ... but then an error message appears and it sends me back to where I started!

The obvious course of action is to walk away from the problem, and to find another self publisher ... but I am rather pig-headed and stubborn, and don't like getting beaten by a piece of software. Luckily, I currently have free time to try to solve this situation (it's one positive aspect of the lockdown!) and I'm going to persist until I throw the PC out of the window!

A dangerous and known malicious website

I have had several reports that Norton is reporting that my blog is a ‘dangerous website’ and ‘known malicious website’.

As soon as I got the first report, I ‘swept’ my blog with my antivirus and anti malware software ... and found nothing wrong. I then tried logging on to my blog using my PC (which has McAfee antivirus software) and laptop (which AVG antivirus software), and neither showed any warning message.

All I can assume is that either there is something on my blog that my antivirus software is not picking up or that Norton has some sort of problem with Google’s Blogger software.

All this has come on a day when my blog has been swamped by spam messages, even though I have activated captcha word verification under the comments 'Settings'. These are deleted and never published, but are a monumental waste of time ... and positively irritating!

Work on the Portable Pike & Shot Wargame book continues

I managed to finish the text of the book and sent if off to be proof read by the contributors ... and they have already begun to give me their feedback. They have spotted a few changes that have to be made, and one has suggested reordering the chapters into a more chronological order. This makes perfect sense, and I will be looking at doing that later today.

The book was a bit bare (other than for some maps and a few line drawings) but I am now in a position to include some photographs, courtesy of the contributors and David Crook. He has kindly taken some of his newly-arrived 28mm-scale WoFun printed plexiglass figures ... and as the following photograph shows, mighty fine they look.

Now that the UK has moved into its second national lockdown of the year, I hope to accelerate work on this latest book so that it can be published before Christmas.

Nugget 330

I will be collecting the latest issue of THE NUGGET from the printer later this morning, and hope to post it out to members of Wargame Developments later today.

I have uploaded the PDF version to the Wargame Developments website, and it can be downloaded and read online using the password that was sent to all members when they resubscribed.

IMPORTANT: Please note that this is the third issue of THE NUGGET to be published for the 2020-2021 subscription year. If you have not yet re-subscribed, a reminder was sent to you. 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.

Went the day well?

I had to be at University Hospital Lewisham by 9.00am on Monday morning, so Sue and I booked a cab to pick us up from home at 8.00am. It was ten minutes late arriving due to the rush hour traffic ... and matters did no improve during our journey to the hospital. In fact, it took us an hour to travel under five and a half miles. Luckily, I was able to telephone the CT Department to tell them I was going to be late, and they were able to adjust the schedule to fit me in.

Having arrived at the CT Department, I was fitted with a cannula and given a litre of disclosing fluid to drink. This fluid lines the walls of the digestive system so that it is easier to see on the CT image, but it takes an hour to drink and leaves a metallic aftertaste in the mouth. Once the hour was up, I was taken to the room that houses the CT scanner. The actual process of scanning took less than ten minutes, and was rather like lying in bed on your back, with your hands above your head, whilst an underground train rumbles past.

After having the cannula removed (it had been used to feed a dye into my bloodstream during the scan), I then had to go to a separate department so that a blood sample could be taken. By this time it was just after 11.00am, and Sue and I decided to walk to the nearest cab rank to find a taxi to take us home. The traffic was much lighter than it had been during the rush hour, and we were home a little after 11.30am.

All-in-all, the day went quite well, and I should get the results - and know what treatment I will have to undertake - on Thursday or Friday.

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The title I chose for this blog post comes from FOUR EPITAPHS, by John Maxwell Edmonds:

‘Went the day well?

We died, and never knew.

But, well or ill,

Freedom, we died for you.'

It was published in THE TIMES on 8th February 1918, and is sometimes confused with his later Kohima Epitaph:

‘When you go home, tell them of us,

That for your tomorrow, We gave our today.’

The title was also given to the excellent 1942 film about an English village that is seized by a group of German Fallschirmjagers in preparation for an invasion, and how the locals resist and eventually overcome the invaders.

It is a film that I never tire of watching (much to Sue's dismay!), even though I read the book and saw the similar film THE EAGLE HAS LANDED well before I saw WENT THE DAY WELL? on TV.

A change of name

Over the past few days, I have been working quite solidly on the next book in the PORTABLE WARGAME series, and after giving it some serious thought, I have decided to change the name from THE PORTABLE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY WARGAME to THE PORTABLE PIKE & SHOT WARGAME. I think that this better describes the sort of wargames users will want to use the rules to fight ... and probably makes it slightly more appealing to the average wargamer.

To give regular blog readers some idea of what the book covers, here is an image of the current Contents page:

I hope to write the chapter about the Battle of Sedgemoor today so that I can send it off for proof reading by Wednesday.