War gamers and reenactors

After all my previous weekend that were hectic, I had a really quiet one which was welcome, the only thing I did of note was go to a party in Nottingham at my friend Dave's.

He had got together lots of people I knew from the past for what ever reason not quite sure, re-enactors and war gamers, quite a few Games Workshop staff where he works in the design team and also does his own war games figures.

One of the Perry twins was there who I had just brought figures off by mail order and John Stollard who I went to Paris with to play Warhammer for the French in 1980something, he now runs his own war games company, Warlord Games.

Most people I knew even if a few names did not come straight to my mind, I suppose once in a decade its nice to see old acquaintances.

They say never far from a rat, well this one lost a argument with my car as I found it flattened on my drive, I say rat because of it size which was about 250mm excluding the tail, so I think just too big for mouse.



I think rats can be cute, but all I thought about was disease as got the shovel to carry the corpse to the bin, especially with the hundreds of flies buzzing around it.

Cold Days

Having booked the installation of new boiler to replace my old back boiler, I found date chosen left me and Jasmine without heating for the coldest days so far of Autumn. Monday night after the plumbers had left I sat watching telly in a coat and gloves with Jasmine inside the coat with me.

Jasmine was not a happy cat having been spooked by all the work, sledgehammers knocking bricks out the fireplace to get the old boiler out, blowtorches constantly setting off the fire alarms, they also used a big industrial vacuum cleaner to suck the old pipework dry. Poor Jasmine also ended being shut in rooms out the way and at one point when the plumbers had all the windows opened the front and back doors I had to put her with blanket into a cat box or she would have run off.

By Tuesday morning the plumbers were teasing me the promise of heating by noon, they actually turned it on for 5 minutes around 3pm, before switching it off to do more work, so I didn't get warm until 6pm by which time I'm sure it was colder inside my house than outside.

My friend AndyH popped by seeing my car in the drive, but didn't stop long, he was driven off by the cold.

I now have a room thermostat and pressure for my shower which was brilliant this morning, and the mess to clean up, but need to wait for cement and plaster to dry before stuff can go back in the cupboards and furniture put back, plus the plumber needed to return tonight to finish off some last bits which will then leave the redecorating.

I also went over to Andy and Heathers last night and played a silly Monty Python TV and Holy Grail card game (twas a sample from a supplier), where you can get with the right cards extra turns for quoting Monty Python lines, talking in a silly accent or singing Monty Python songs, fortunately they only had to suffer my silly accent, although Heather kept her false Indonesian, Welsh, Germanic half French accent up longest. Good fun and if you don't sing or quote it makes no difference to your chances of winning.

Whats part goat, lion and snake

I spent this Saturday in the new Chimera Shop, since Heather asked me if I could be Saturday girl while Andy was away getting his kids injections sorted and her other Saturday girl is in America.
I arrived at the shop around 10am with few Kids in there already, I'm calling them shop orphans since they seem to have been abandoned by there parents, a couple were there until mid afternoon and one lasted all day and was returning Sunday.
Encouraged to play a few games I had small crowd for a game of Pirates and then played a game of D&D skirmish, both I did not know the rules for, Pirates I kinda made up the rules, since they would not wait for me to read the rule book, D&D I managed to get the basic idea before we played.

Overall a OK day I left about 4.30pm, having only intended to stay until Andy got back, but Heather gave me coffee, and the kids wanted to play, so I stayed.

I’ve posted a picture of the shop below, click for a larger image, but you can see more picture here on the website I updated Sunday with a few extra pages, a preview of Dave's Logo, which I'm still waiting the artwork for so I used a photo of the shop window.

The shop itself is very good, lots of things I could buy, and I like the sound of the plans to improve it, official opening Day is going to be Saturday 24th of November for anyone interested.


On Saturday evening I decided to watch the Rugby, I like the big sporting occasions, but generally don’t follow any sports since for that you need free weekends, which a few in number, or a be very keen on sports, which I'm not, still I enjoyed the game even though England lost.

Sunday was a shopping day, but one of those were you look and don’t buy, a trip for inspiration.

I also managed to find a place to leave plastic carrier bags for recycling, my local Morrison's now has a large steel container thing in the carpark, which is far better than Sainsbury’s cardboard bin which held about 10 carriers and was always overflowing, so I dumped about 6 months worth of carrier bags.

On side note my mother had to have the builder round for her cat, which had crept behind a kitchen cupboard, up a vent from the cooker and got stuck, the builder arrived to remove the kitchen unit just as the cat re-appeared :S after screaming for over 2 hours.

Tip of Day: don’t go down a road when a ploughing competition has just finished, not only do you get a bottle neck of slow moving tractors, but them sharp plough blades look very dangerous swinging about on there chains and hinges as they go down the road behind ancient machines.

Support your local shop

This may not be the most interesting thing to write about but I’ve just had a good experience with the purchase of my new cooker.
After trying Comet and Curry’s I went to the local shop in the village on Friday they where £ 20 cheaper than Comet and Curry’s for the equivalent model, and not only that they included delivery, installation and taking your old appliance away a cost of £ 105 on top from Comet and £ 65 from Curry’s, they also did not try to sell me a 5 year warranty for a extra £ 154. So a saving of £ 279

The other thing the local shop would deliver at a specific time, the shop owner also proceeded to tell me my family’s life history, from the name on the receipt he knew my mothers maiden name, my old address, and one of my uncle’s names etc. amazing memory.

Delivery today went smoothly they turned up exactly on time allowing me to travel from work home and back to work again all within an hour thus no wasted holidays waiting in for trades and approximate delivery times.

Cold food

So I went to eat my dinner cooked in the oven tonight, my stomach had not seen food since 11am and it was 6.30pm, it was cold must have forgot to switch the oven on silly me, no such luck dam oven has stopped working.
So now what to do, get it repaired the electric cooker and oven is very old, purchased when I had no ready cash having just having put down a deposit and got a mortgage.
Not only that is was a second so I could do with a update come to that, saying that so could the kitchen.

So repair or new? also gas or electric? all the fittings are there or perhaps make do without and buy more kit.

PS don't worry I blasted my food with microwaves so did not eat cold food.

Leaking roof

I had a good weekend the forecast rain generally held off, a few crew tantrums seemed to have settled down by the end, I travelled home with 3 very sleepy people all of whom slept for most journey (fortunately the driver was fine) and was fed plenty of porridge and cakes.
My character also had a good weekend, if not for last hour where he landed on sorcerous snake when he was hoping for a supreme ladder, still if it was all good, you would not be able to recognise the good.

That was the good since when I got home I found a plant, broken plant pot, a pile of soil and a cat trying to look Innocent, then this morning I woke up at 4am to sound of dripping splashing water and kitchen roof that had sprung a leak overnight (at least it waited until I was home). I positioned a few buckets a washing bowl and pile of newspaper and went back to sleep and mopped it this morning.

Oh and thanks to Julie and Dave for my birthday present