Statue and storage buildings

The buildings here I simply knocked together from plasticard. Their purposes are to add a bit of colour variation to the board, to more closely represent the often haphazard and clustered placing of buildings and to allow infantry to trundle merrily through the area while restricting its attractiveness to AFVs and similar. There was a slight problem with the varnish, and you may be able to make out certain areas where it has misted. Lamentably, this was even more the case on the artillery emplacement I was working on, which will need some heavy duty rescue work. Tsk. The slight damage done here is not enough to warrant that, I feel.









The statue is a rubber chess piece of Darth Vader which seemed very apt for a statue. A headless Princess Leia and an unadulterated Emperor Palpatine from the same set are doing duty in some graveyards upstairs. Painting amounted to a black undercoat, then several drybrushes of grey on the base, and some washes of cream over the statue's stand to differentiate it. The statue itself received a coat of Citadel Colour Burnish Gold (an old pot still sitting about), then a wash with Devlan Mud, then a drybrush with Mithril Silver.

Supers and terrain

I've been doing lots and lots. First, here is good old Molly the Macharius Vanquisher.













Then Cedric the Stormsword.













This will be a missile silo.



This is the building I made out of the drain connector and some bits and bobs. The base is a bit of spare shelving from a CD storage doodah.





Tents!



Trees!



The Lascannon teams covered in camo betting made from bandage material dipped in a mixture of brown paint, PVA glue and water.



A storage container made from an old cocoa tin, I think.





Objective markers.



This storage tank is made from an old aerosol. One shouldn't really make terrain out of things that might explode, but it has yet to do so, despite sitting around for maybe eight years.



Storage tanks made from the plastic lids of spraypaint tins.





These buildings have been varnished after this picture was taken.



Back to the Lascannon teams again. They've had some spots of various colours added, then a drybrush of some creamy colour.









A nice wee copse around a rocky outcropping.

Puppini perfection

If you've not heard of the Puppini Sisters, check them out on Youtube or similar. Kudos to Jenny for bringing them to my eyes and ears.

On a different and altogether less pleasant note, anyone with a fix for trapped nerves is encouraged to pass it on to me. Managed to trap my right arm's nerve in the elbow some time yesterday afternoon. Still there. Ack! Had my right knee doing this to me the other day. Oy vey! I haven't had a proper night's sleep since Thursday, so last night I just fell into bed, abandoning the collecting. Mum very kindly went out and did a nearby street anyway. Naturally, I still didn't have a good night's sleep. I must have shut my eyes around six in the evening, and reopened them just after eleven at night. No collecting later on. I am going over to N's, where the three of us will be watching either a film he's secured or Alien, which I shall bring with me as backup. That'll be cool, either way.

Went over to see Debbie last night, which was grand. Had a few drinks, and watched Black Swan, which she'd bought on the day of its release. Huzzah! It's a delightfully deranged piece of work. I could give a more nuanced commentary if I hadn't been imbibing whiskey and vodka, so accept that my praise is vague and undefined. Furthermore, the aforementioned elbow business keeps throwing me off. Stabs of pain if one shifts one's arm a few inches the wrong way are not conducive to maintaining a strong narrative, as you can see.

I've been making a spot of terrain. I found an old Star Wars chess piece I lopped bits off and stuck to things some years ago. I've stuck some sand on his base, so just need to secure that and dust him down before I can paint him. In addition, I have a few bases of trees, some storage containers (constructed from bottle caps, an idea taken from another chap's blog), something which will either be power generators or storage tanks, a pair of objective markers inspired by a recent post on theback40k, and a building made from some spare bits and pieces stuck to a piece of drain connector. The objective markers will represent smoke curling up from the ground where smoke grenades/markers have been dropped to show the troops where to go. Pictures soon. I'm also working on finally concluding an old 1/72 Airfix German artillery emplacement, which I started turning into a 40K IG command centre and artillery emplacement some time ago. So there's a lot in the pipeline. I mean to post some pictures later on today, so keep your eyes peeled, plastic fans!

Everything is proceeding according to my design

I sent my fleet to the far side of Endor, and all I got was thrown down a cavernous well by my apprentice. I bet the dead Emperor collects Garfield cartoons about Mondays.

