Memory Lane Part 23: Do You Remember Your First Time?

 So, we've focussed a lot of the first steps in gaming, with a slant towarsd roleplaying, but of course I was also double dipping as it were, and finding my feet in historical wargaming.

It was bound to be like that because as well as 20000AD, Starlord, Starblazer and Eagle, I was also a weekly taker of Warlord, Battle, Action and the Commando comics, with a healthy and balanced shot of Whizzer, The Beano, The Dandy and a devotee of the Willy The Kid periodical digests, the latter of which were so splendidly and blatantly NPC by any standards that the young and sensitive of this modern age would in all probabilities and without aid of any kid, self-immolate in a Roman candle of outrage.

But that was then, so hush chile, and let grandpa reminisce...

It was a Saturday morning in March 1982,  the sky overcast but with that promise that Spring would lumber  along anytime now, and Alan and I were taking the 278 bus into town for a mooch around our usual haunts but not Games Workshop as that was a few months away. For some reason that day, we just didn't have our mooching mojo, and so, by about midday, we were ready to call it a day, go home, listen to a few records and maybe abuse Alan's Atari, if his Mum & Dad were out and the TV could be commandeered, or over to my house, where we would probably end up mucking about with a model kit or share in a daydream of owning a Tamiya RC car... I wanted the Grasshopper and Alan the Hornet. We'd both get them , but that was in the future, and was, if you will recall, how we came to find the games section in Beatties, as we drooled over these expensive luxuries one day.

Come to think of it, at the the time, we'd probably have ended up in my parent's loft, where I had a model railway laid directly onto the boards my Dad had put down there, pinned permannently in place without and track underlay. Lord knows how that railway ever ran, but it did - all three tracks and the various sidings. I even smuggled more bits of chipboards up there, to take an extension another 6 feet to the elevated ore tipper my Nan had bought me, the incline so steep that only the venerable Caledonian Railways 0-4-0 'Pug' could get the traction.

I'd picked that one up at the York model railway show, which Alan and I had found whilst on a day trip with my Mum & Dad. It was priced at £9 and I was £2 short. My distress must have been writ large on my face, because the trader (and remember that this was the 80s) asked how much I had, and I emptied my pockets for a total of £7.10.

That man bless him, said he would take £7 for the little blue beauty, so that I did not 'go home to Sheffield without a penny in my pocket'. I have remembered that clearly for over 4 decades now, and by god, that little train did some serious service despite it's small size.

Thank you sir, wherever you are.

Anyway, back to the Steel City and that grey day...

We were wending our way through the city, not really wanting to call time on our weekly foray, when we bumped into Shaun, Craig and Snitch, three local kids who were a year younger than us and were also part of Steve Roberts' after school club (well, actually it was Monday evening 6-9:30PM, but it was at our old Junior school, and so, we thought of it as 'after school'.

Quizzing them on where they were off to, they said that there was a wargames show (a what?) in the Vitoria Hotel, a sprawling former railway hotel from the steam days which stood overlooking where Alan and I had got off the 278. We'd decided that we'd catch the 278 home too, and as luck would have it the lads were heading from the number 4 stop, down through the haymarket (remember those punks and skinheads? *shudder*) at the very moment we were.

 We tagged along. It sounded interesting...

When we got there, it must have been Trevor Smith on the door, as that where I always saw him from there on - every year, without fail. But what I do know is that Snitch uttered the magic words 'Steve Roberts' and we were in, for free!

The Victoria was the venue of Triples before the move to the Octagon, and I liked it a lot, because, being a Victorian railway hotel it was massive and the show sprawled in a way that made it a great adventure to wander from room to room, in search of booty and thrills of a game related nature.

Of course, being new to gaming and pretty fucking clueless, truth be told, it was even more exciting. That palpable sense of being somewhere forbidden and arcane, getting a glimpse at a secret world was something I just don't get these days, being familiar as I am with how the illusion is created so to speak, but also because back then the sheer variety was staggering. 

I would become very familiar with the Victoria Hotel, including the service areas (but not today) through Triples, before the move to the Octagon. I loved it with it's high windows, fittingly shabby Victorian grandeur and again that sense that within this place that few 'normal' folk ventured to in Sheffield, was a whole underground, counterculture waiting to be explored.

It was here that I bought my first historical models from the bring and buy. 

Now as some of you may know, I ran the bring and buy at Triples for about 20 years and I think may hold the record for the largest bring and buy purchase ever at the Derby show, where 4 grand on a single army was spent in the 90s. But on this day I had absolutely no idea what all the figures with raffle tickets on them were... I was that much of a noob.  Yes, let the record show that I was a neophyte once :)

Once we had cleared up that this was not a raffle (to be fair the rest of the lads had the same thoughts) thanks to some rather frustrated conversations with the men behind the stall, we set about looking for what we could afford. 

My eyes fell on some tiny (which I know now were of course H&R 1/3000) Russian tanks (yeah the red star was a give away) and I logically thought that these must be cheap. I had well less than a pound left in my pocket and so I  - Oh my god, I'm so sorry - rifled through tis box of several hundred painted - Oh Jesus, forgive me - and chose 10 models, which I held out on my palm to of all people Steve Roberts, not realising of course that these were actually part of an army, for sale as one lot.

Steve explained this and then, in what I can only, with 45 years of hindsight to believe was an act of pity and support for 'one of his boys' said 'Well, they won't sell them as one lot.' did a quick calculation of metal cost, adjusted for them being painted, but akso used, and asked me for 70p

Yes, I know, I KNOW ALREADY!

If you were the owner of that army, I apologise and, if you can prove it, I will send you a cheque for £1 to cover the painting cost based on the early 80s. 

But on that day, I got my first 'proper' historical wargames figures.

Much of the rest of our first visit is a blur, but that bring and buy encounter is as clear as crystal. I will of course come back and write more about Triples at the Victoria in a future instalment.

We went home, and inspired by some rules Steve used for battles with 1:72 Airfix model tanks on Monday nights . I also wrote my first set of rules that evening with Alan, sitting in that dingy but homely dining room over at his Mum & Dad's. We used D6 and the old Softskin, Light Armour and Heavy Armour chestnut, so beloved of the older generations and I confess that on my reveresed Subbutteo pitch and with some layered hills made from corrugated cardboard, we played some great games, dividing my 10 Russin vehicles between us. Did we is nome spooky foretelling of the future predict the Ukrainian conflict?

Of course we didn't you soft lad! We were just two kids with more enthusiasm than money (or experience) who were having a fuvckinbg great time, fighting imaginary battles with little lead dollies.

And it was as much fun then as the large games with thousands of 28mm figures I have become a slave to in the following decades.

Indeed, it was with two brigades of Spencer Smith plastic ACW I got from Steve (that man is responsible for so much) comprising  6 infantry regiments  a couple of guns and a handful of cavalry,  that I got my younger brother addicted to wargaming at about age 9. 

In fact, I think that those first forays with simple figures and rules, which relied more on the imagination than aesthetics, were some of the best. 

And so, as the day is getting away from me, and I must away to the coal face of creativity once more, I will bid you farewell and adieu, but will return with more memories of the Triples at the Victoria and the story of my first forays into painting competitions next time.

 

TTFN