The Secret Project

Today I have been working on something I shall not show you yet. I shall scatter very vague clues to its nature throughout this entry. Tomorrow I mean to paint it. I think you'll like it, as the actress said to the bishop, or vice-versa? Ahem. In other news, I have completed the application of transfers to the company of Basilisks. The coat of varnish which locks the transfers to the models is drying even now. They look pretty good so far, and I thus have high hopes of their eventual appearance.

I was just a short time ago in my attic, which might help some of you discern the nature of my secret project. While there I found a box I'd missed before, which has another ten Leman Russ tanks in it. Every time I think I've disposed of some of them I turn up another load in some dusty, cobwebbed corner! So after months of selling these things, I think I now have a hundred left, which is more than I expected. The thought occurs to me that Christmas is approaching, so it might be an idea to hold off on selling any more until November, and thus take advantage of the Christmas Rush.

There's something of a segue here, as I have just spoken of GW models, and now I mean to speak of a GW ruleset. My friend alerted me last week to the sale at Warhammer Historicals, which is or was knocking fifty percent off the price of things. My penury had dissuaded me thus far from investing in Over the Top, the mid-war sequel to the company's Great War ruleset. However, this huge discount acted as a double incentive. First, the cheapness of my desire made it more attainable. Second, a fifty percent off sale suggests the possibility that the subsidiary will be axed ere long. I don't want to find myself in the position of being unable to purchase at any price that which I might have purchased at half price.

I have flicked through the rules, and am pleased at their appearance and at the appearance of the lists. Having only briefly inspected them, I offer no opinion of their historicity or playability. Having read a few pages from the beginning of the book, the fact that they were not written by a native Anglophone is apparent. You probably assume I mean this in an uncomplimentary fashion, but I mean quite the reverse! The English can't fasten together sentences with conjunctions, and our apostrophes skewer innocent words. We are never taught these rules, and so we cannot employ them. Foreigners learning English, on the other hand, are blessed to be taught it. Buchel's spelling and grammar are - so far - exemplary: a delight to the eye and an ornament to the page! There are certain peculiarities that remind one that he is not a native speaker: "the no-man's land" appears rather than "no-man's land". I'll take a hundred such instances of grammatically correct, perfectly spelled oddities rather than a single Forgeworld volume's endless instances of mangled verbiage!

I shall devote myself to this for the rest of the afternoon and the early part of the evening. I have some friends joining me at 7 pm to watch Casino,
which I have unaccountably failed to watch thus far. Well, I say unaccountably, but in truth I have dodged it for a few weeks now, knowing we would soon be watching it. I just have to explain away the preceding years of neglect now! Saturday will see me graving the portals of wherever it is in Stoke that is hosting a Real Ale Festival, and on Sunday I have arranged to have lunch with the estimable Andy Kind, an old schoolfriend of mine and all-round awesome guy, and his lovely wife. In perhaps even better news, the world of work has knocked on my door of late, though I shall say no more for the present: don't count your chickens before they are hatched, and all that! Until next time, chaps and chappesses!