So long England and thanks for everything, good friends, good people, good times,.............

.........,most of the time anyway, I'm going home!


2014 was in all honesty an awful year, depressing job, mounting debts, stress, high blood pressure, England becoming a less pleasant place to live for several reasons, bailiffs, anger, selling figure collection to survive, diabetes suicidal thoughts etc........blah, blah, blah!

So the other half decided that we should sell the house, move to a farm in the Republic of Ireland.........so we have and tomorrow we are!

I won't bore you with the drama of selling a house these days or packing up a man shed but we paid off the debts, bought a needs some work three and a half acre property in Ireland (lock, stock and two smoking barrels) and that was that.........

I'm going to miss England especially the friends I've met, the bloggers, the shows, the games, the best friends, becoming a Reject, the last few years of the eleven and a half years at GSK.............

So I'm off and will be back blogging regularly as soon as I can, painting, planting potatoes and turnips, becoming calmer, being Irish........

Currently still laptop free but using a pad and it can be a fecking nuisance, doing this on friends laptop where I stayed after the sale and transition, painted a lot before finishing work and hope to post in the painting challenge before time runs out, maybe one big post Curt?,.....

See you soon and a bit of cleavage at the end of the pictures as a warning for those who open this at work.............

Good friends, times and people......................

Happy Trails..................

Salute 2014, Loki hard at work, Judge Dredd search, Ray's likeness in a model and my feet and patience are getting too old for these.......

..........shenanigans!

Made my way to Salute this year with some of the Rejects (Postie and Ray) and still another year without purchasing out tickets beforehand (1 hour and 5 minutes in the fecking queue, my feet never recovered), very unprofessional security shouting and herding us like cattle and security supervisor shouting about Salute crew being inefficient and that they should take over the whole thing, the stormtroopers should have taken charge and no Darth Vader this year?

Finally got in and met my friend and work colleague Vinnie (fellow blogger) and everybody split up and would meet again at 1 o'clock for the blogger meet up, not a lot on the list this year some (15mm modern stuff), a bit from Peter Pig and Old Glory (Old Glory had brought their modern range but just not the 2 packs I wanted to buy, no pictures on the site?)

Salute was in a bigger space this year, muggy hot and the lighting of a mad scientists lab (just missing the lightning flashes), no Bring and Buy this year after a heated dispute last year? Some good looking games, some grumpy gamers, camera not working right which I discovered when I got home (most pictures were discarded), muggy hot (I know I mentioned it already but it really was), good people, good fellow bloggers especially Loki who worked like a drunken donkey on the Warbases stand (kind offer too), Mark who presented me with an unpainted unit of 28mm British Legion figures from Orinoco Miniatures from their Wars of Liberation range 1810-1830.

Some of us also got fudge from Clint (very professionally and fairly handed out, nearly as well as I did), we remained until about half four (Ray was afraid he might have missed something or an autograph hunter), all in all not a bad day but easily done on line but we do like to see figures in the flesh sometimes before buying, thanks Old Glory, two other online companies have annoyed me lately too!

Apologies for the pictures,not very good either but the best of a bad bunch, not in any order, some explanations about them from what I could remember........

The free figure is on it's way to Stefan........

The blogger meet up ........

What you see is the fecking other queue with tickets, Salute explained that Excel wouldn't let two queues move at once, Ray spent the whole time talking to a possible new Reject.........

 

Loki had at work, the tall iron grey haired gentlemen in the middle.......

Finally found Judge Dredd, my mate Vinnie who left around two and had been searching for him too asked me to find him and get a picture, I found him around 4!!!!!.......

Dropzone Commander cityscape..........

Some pictures from the painting competition......

One of Kyle's entries.......

Excellent 54mm scale elephant......

Carlist war game........

Lovely lancers or the only picture worth salvaging....

Great Roman game........

Shot down in flames.......

Loved the action of the rocket launchers......

Even better action shot.........

Another of Kyle's works, I must find out how he did......

Modelled on Ray..........

What a true monster spaceship from  Hawk Wargames.....

Really excellent.......

My favourite game, WW2 Sword Beach assault........

These actually downloaded in order........

Frank Herberts "Dune" or The Spice will flow........

Strange red lighting effect inside........

Is that Sting with the red hair......

Great looking Gripping Beast game.......

An Allan Quartermain game........

Lastly some more Oshiro terrain but the figures have long gone......

Yet again apologies about the quality and lack of pictures, so many games missing but.......