The Corner Conundrum

 I have come across a new resource for horse and musket siege warfare. Among other things it has some nifty animated diagrams to explain why bastions were needed and why they were the shapes that they were. When it comes to saps though, it would appear that they are drawing on the same source material as everyone else. Duffy is clear that, other than in unusual circumstances, saps only had one side, which still leaves open the question of how to represent the corners. If one was to take the sensible option and simply delineate the trench with suitable rectangles then it would look like this:

If one replaces those with the saps that I have moulded (and you will note that I haven't got round to casting any more) you get this, which looks completely wrong because it is completely wrong:

A more 'correct' layout would be something like this, which isn't remotely aesthetically satisfying:

The problem is, obviously enough, that you can't see the trench. I do have some ideas, the one which I favour the most being to include a tiny model Phil Harding using his trowel to point out the edge line to an even more tiny model Tony Robinson. Failing that, I have one or two other possible solutions in mind, and shall report back.

Die Frist ist um

And so to the opera. Leeds Town Hall is sold out and rammed, it's the hottest day for years, and we're facing two and half hours straight through Wagner's The Flying Dutchman with no interval. But, fortified by a last gasp pint of Tetley's I made it somehow. So, thankfully, did the singers, conductor and orchestra.

It was, as one would expect, simply excellent. The cinematic semi-staging works even better for this than for the Ring and the title character's costume wouldn't have looked out of place in a fully staged version - or in a Disney cartoon come to that. I did wonder why the Helmsman had come dressed like Phil Harding from Time Team, but the influence of television is everywhere these days. Anyway, the chorus and band - the foundation of Opera North's success - were on fire.

As usual with opera one is faced with the question of what on earth it's about. I lean to a theme of Marxist alienation. Die Hollander himself represents wage slaves in the twenty first century, doomed to be tossed about by the storms of the capitalist crisis, unable to find a safe harbour but still naively believing that security, stability and a home can be his one day. Is it a coincidence that he sings 'Die Frist ist um' at the same time as the Germans say exactly that to the Greeks?