A skirmish...

... beckons. I've been idle on the toy soldier front of late, but this evening I finished off two small groups of antagonists:

A few Milice to join those already painted a while ago - see the earlier creeping around posts. While, under the command of 'Hairy Pierre':

French resistants.  I've now got about a dozen or so of each, so I think I might try out Too Fat Lardies' Through the Mud and the Blood rules as they applied them to interwar fighting (Irish Independence, Red Revolution on the Ruhr etc) in their supplement, Triumph of the Will. Now that my seed potatoes have been chitted and planted, and it looks as if might, possibly, become a tad warmer, I could use the long, but narrow, shelf in my shed to run a Triumph of the Will style ambush scenario with Milice and Resistance.

Talking of warmth, and the lack of it here in Mercia, England, my garden seems to be about three or four weeks behind, and only today did the bright, but weak sun tempt out these tulips:

And, speaking of tulips, I'm currently enjoying this marvellous piece of middlebrow (I gave up on 'highbrow' when I stopped being a yoof) literature:

It's a 1952 English translation of a hugely successful novel that came out in the Netherlands just ten days before the German invasion in 1940. It's title in Dutch was/is, Hollands Glorie, and although it is a tale of deep sea tug boats in the early 20th century, the obvious link to Holland's golden age of sea exploration and power (until the rise of England - after the Dutch had given us a few surprises!) made the book a patriotic best seller in 1940, with 300,000 copies shifted. Anyway, a good read for a middle aged bloke whose 'sea going' exploits have largely been confined to the ferry across the Mersey.

Another enjoyable read at the moment is this one:

As recommended by Springinsfeld - I can see why his father enjoyed it. A gentle tale of escapism from the early 1930s - the office worker finds freedom. It still resonates - although I do wish Mr Finchley would stop lighting his pipe of tobacco...