Update...

Mao would have approved of this:

Karl Marx may also have approved of it, but I have no intention of entering into arcane debate about whether the 'younger Marx' would have done so more, or less, than the 'older Marx'. However, Marx's son-in-law, Paul Lafargue, would not. Some years ago my brother-in-law, Ken MacLeod, bought me a copy of Lafargue's opus magnus, The Right to be Lazy, and gave it to me with the comment that Lafargue seemed to have taken his own advice to heart and wrote nothing else but his little peon to idleness. I, on the other hand, have not been able to take the Froggie socialist's advice these past months, as in the new, fresh, globalised world of higher education, 'LABOUR IS GLORIOUS'. Well, actually, it's been more of a case that I have been kept from modelling/toy soldierly things by the first two thirds of the Petainist slogan, Travail, Famille, Patrie. Mind you, I suppose I was increasingly stressed as the United Kingdom hung, for a tense week or so, on the apparent abyss, while the Scots (or, at least, those of them in Scotland, if not in the UK), decided on how to vote with regard to the end, or the continuation, of the UK. Happily (from this blog's perspective) it was UK OK. But, on with the updates...

Firstly, I was able to paint up the latest unit for my Maltovia vs Lovitznia conflict. The new regiment, in French style, can be seen on manouevres:

It looks as if it's the end of a long, hard exercise for these chaps.

Secondly, after many a mishap, I finally managed to complete the Roden offering of the Albatros II:

I won't bore you with all the horrors associated with this kit bash, but to give you the flavour of things - having fixed the wings, I promptly dropped a rather heavy bottle of wash onto the thing, smashing three struts...

 But, all is complete, although I have put away another Albatros model that I had thought might make a twin.