As in the old saw, 'send three and fourpence, we're going to a dance'. Or to the uninitiated, the garbled comms that should have been understood as 'send reinforcements, we're going to advance'.
But, my 42s project got some reinforcements today, in the shape of Irregular's interesting generic 19th Century armed civilians:
I based them this evening, and admired them. This will be a very useful little unit, and I'm sure the figures could find a home in many a table top war, for example, with those tall 'round hats' they would do very nicely as War of 1812 Upper Canada militia.
As part of the great migration to my shed, I have come across all sorts of half forgotten bits of kit from the past. Look at this:
Only slightly damaged, one of the classic Airfix standbys - the Foreign Legion fort. A bit of work and it will be better than new. I don't have any 20mm Foreign Legion chappies, nor angry desert fellows, but it could well do for a combined Egyptian/British sorting out the Mad Mahdi type scenario. As an aside, not so long ago our esteemed BBC had a piece on its web pages about the whole 19th Century Sudan business. Now, I know it is easy to think that the B[ritish] B[roadcasting] C[orporation] is little more than a nest of EU-loving, politically correct, North London (big insult here in Blighty, for overseas readers) vipers, but the piece on the Sudan did make me wonder. What initially caught my eye was the phrase, 'and the Victorians called him the Mahdi'. Er, no, as any wargamer knows, the Victorians called him 'the MAD Mahdi'. Doesn't mean to say he was mad, just that that is what the Victorians called him - it's known as a 'fact'. Then I realised that the piece made no mention of slaves and slaving, and that dear old 'Chinese' Gordon (our, British, version of the Mad Mahdi, but not to be confused with Charlton Heston) was rather set against such horribleness. But, then, perhaps whichever twenty something, Oxford University, English Literature graduate who had written the piece for the said nest of BBC North London vipers, didn't know that the 'Brits' (thanks, IRA) were against that sort of thing by then. The same sort of problem arises when people think about Haile Selassie - the 'Lion of Judah' - they don't know about the slaves. Mind you, the poor old fellow did come to a sticky end, when the revolting Bolsheviks murdered him. They didn't believe in slavery either. Apparently.
Now the question after all that rambling is, does the carbon monoxide alarm work in my wood burning stove bunker paradise? Of course it does! And this evening I was warm as toast, burning bits of wood that I had only today salvaged from a skip:
Sort of 21st Century foraging for firewood.
Nice figures and old fort. Firewood foraging is profoundly satisfying, one of the small pleasures in life.
ReplyDeleteYes - it's the 'little' things like that which bring a remarkably 'deep' feeling of satisfaction. And I might say that I am no hippie. I used to get the same collecting apples from roadside trees - but now I grow me own!
ReplyDeleteYou do, of course, have lots of 20mm Foreign Legionnaires and Arabs - the contents of the boxed set that the fort itself came in! Nat Slater and I wrote some rules for gaming with them about a decade ago or so. Not sure where they are though. I seem to remember them being in a little cardboard box. Which helps so much...
ReplyDelete'a little cardboard box'....mmmmm.....now, do I have one of those, I wonder?
ReplyDeleteI wrote a comment and my phone ate it - suffice to say AlFront, don't ever change!
ReplyDeleteFor a terrible moment there I thought you'd written 'I ate my phone' ! Mind you some phone obsessives might benefit from being made to eat their phones, like the fellow on the train from London to Hobbiton today. Perfectly reasonable one hour phone call, except that every few moments he said 'mate'. Now I know why one can't open the windows of trains anymore...
DeleteI think it will be a terrific unit filled with character.Lovely fort too.
ReplyDeleteSombre clothing though, I think.
DeleteI didn't have the 1/76 Foreign Legionnaires when I was a kid - but I did have the 1/32 ones. The reason I remember - and bring this up - is that the Airfix Arabs were moulded in the most hideous shade of lilac! The putrid purple made me feel physically ill every time I got them out the box!
ReplyDeleteDo like your Canadian militia!
Yes, there was a period (late '70s/early 80s, was it ?) when Airfix used stunningly bad colours - probably induced 'bad trips' in other chaps too, Stephen!
DeleteGreat post, will follow the progress with this one
ReplyDeleteMy thanks, dear fellow. The armed civvies are undercoated and waiting.
Delete1/32 Foreign Legionnaires... cor! A holy grail nowadays!
ReplyDeleteActually, I have to confess, I don't remember the 1/32s. Do Armies in Plastic do Legionnaires? I know they do Arab fellows.
DeleteThey certainly do. They also do two nice 54mm forts, African and N/W Frontier. Unfortunately, their figures are almost completely unpaintable; the plastic bends and sweats horribly even after washing, priming and coating. I suppose this is why they can get away with doing the same set in different colours and selling it as a different unit.
DeleteAh, now that is interesting. Last year, I painted up two boxes of Great War AIP German infantry and a box of Uhlans. As usual, gave them a good scrub in soapy water and then gave them a coat of PVA. But, to my annoyance, the PVA blobbed and refused to cover. I thought that there might be something wrong with the PVA, so I bought a different brand - same result. Needless to say, that rather ruined the finish. I then switched to merely varnishing the unpainted figures prior to painting. That was a better result. I wonder how they are getting on now, though. I'll pop by their barracks and take a look.
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