Patience is a virtue ... and I’m not feeling very virtuous today!

A week on, and I’m still waiting for Lulu.com’s so-called ‘support’ team to get back to me ... and my patience is almost exhausted.

As a result, I am preparing to experimentally publish a book that I wrote some time ago, but have never published. It is an updated version of my RESTLESS NATIVES rules, which are a non-gridded set of Colonial wargame rules. The book includes scenarios for the Sudan and the Zulu War (the latter were a later addition to the original book), and these could be easily adapted for use with the rules in my PORTABLE COLONIAL WARGAME book.

I am going to use Amazon’s KDP publishing system ... and if the end result is satisfactory, I’ll probably use them to publish THE PORTABLE PIKE & SHOT BOOK.

A lack of progress report!

As of this morning, I still have not had a reply to either of the messages I have sent to Lulu.com's 'Support' team ... which means that I cannot make any progress with publishing THE PORTABLE PIKE & SHOT WARGAME book.

I have now had feedback from all the contributors, and I have a number of photographs and a diagram to add to the text. Once that is done, all I have to do is make a number of final checks, and the text of the book will be ready for publication.

If Lulu.com do not get back to me soon, I will look at moving over to another print and distribution service. There are several front runners for this, of which Amazon's KDP is currently the favourite. The only problem is that they only offer two options for printing and distribution, Kindle electronic book format and colour paperback ... and I'd like to produce a colour hardback edition if that is at all possible. There is a possibility that I might be able to do the latter privately, but the book would be expensive to print and distribute.

Once I have a date for my forthcoming operation, I plan to publish this book before I have to go into hospital so that it will be on sale before Christmas ... so if anyone from Lulu.com is reading this, the countdown has started!

And the news is ...

This morning, I had a conversation with the surgeon who is overseeing my case, and the news is as follows. Of the three polys they removed, one was just a minor lesion scar, one was benign, and the third contained cancerous cells.

As a precaution, they want me to undergo surgery before Christmas to remove the piece of bowel from which they removed the cancer-containing polyp as well as the nearby lymph glands. The operation will be under a general anaesthetic, and will last about four hours. I will then have to spend a week in hospital before I can be discharged. It will then be some time before I am back to what passes for normal, and I will have to take things easy for some time thereafter.

Assuming that everything goes well, I will then go onto a five-year monitoring programme that will involve further colonoscopies and blood tests.

As my regular blog readers can imagine, during my time in hospital (and possible for some time afterwards) I doubt if I will be either able to - or be inclined to - blog, but once I’m back to anything approaching normal, I’ll be back blathering on as usual!

I do have one thing that I want to do before I go in for my operation. I would love to be able to get THE PORTABLE PIKE & SHOT WARGAME book published ... but that will depend upon whether or not Lulu,com can get their act together.

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.