The Souls of Old Men

I awoke this morning to find that, despite waiting patiently for all these years, I still have neither a bus pass nor a pension. But let's forget all the negatives and instead look forward to the good things that are yet to come:

Inside their worn, tattered bodies 

sit the souls of old men.
How unhappy the poor things are
and how bored by the pathetic life they live.
How they tremble for fear of losing that life, and how much
they love it, those befuddled and contradictory souls,
sitting - half comic and half tragic -
inside their old, threadbare skins.

                     - Constantine P. Cavafy

You can knit a sweater by the fireside

"But at my back I always hear

Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;

And yonder all before us lie

Deserts of vast eternity."

- Andrew Marvell

It would have been Andrew Marvell's birthday today. 

Yes we can the can

This blog has on occasion been known to feature - for no particular reason - videos of seventies rock bands fronted by women in jumpsuits. Today is a day for self-indulgence so here is another - somewhat more lightweight, but nevertheless entertaining - in that irregular and infrequent series:

Mi Revenis

I have returned. My absence has been due to a surfeit of stuff occurring in real life. I won't go into details, but at one point the big bouncy woman was rendered speechless for the first time since I've known her. There were also a couple of birthdays: the younger Miss Epictetus has turned twenty one and I have celebrated becoming twenty one and some months, 480 months to be precise.

Anyway, I have managed to do some other stuff including the first evening of a Crusades game at James' which I'm rather enjoying. My plan once again involved my forces moving swiftly across the table and once again they didn't. Still, the newly painted catapults are fun to play with. In other wargaming news I have done a fair bit of painting (fair bit for me that is) during the month:

German WWI 7.7cm + 5 crew	1
German WWI infantry	18
British WWI 18pdr + 5 crew	3
British WWI trench raiders	10
15th century longbowmen	12

What I haven't done is very much boardgaming so I think I'll wrap the review of games played in March into April's report; I know you'll be bitterly disappointed.

2016

At the beginning of the year I thought I'd be clever and keep track of things that happened in a draft blog posting, thus making the inevitable - assuming that the Lord spared me - year end review much easier. Obviously it was too clever for me, because at least twice I accidentally published the draft post before hurriedly taking it back down again. Anyway, for those of you who haven't seen it as we've gone along, here are the highlights of the year:

Opera:  I've seen fifteen operas this year, which is possibly some kind of record for me. I'm going to nominate the one that wasn't really an opera as my favourite, namely 'Into the Woods'; it's my list and I shall do what I want. If one wants to be difficult and exclude it then I would go for 'Aida' in the amphitheatre at Verona; quite spectacular. The least effective moment for me was the title character's backside being flaunted in 'Suor Angelica; quite ridiculous.

Theatre: I've seen twenty seven plays, the best being the revival of 'An Inspector Calls', followed by the charming 'Simply Ballroom' and the RSC's 'A Midsummer Nights Dream'. Worst by some way was the execrable science fiction dramatisation of 'Villette'

Film of the year: I've seen ten of these, which is certainly a step up in number on previous years and, apart from the very average 'A Streetcat Named Bob' they were all excellent. I'm going to plump for Tarantino's 'The Hateful Eight' as the best with honourable mentions for Alan Bennett's 'The Lady in the Van' and Jane Austen's 'Love & Friendship'.

Gig of the Year : I've lost count of the gigs that I've been to, and can only say with any certainty that it's more than thirty five. Van Morrison was the best with a shout out for the Jon Palmer Acoustic Band supported by Yan Tan Tether (the night they recorded their live album not the night they sang all the Christmas songs) and also the Jar Family. On a less happy note, for the second year in succession I had a ticket to see Graham Parker and didn't make it.

Book of the Year: The least surprising category of the lot. If you hadn't worked out that it was going to be Heretic Dawn, the third volume of Robert Merle's Fortunes of France series, then you haven't been paying attention.

Walk of the Year: As the big bouncy woman and I didn't get to walk anywhere this year - and how sad is that? - I'm going for a visit to Buckden, Cray and Hubberholme that the elder Miss Epictetus and I made shortly before the onset of adult life proper took her away from me. A Ramblers walk to Crummockdale also sticks in the memory.

