'I come across the desert...

... to greet you with a smile/My camel is so tired, it's hardly worth my while'. If you remember that, you've got grey hair, or no hair. The Mahdi's mad chaps are finished:

Cue much unearthly howling (uluating ? Is that the word?), headlong rushing at amazing speeds, and much swearing from Jolly Jack Tars, hard-bitten soldiery, and, one presumes, from Tarboosh wearing fellows.

All I need to do now is make some special bits of scenery, and a game of Peter Pig's/RFCM's 'Patrols' will be a big step nearer.

If you haven't read it, the book on the right, A Good Dusting, is well worth spending time on. And if one wants to mess with history and its 'meaning', then there are lessons there - British chaps drawn into a lot of very nasty fighting in a nasty place for no good reason other than an ally (in our case a very powerful one, in the old case, a weak, but important one) wanting British chaps be there. If that makes any sense.