Well the weather here has been awesome up to this evening, it has clouded over as the day drew on. Yesterday we had some Neolithic and Viking/Norse shenanigans. Today we had more pre history with a visit to the Tomb of the Eagles followed by some more Viking/Norse remains, not to forget a run along the Churchill barriers.

No pictures as my phone camera is totally shot and their is no internet at the campsite to upload pics either.

Hobby wise I have been doing so more reading on the Sudan campaign to save Gordon. Eventually I will run the campaign to do so from Suakin on the Red Sea.

We will be using my 10mm Pendraken forces and terrain to fight. The idea is that players will be officers of her majesty playing against an Umpire or two. I like the Science versus pluck rules so will use them.

The general commanding will have to organise supplies and request troops etc prior to the campaign. They will aim to reach Berber where the campaign will end.

Anyone who wants a non combat role can be a reporter for the Times.

Sometimes the fact that my parents hung onto things for decades does have its advantages. Both have passed away now but these were kept by my father and now belong to me…

These are just some of the treasures I now have.

I have a number of other such booklets from WW2 not to mention a WW1 bayonet that was given to my father in round about 1926 to play with! It does go nicely with my WW1 Lee Enfield 😁. I was going to do First World War cavalry as a great uncle had been in the Northumberland Hussars, but my move to Shetland put pay to that. The rifle was purchased and deactivated before it became difficult to get such things.

Got the elves sprayed white and decided to give the new ones a Contrast paint job too.

I am really warming to these paints especially for the 10mm minis. This is the Plaguebearer Flesh over a white undercoat, I really like the way it is a very yellow green. I gave the faces a quick blast with the Guilliman Flesh. It really does bring out the detail. The red colour is the Blood Angels Red.

I will crack on with these tomorrow and hope to have everything completely finished by the end of the weekend.

Today I promised to take the kids to the loch. It is really shallow, especially when the tide is out.

Not a bad place to have on the doorstep.

It was a little misty to begin with today, but still very warm. When the sun came out it made really pleasing patterns on the water…

And on a totally different note, we had a massive visitor to Shetland today…

For those that watch ‘Shetland’ (never seen it myself) but Jimmy Perez’s house is second from the left.

Sadly I cannot remember who took this photo, it definitely isn’t mine.

This is my residence for this evening ….

A spur of the moment decision to go camping. No room to bring anything faintly hobbyesque. Luckily my IPad has loads of reading material…

Tonight I am having a gander at the up and coming Aliens RPG that I pre ordered…

I am cold an uncomfortable already …wish me luck….

I managed a bit of painting tonight (shock, horror). This was after going to a concert a couple of my kids were in (more on that later).

The bulk of these are standard infantry. They were painted in the Leviadon blue Contrast paint. It is sort of working over the grey primer. They will have the dark grey armour and helmet like the previous ones. The one in green is a Pathfinder sniper. His uniform is camouflaged and his armour etc is a dark green. Their faces are white as I am going down the paint with a wash for the skin tones. Still a very long way to go but at least I am painting again.

As for the concert. It was the end of a week long (we have broken up for the summer) creative project including dance and painting etc. It was all to do with the red necked phalarope.

Which looks like this:

We have a small breeding population on the island of Fetlar (which I knew) and they migrated South (which again I knew) however what I did not know until this project is that they don’t head south to the Med or Africa in fact they head pretty much West then South then west some more until they reach the Pacific Ocean off Peru.

You can read about it a bit more here: https://www.bou.org.uk/red-necked-phalarope-pacific-ocean/

Tomorrow I will endeavour to get some more paint slapped on the miniatures.

And I am back….I would like to say new and improved…but sadly not.

My time as acting deputy head has ended – the six weeks flew by, I came out the other end knackered but a whole lot more confident… so confident in fact that I managed to get a headship in one of the west side schools. The interview was about an hour and a half long, but according to my initial feedback, I wowed the panel and it was a unanimous decision. I then had to do another two and a half days before the end of term. We made it… it was pretty close to a crash landing but that’s a whole other story.

So where do the migraines come in… on Monday I suddenly started having a weird blind spot in my left eye, it was as if someone had placed a sparkly c over my eye. I lost peripheral vision completely. Evidently it was an occular migraine (never even heard of one before) no pain, no yucky feeling, just a weird loss of vision. They last a while then go away, and it did indeed last a while and then after a couple of hours it went away.

As for the drains… hold your noses (luckily I have no sense of smell 😁). I decided to do my regular septic tank header check and it was in fact backed up… luckily a 30m long piece of 40mm plastic water pipe is ideal for shoving into the ‘water’ and with a bit of vigorous hoiking about it generally gets the message and drains into the tank as it should.

And trains…. I have somehow made it to 53 and with my birthday money I purchased Ticket to ride. 3 hours later I emerged victorious….

The kids very kindly got me a couple of pots of Contrast paint for part of my presents from them.