Event of the Year: There were many candidates, quite a few revolving around ambulance trips to A&E; the first CT scan that I had was a very odd experience as well. The great base fire deserves a mention as does the time that the kettle exploded; nothing much resulted on either occasion, but they were very disconcerting. The training day before May half term was a real highlight, not least because the rest of the year was crammed with things getting in the way. However, I'm going to choose my 60th birthday when my daughters took me to Whitby for the day, and didn't we have a lovely time.

His little chronicle, his memories, his reason

"Have common sense and stick to the point" - W. Somerset Maugham

There has been a request for less introspection fuelled by advancing years and heartache, and more posts about wargaming. Fair enough, although I must mention that I had a really lovely day on my sixtieth birthday, the Misses Epictetus taking me to Whitby, a place where astonishingly I had never been despite living in Yorkshire for the last twenty years.

So, wargaming then. Firstly, there has been some. We finished the Seven Years War battle from the previous week. James may write it up in due course, but I'm not going to report anything further myself, beyond saying that it must be a candidate for the most one-sided game that I've ever played in; quite astonishing. Some of the rules changes are here to stay, some aren't. It seems that James is planning on doing a Seven Years War game at Derby in October, so no doubt everything will be revisited anyway. We reassemble in the wargaming annexe this Wednesday for some To the Strongest!. Tempted though I am to refight Tewkesbury yet again, it's actually going to be a Romans vs Celts game featuring for the first time both the crap chariots and the Hamian archers.

In addition there has actually been quite a lot of progress in the Great War project. Three second hand Ospreys have been received, read and digested:

• The British Army in World War I (2) The Western Front 1916-18
• German Stormtroopers 1914-1918
• The German Army in World War I (3) 1917-18

I enjoyed the first and third of those, but the second is hampered by dull illustrations and dodgy politics. Interestingly it doesn't subscribe to what seems to be the otherwise generally accepted line that German tactics weren't any better than those of the Entente by the end of the war. I also bought the Two Fat Lardies scenario book, Stout Hearts & Iron Troopers. I have already painted three quarters of the British required for the first scenario so have turned my attention to the Germans. I have previously explained the paucity of ordinary German riflemen available in plastic, so I have been having a tour of the available metal options and have placed orders with Lancer Miniatures, Tumbling Dice, IT Miniatures and Early War Miniatures, although not for Germans in the last case. I passed on Irregular Miniatures because they don't do late war and are in any case rather on the small side. The Lancer and Tumbling Dice have arrived and, together with a selection from Emhar and Revell are being painted. The various greys, browns and khakis of the First World War fall smack in the middle of the range in which I am colour blind and I have therefore taken the easy route and gone for Vallejo German Uniform as the main shade. Also acquired have been some British rifle grenadiers and some unpainted shell holes in thermoformed plastic. I'm not sure how I shall present them on the tabletop. They're fairly solid, but could probably do with being based; the question is really whether to put them on hexes or not.

Help the Aged

 "Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man." - Trotsky

"To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living." - Herman Melville

At twenty a man is a peacock, at thirty a lion, at forty a camel, at fifty a serpent, at sixty a dog, at seventy an ape, at eighty a nothing at all. Baltasar Gracian
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/b/baltasargr150625.html?src=t_sixty

At twenty a man is a peacock, at thirty a lion, at forty a camel, at fifty a serpent, at sixty a dog, at seventy an ape, at eighty a nothing at all.
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/b/baltasargr150625.html?src=t_sixty

"The tragedy of growing old is not that one is old, but that one is young." - Ruth Rendell

At twenty a man is a peacock, at thirty a lion, at forty a camel, at fifty a serpent, at sixty a dog, at seventy an ape, at eighty a nothing at all.
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/b/baltasargr150625.html?src=t_sixty

Boardgaming

To the White Swan for to take part in International Tabletop Gaming Day +1 as it isn't known. A healthy turnout for a couple of games of Resistance plus one of Ice Flow. I left them playing Citadels to return home to celebrate my birthday in the most suitable fashion: alone.

He cares even if no-one else does

I did get to watch Waterloo on the tele though. What a top film. Admittedly I can't help expecting the Duke of Wellington to whip out a guitar and sing a song about alpine flowers, but that's probably just me.

"Yes, I realise it's singing, but who?"