Yes there are many Epic journeys in history, Marco Polo, Ferdinand Magellan and Christopher Columbus to name a few. Little did I know that my journey this morning would be something close (okay I might be exaggerating a lot). I left the house before 10.00 and returned at 17.45. Why I hear you ask. A bit of shopping and the last few stocking fillers.

Lerwick was absolutely mental. Every single shops had queues outside the door. The Supermarket had actually run out of carrier bags, (I had forgotten to take mine in with me) they were giving out banana boxes.. I actually got  two from the last five in  the store.

I actually did have some success with a 3 foot live  Christmas tree…£6.25 instead of £25.

In the end we got pretty much everything we wanted.

On the hobby front, I managed to get the Batman and Harley finished. I also got some new miniatures glued together and onto bases. Can you guess what the game is going to be…

My son keeps pestering us for a lizard, thankfully we never gave in as five days without power would have been the end of it.

This one should be able to withstand most temperature ranges we get up here…

The snow has gone and the temperature has risen 10 degrees… the downside is the flooding and the odd landslide.

We are slowly returning to normality here. Temperature has jumped from -2° to 7°  and we now have heavy rain and strong winds. I am hoping that the 6 inches of ice up my track dissappear before I try to drive up it tomorrow, but I am not holding my breath.

I feel a bit sorry for the kids at school. They were meant to be doing their musical and sales evening on the 12th the day we lost power for a week. We had one more chance to do it at a concert tomorrow night and that has now been cancelled. They put a lot of planning and effort into making some great games as well as making lots of things to sell.

We can hold the raffle in the new year, but all of their items were Christmas related. We will nox ig up and sell it next year as luckily it will keep, apart from the sweets, but at least they can take them home to share with their families.

Well the snow is sort of hanging in there. The weight of oit has buckled the porch roof and damaged the roofing felt. I now have snowmen water dripping into a bucket. To be fair the roof really needed replacing in my October break but sadly the wind was too strong, from what I remember.

The gritter came along the spur to rescue us today and promptly slid into the ditch. It was good of them to try though. We did manage to get out into Lerwick, the place devoid of snow.

On the up side the temperature has resents four degrees and things are beginning to melt, on the down side they reckon -1° tonight so the nice thawed stuff will freeze solid.

To be fair to the electric company they are giving us a good wadge of compensation. Sadly my tropical fish didn’t survive the cold temperatures though. Luckily I only had two so it wasn’t a huge tank full.

You may have wondered where I had gone… or maybe not…the last time you heard from me I was sat in a blizzard in a queue of stationery traffic. Snow was expected, but not to the levels we saw. I am Back… why then has it taken so long …well we lost power on Monday at 15.00 and it returned today (Friday) at 18.30.

Temperatures were down to -2° outside and our bedrooms were sitting at 10° so not exactly the warmest few days. Luckily we have a gas stove as well as a couple of gas bottle heaters for the lounge and kitchen.

The snow was so heavy that it snapped power lines as well as snapped the power poles. In my valley alone we had ten down or disabled. Two poles were in half.

We had around 6 inches on top off the stuff already down with some drifting… here I am stood on top of the snow… nope I am not Legolas, the snow had frozen solid. The council didn’t come and plow or grit my road so we have a good old bit of ice driving to get to the bit where they had gritted…

Finally this is my normal pose

My school was affected by the power outage too so we have all been home all week.

The weird bit is the snow isn’t everywhere… my road and Lerwick… spot the difference!

The snow starts about 5 miles from me. People in Lerwick couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about! Can’t say I blame them!

There were around 6500 homes without power this week. The Engineers did an amazing job to get so many people back online.. they basically had to rebuild the West and North of the power grid.

Do You want to build a snowman ? Well you certainly could here today!

I have been sat for an hour as a vehicle has got stuck on the only road from the West…

Time to get out and clear the snow from the windscreen.

And painting!

Tonight I set to work rebasing my 10mm elves. You may remember I had left them in the shed and the mdf bases on a fair few armies had an attack of white mould.

Over the past few weeks I had been getting them of the MDF and last night thought I might as well get them back onto bases.

I also got some more done on the skeletons as well as used up ends of filament rolls making more flexible walls

Doomed I tell you!

So as you know I like a bit of 3D printing and to support my Geek Club (who just happen to love the Goonmaster anthropomorphic miniatures) I joined their patreon… to be honest it wasn’t hard…look (badly photographed) chameleons…

However, this is not the doomed part… as I had jumped on the monthly payment for Goonmaster, one of my others was going to have to go the journey. Yeah!

I was going to drop Highland, as I have had three months of dwarves which I am not really that into. They were bringing out a new race… everyone was guessing… anywhere from Chaos dwarves to Wood Elves… sadly for me…

When I played Warhammer 6th Edition I loved The Orks and Goblins… I had a lot of Gobbos… I always wanted a whole 2000 point goblin army… looks like I have a chance thirty years later!

To be fair if it had been anything except Gobbos or wood elves I would have been gone.

So it would seem like my Lord of the Rings one will be going in the new year. I was supporting them from day one, about two and a half years ago and I have printed very little. The odd miniature here and there for the One Ring RPG and for the stalled battle of the Five Armies diorama.

It will be a case of if I want something I will buy it on My Mini Factory. I am hoping the paths of the dead will be next!

Yes I am feeling better and managed to stay up all day as well as sort out the horse and do the weekly shop.

I started watching Wednesday with Lucy, thoroughly enjoyed it. We got up to episode six. She is on her third watching of it. Whilst doing so I tried my dipping inks in the cat food box trays…

I can fit fifteen in each box, so there is room to grow the collection.

I actually did a bit of painting too.