I decided to give it a go on some of my proxy MI. As it was going on (I shoved it over a grey undercoat) I was honestly not that impressed, but when it dried I could see what it was meant to do.

I then decided to have a go over a white undercoat, the only thing I had was an alien plant….

This is the same blue as the infantry, I gave the top a shot with some of the red. The blue works better, I think because there is more detail to sink into. I will carry on messing about with it before I decide whether or not I like it.

Before even opening the pot I printed off a paint holder….

I didn’t want to spill their presents all over the table.

Finally (you will be pleased to know) I managed to finish painting something…

I will try and catch up with whatever everyone else has been up to over the next little while.

Just before midnight on an overcast night and this is how dark it is…

The IPad doesn’t do it justice to just how light it still is. We still haven’t hit the longest day yet and it is still possible to read a printed page outdoors in the natural light. Up here they call it the ‘simmer dim’ or to anglicise it.. the ‘summer dim’.

I haven’t been on my blog much which is a bit annoying, the new job is great but I am putting in 10 hours a day at least and tonight I managed to get away at 18.45 after an 08.00 start. So much for teachers starting at 9 and finishing at 3.

I have managed a teeny amount of hobby time, I got a bit more done on my Fleet Rescue Troopers and also managed to put the metal bugs together.

They did not want to be glued, so in the end it was down to the Superglue and bicarbonate…

I am going to try to get them sprayed tomorrow. I was considering painting them mainly in inks, but I shall have a ponder and see what I come up with.

Hopefully I will get caught up with the backlog of followed blogs and get to see what people have been up to.

It is that time of year when I take a bit of time to contemplate on an awesome period of time I spent with some truly remarkable ladies and gentlemen. These Ladies and gentlemen were members of the Normandy Veteran’s Association.

I was doing my undergraduate dissertation and decided it would be on oral testimonies. So having an interest in WW2 and a local branch of the NVA I decided to put the two together.

I spent a couple of afternoon sessions with them which I will always remember with a great fondness as they took a kid into their midst and told me their tales, some had us roaring and laughing and others had us all in tears, the memory of the latter has me snivelling a bit as I type this.

Let us take a gentleman called Geordie to his friends, a nickname no doubt from his location of Newcastle (my neck of the woods as a youth).

His tale unfolded like this.

” I had to land on a beach called Mike Green, so I looked over the side as I came in and saw smoke everywhere, This navy guy shouts good luck lads and drops the ramp. Some bugger started shooting at us so I lowped (leapt) over the side hit the water and waded ashore. I legged it up the beach and hoyed myself down and started shooting at Germans. All of a sudden this medic appears and shouts ‘Howay son you goin’ home!’ ‘Bugger off said I, I am shootin German’s!’ He then said that with bullets whistling around his ears knelt up to prove the point. The medic pushed him back down and said look at your leg you daft bugger. He looked down and could see his thigh bone. As he had gone over the side he had caught himself a whallop on a metal tank trap. As he said himself, after seeing his leg he felt a little queer and agreed that off the beach was a good idea. At this point another veteran pipes up.. have you got a hole in your leg? Well Bugger me – so do I. At which point both gentlemen dropped their trousers and compared their war wounds. The second gentleman was “shot at by some bugger with a 37mm AT gun” that missed him, ricocheted off a cobblestone and came straight up his leg. These two had known each other for years and had never shared the information.

Another one promised his mother that he wouldn’t get shot so spent his first night in France asleep in a metal dustbin.

One mentioned a cock up of them almost landing on Omaha, but an admiralty barge came out full of wounded and ordered them to bugger off, turn about and head to their own bloody beach. He said he looked over the side and saw all this muck and shite flying into the air and thought ‘oh my god, what is going to happen here!’

Another gentleman landed with the paratroopers at Ranville. They met up at Pegasus bridge and was there to watch Lovett’s commando’s marching along the river, piper out front and all in their soft hats. The German’s started shooting at them and they tried to give cover fire. At 14.30 the first tanks reached them. They had been ordered to take and hold the crossroads a couple of miles beyond the town. His CO requested they stay as Jerry were preparing for a counterattack. The tanks refused and pushed on. He said there were three loud bangs in the distance and three columns of smoke. As he said himself ‘ A German Anti tank gun got them, knocked the three out and we couldn’t do a bloody thing to help them at all. Hopeless!’ Same gentleman explained that they were all in Stirling Bombers to jump out of as a way to confuse the enemy.

Another was somewhat miffed that his unit had been attached to the Canadians and had fought alongside them for the duration of the campaign and that The Canadian’s got all the credit.

The one thing that stuck in my mind was that there was no animosity towards the enemy even to people who had lost close friends. As one veteran of the 49th Division said of the Germans. ‘They were good…. bloody good fighters and we had a lot of respect for them as soldiers.’

A well known photo next…

Evidently the guy on the left of the photo facing the camera is a Shetlander… how bizarre is that.

Finally a photo of a photocopy of a photo…one of my relations in France.