S is for Shamefully Ignorant!

King John's castle was a stone's throw away, for the whole of my childhood, and most of my Adulthood, and I only discovered the fact in April, at the grand old age of sixty-one! No school trips, no trips with the parents, and not me, having walked various other sections of the Basingstoke canal, had revealed its existence, or whereabouts?

 

Eventually I did notice it on one of the information boards along the canal, whilst on another walk, and determined to go and have a look, and on a balmy, summer's day (in April!), I walked the section down to the Graywell tunnel, and paused to inspect the castle ruin, from whence King John (the Boris of his day) is believed to have set out for Runnymede, to sign the Magna Carta, and begin the slow march to the Western Democracy we were vaguely enjoying, until recently, when it all started to go a bit wobbly! 

 

I took a video of the interior walls, but having rather forgotten how to do videos, it being a while since the last one, I've ended-up with a slide show, that has the video embedded toward the end, but it's all only a couple of minutes, and then all the stills are also below, so it might as well go first.

 

And for those who post all that anti-British shit on Quora; this was built over 800-years ago, 300 years before Columbus, it was a ruin 200 years before the American war of Independence, and yet, here it still is, anchoring any British arrogance in the history of a millennium.

 

These are taken clockwise round the castle, with one view obscured by trees, and it was, being April, a low, bright sun, so I had a few problems, but you get the idea! Originally eight sided, two walls have totally gone.

 

Indeed, what you can see in these photographs, is actually only the flint infill of the walls, all the dressed stone and masonry, inside and out has long-since disappeared, purloined for the buildings of the area, in later centuries - think Churches, farms, inns, bridges &etc! As I dare say, were any usable timbers!

 

Information boards on site.

 

One of the fireplace chimney flues.

 

The smaller holes are for the old floor joist timbers, the larger hole . . . ? Secret treasure nook/safe, larder, alcove for a religious icon, relic or statute perhaps? Cell for prisoners? Armscote? Somewhere for the ghost to hide, so Shaggy and Scooby walk past him, and he can jump-out behind them . . . Yah-yah-yah-yikes!

 

It is only infill, and in time there will be nothing left but a pile of stones.

 

This is actually reversed, it was the only way to get a clean shot! If you sit on the middle bench and move your head about, you can superimpose it on the ruins to resurrect the castle for a moment, albeit as a cutaway!

 

The castle is on the Three Castles Path/Walk/Way, which I naively, but admittedly confusedly, assumed must be either Basingstoke-Odiham-Farnham, or Odiham-Farnham-Guildford, but no, It's Winchester Hall-Odiham-Windsor Great Park & Castle! A 60-mile walk, and the other 'local' castles (orange dots, there's Highclere as well) don't get a look-in! But you can see how they form a line protecting the route to London, along the Downs.

 

For non-British readers, it's pronounced oh-dee-um, unless you're very posh, then you might get away with oh-dee'am!

S is for Standard

Some of my favourite toy soldiers are the card flats I've picked up over the years, and these are some of the nicer ones. Standard Games and Publications first advertised these in the late 1970's/early '80's. There were three ranges; ACW, Norman invasion of Britain and Fantasy.

This is the whole range of ACW and one of the fantasy sheets, the other being F1 Dungeon Adventure. Also missing are the sheets of Normans and Saxons.

[If anyone has the missing sheets to spare in good condition I have most of the ACW as mint spares for a strait one-for-one swap]

Close-up of the Confederate cavalry sheet, note how the same poses are used for Union and Confederate with a change of paint and also for foot and dismounted cavalry figures with the foot officer reused for the Artillery Officer, in other words, the original artist only had to come up with a small range of poses, yet the finished article still works...

...as can be seen here, there are at least one of everything on the baseboards illustrated. Each sheet came with a base sheet which vaguely matches the bases of the figures.

Comparison between various other modern card flats, left to right; Horse rider from cut-out race game in Christmas edition of Country Life magazine a few years ago; Usborne Publishing medieval peasant from the cut-out and assemble castle; Standard Union standing firer; Steve Jackson Games Half-Orc, this series of cards was recently re-issued as a single spiral-bound book, so if you're taken with them - check Amazon; Finally one of the rarest figures in my whole collection, this is a cut-out and stick figure - in 28mm - of the 54mm Atlantic space series, taken from the collectors cards that were issued with late production Atlantic 54mm WWII figures. I stuck him to a sheet of heavier card before cutting him tight to the artwork, hence the wierd base!