The odd thing about my early years, was that despite the fact that my parents were overly strict and overbearing control freaks in the rest of my life, when it came to gaming, because I was mixing with improving and wholseome characters, I got a lot of freedom.  Ask to go into town when here was some kind of minor Left Wing/CND protest and I would be confined to barracks, but ask to travel 30-100 miles on a quest for games, and that was OK, as long as I let my parents know by publuc phone, when I had arrived and when I was returning home, laden down with booty which even the original Games Workshop could not provide. For a short day out, we would go  by bus or train , to  Doncaster which had The Stamp Corner, ostensibly a philatelic supplies specialist, but which also stocked Minifigs and Hinchcliffe figures and the entire range of Osprey books, which was amazingly useful when it came to Christmas and birthday, as my father worked in Doncaster and, worked wi...

 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 chil', 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 ...