As I grow ever older and tiptoe towards the grave whilst at the same time doing my level best to not catch the eye of the Reaper, who spells the end of collecting and playing with toy soldiers, by systematically going through my Filofax, editing the entries in the contact list, I feel ever increasingly like a dead man walking. Indeed, I have little doubt that there are a few people - most of whom never met me in the flesh - who would like to see the 'walking' part of that erased, because I say and write things that they don't like. Increasingly I feel like a revenant when at a wargames show, floating amongst the living. Felt perhaps, but unseen until another spectre of gaming past recognises a kindred spirit and we perhaps embrace and converse in ghostly conspiratorial tones about this ior that, sharing memories of when we too, were vital, young, kings of the world, our painted armies'ooooh'd' and 'aaahhh'd' over, trophies taken home to join others...

     It's 3:30 AM and, because I have a show today, insomnia has struck like a bolt from an arbalest into the forehead of a charging Pict... Ah well... I've been getting my shit together and completing various buying missions to get everything ready and shipped to my painter. Thus far, I've sent the remainder of my fantasy collection apart from my Barbarians - I'm procrastinating about buying 6 figures I need to finish it all, for no other reason than I'm a lazy bastard. At present, my Painter is working on 1000 or so Early Imperial Romand & Celts, then he has about the same number of Baron's Wars  which arrived with him this week. That just leaves the Late Romans & Picts which, I should have in the mail to him by the end of the week. I'm, picking up an order for metal Picts from Gripping Beast at Vapnartak today and the remaining 300 Pictish infantry and 450 or so Late Romans - also GB - will be with me towards the end of the week. And that's al...

 It always amazes me, when people look askance or doubt your veracity when you own large armies. Similarly, I look aghast when faced with people who believe that 30 figures constitutes use of the epithet 'army'. As I have said many, many times in the past, although I was a roleplayerright at the start, I was fast off the blocks when it came to tabletop gaming and the possibilities for fielding massive armies on the tabletop battlefield. My generation grew up with plastic soldiers from companies like Airfix or Matchbox, often in numbers which presaged the life of penury so many of would be faced with when we discovered the fresh new hobby of wargaming. That said, I think it meant that we grew up with a different set of optics and in a time before £3.00 became accepted for a single 'rank & flank' style toy soldier which, costs pennies to produce, even in these times of financial madness. Of course, if you are using a third part service for casting, the base cost goes ...

Having no siblings until I was five, I got used to and enjoyed my own company.  At primary school, I had a few friends, such as Paul Heeley, Matthew France when I was at Firs Hill, and then, when I was at Limpsfield (a groundbreaking 'community school' run on an experimental framework, the name of which escapes me at 06:30) Alan Staniforth, Andrew Moffatt, Vinny Wilson, Carol Herbert (who killed my Lone Ranger doll in a mining accident) and Ian Vollum (or so I thought, but when we met in a nightclub aged 18, he had no memory of me - or so he said, despite being in the same class and hanging out at school every day for 3 long child years). UPDATE: 24 hours after this post, I was speaking to Ian, and reminiscing about things going back to being 11 or 12 years old. And as for the meeting in the Limit, nightclub, I was apparently 'a bit scary' which back then, with a 14 inch mohican and/or assorted leather clothing and makeup, is understandable.   When I moved to comprehens...

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It's January, a time when I used to begin another 'campaign season' in the hobby by planning what I would like to buy at Triples in March. Alas, Triples no longer exists, but I do still plan a January to October 'campaign season' every year, for what it's worth, and I often begin with reflecting on how it was when I had £3 per week spending money and a head full of white metal dreams and printed paper aspirations. I had some excellent times in the early 80s, along with some awful times, but the latter took place in the  real world , so I wasn't really that bothered, because when life got shitty, I simply grabbed my denim jacket, hairbrush and whatever money I could scrape together, and went on a rampage in the world imaginary. Now, when I refer to Games Workshop in an 80s context, if you don't know what it looked like or that Warhammer was but a glint in a Nottingham accountant's beady eye back then, then go out an get a hold of 'The Dice Men...