Things are coming along excellently here, for the most part. First, the bad news, so I can build up. I accidentally reversed into someone's garden wall yesterday. My car has some scratches, and there's only about a foot of wall needs repairing, but it still bugs me. I couldn't see the wall from inside the car (teeny short thing). I ought to have looked before I got in. So building up from that we have the fact that I've put all the camouflage on my Macharius, Molly. It's slightly incongruous that the turret was painted all in yellow, and the hull has a four-tone camouflage scheme, but if you're going to complain, please meet my friend, Hammer. He will be glad to explain to your fingertips why I won't be paying attention.

Building up from that pleasant if dull news, some dull but worthy news. My plans for Christian Aid were to deliver envelopes to 440 addresses yesterday, and the rest (370) today. I've exceeded that, and have only 200 deliveries left to make. So I've moved up my collection schedule. I now intend to deliver the final 200 this morning after Mass, and then spend four hours this afternoon collecting envelopes from places I delivered to yesterday. I owe a lot to Mum for helping with this. We've had no volunteers from the parish, and so I won't be doing this next year. It's incompatible with holding down a job and having a life. I may sound discouraging there, but it's true. It's one thing to volunteer a couple of hours over a week to deliver and then collect from a small area, but when nobody else volunteers, the workload becomes ridiculous. It is a very important cause, mind. So if your scruples don't prevent you, then I enjoin you to stick what you can in the envelope, if there's a collection in your area. I hope this year to raise more than we did last year, and go out on a high. I don't have the figures immediately to hand, so I'll revisit this topic when I do.

I had four cans of Red Bull to keep me up yesterday. They didn't really do much at the time, and instead kicked in about 4.30 am. I've had staring eyes and gurgling stomach ever since. Fingers crossed I can keep going until 6pm (my planned quitting time for today). I shall ask Father to make a plea for volunteers to give half an hour of their time, and meet in the church car park at 4pm. If we can get even a handful of people, it'll scythe the time we need to devote to collecting. I don't know if we'll get any volunteers at such short notice, but you can't win without trying! Well, maybe if the AI's really poor. Anyway, I've scheduled six hours to work on Christian Aid today: two on delivery and four on collection. The more I get done today the happier I'll be and the sooner we'll be done. The advice is that Monday evenings are the best times to collect, but I don't know how much two people can get done in, say, the period between 6 and 8/9 pm! Knock on a door. Wait fifteen seconds. Nobody comes. Go to the next house. Knock on a door. Wait fifteen seconds. Someone comes out in the middle of their dinner and asks you to come back in five minutes. You can't come back in five minutes, because you're trying to cover a hundred houses with two people. You come back in half an hour, and your tardiness is lamented. Rinse, repeat!

So it's hard. But it's also a very good cause. I've said it once; so here it is for those who skimmed the above. ;-) I shan't give you examples. If it isn't your bag, baby, an example won't help. If it is your bag, you'll be happy with just a link: http://www.caweek.org/?WT.mc_id=dis_CAW_google_brand_26apr&gclid=CJqi6v2Z6agCFUdP4Qodvi5vDA

I hope this finds you all well!

What's happening, man?

So what's going on? What am I doing? Why the hey-diddle-diddle haven't I written anything more than photographic captions lately? Who shot JFK? Or JR? Or was it the same person or just a dream? Well, gather round, friends, and I shall tell you a tale to strike your hearts and lift your spirits to the heavens! No, not really, but I am sure none of you will report me to the Advertising Standards Authority. If your finger's hovering over that button, then shame on you!

What's going on? Well, it seems that when you're stuck waiting until a certain date passes, you can get a bit drained of energy, listless, stuck in a rut, repetitive, Pete, stop saying the same thing over and over. In short, I have plans, but Christian Aid Week is coming up, and I am really just waiting for it to be over. What is Christian Aid Week? Well, it's a special time in a young man's life when – er, it's a week when people stick a leaflet through your door, then come back the next day and you either give them money, say no or pretend that they never stuck anything through your door. In that last eventuality, I think those people assumed we had a vast cohort of distributors and collectors, rather than it being me and about four other people covering 800 addresses. For those of you not so good at calculation, let me say that 800 divided by me, Mum and no other volunteers this year equals this is the last year we're doing it!

Don't get me wrong. It's a good cause. It is a charitable and good thing to do. But next year I mean to have a job. I'm not making Mum do it! I won't have time to do it: 800 addresses, remember! So it's a mathematical certainty. The long and short of it is that it will eat up this whole coming week. Delivery is a cinch, er, well, it can be done at any time of day. Collection means turning up when people are likely to be in. So that's after 5, through to maybe 8pm. In any case, you will catch people having their dinner, who will a) be thrilled to be interrupted and b) ask you to come back in ten minutes, when you've got a tight schedule so as to complete a crazy workload. I'm not condemning them. But note the incompatibility of doing anything mutually helpful here. We can't turn up at a time good for them because we have so few people. I could write another few paragraphs on that topic, and convince you that it was driving me crazy, because you'd misinterpret it, you foolish child. That's yours truly sliding into playful silliness again, not me having a dig at you. ;-)

The thing is, I can't do anything until that's done. When it's done, I am going to put on full sail and run before the wind, if that's the right expression. It's a while since I last read Patrick O'Brian or C. S. Forester, so do forgive errors of naval terminology by this landlubber. I am writing this because I was chatting earlier to a guy who was feeling down. I think I helped cheer him up a bit, and in geeing him up, I did the same to myself. I have nothing more than a vague plan: get a job to get money to spend on stuff. And get fit and thin again. But right now I've no job, no money and no stuff to do. Horse-riding, for instance, is just about the most fun you can have, but it's not free. So I have the following: read a book, poke the internet, exercise at home, watch a film while painting some models. If you're reading this, you know how distracting t'interwebs can be. You sit down, then you're thinking, “Goldarn it, you rootin', tootin' varmint! Gimme back the last two hours!” Well, if you're a time-travelling nineteenth-century prospector, you do. Probably. Maybe. Shut up.

“So, Pete, what's happening, baby?” Why're you talking like you're Austin Powers? “That's not my bag, baby!” Ohhhhhhhhh-kay. I am waiting on Dan getting back to me about something. I thought Rahul was coming up last weekend, but I think he got sabotaged by co-workers being sick. I saw N&B the other day, and we watched a film (Breakfast at Tiffany's – watch it if you haven't seen it, because it's great.) and had a lovely dinner! Thanks, B! Previously, I saw D at the weekend, and met Aidan, who is a great chap! I left some films there, forgot to go back, and so couldn't watch Predator the other day. D'oh! No time to pick stuff up this week, so I'll just have to mumble “Geeerrt to theee choo-purrr!” to tide myself over. “She said the jungle came alive and took him.” :-D

“What next, Pete, you fascinating man?” I am awesome, I admit. So next I need to talk to Dan about this thing, then to Rahul about Amsterdam – whither we are (I think) going at the end of the month – and then I'm having a barbecue here mid-June. After that, I have no clue what's happening. I do mean to visit Martin and Kat. They're not a couple, but both live down south. Probably scores of miles apart, but South is South! Exeter, London, it's all the same. I did mean to go to Ireland and climb some hills in a few months, but that's money-dependent, and I have none, so that's out the window for now. It's on a bit of string, so if I win a million pounds, I'll go do it. In all likelihood, though . . .

So in the short term I shall put up a banner outside my church, deliver nearly a thousand envelopes and then collect them again. Then count up all the money, itemised by road, and then put it in the bank where it will pay for good causes. Hang on. That's a socially responsible thing to do. I'd better mention that at any interviews I do. Ooh, the Pharisees, they have had their reward. Oh, well, it's really only walking, pushing, clasping and adding up. It doesn't really deserve a reward. So, yeah – as they say. Some light manual labour, a fair whack of walking, and then lots of spare time in the mornings and afternoons. Look forward to more from me now I have got my groove back, you funky people.

Macharius Vulcan

Molly the Macharius has finally received all the requisite bits and has just been undercoated. I find my enthusiasm for a project tends to fall off close to the end. I think she has been waiting for completion for over a year. I had a problem with the sponson weapons. My original conception was flawed, as a skeletal support for the gun left the whole interior exposed as empty. So this morning I sawed up some plumbing tube and an old fax machine paper tube, drilled and cut some holes into them. You can see in the first two pictures that the guns can incline upward, and in the latter four pictures that the gun rotates. Two internal pieces of plasticard tube provide points around which the tube can spin.

Lascannon emplacements

For those who have forgotten, I had a load of ugly leftover Lascannon from the old style Leman Russ tanks. I also had plasticard, paint and sand. What other choice presents itself but to fashion a load of weapon emplacements. Well, if you have forgotten, it's also Wargames Illustrated running articles about WWII battlefield defences. Anyway, this is how they look right now.