On Sunday, we ventured to a wargames convention for the first time in 9 months, armed with a low four figure bag of spending money and the hope and expectation of having us a jamboree. I was in effervescent mood. And that was where the traditional festival of fun sort of spluttered to a rather inauspicious halt. What do I want from a show? Well, being a traditionalist of the old school, I generally want the following: 1, A proper bring and buy, or at a push a tabletop sale which is free of dealers who are getting a trade stand for a lot less than were they in the main hall. It should be located away from the main footfall routes so that the knots of people who gather there (ideally)  don't slow down entry and exit, and generally become a clot in a narrow artery, so to speak. 2. Vibrant and varied trade stands. Simply having big box resellers making up 30% of your trade stands is lazy. Build it and they will come. but get out there and tell people about why what you've built i...

 I was chatting with my better and less opinionated half this morning about how one of my clients had been quite guarded when they first came on board. It turned out, that they had previous issues with so-called professional painters in the past and were rightly wary of getting taken around the corner and having their financial (and metaphorical) trousers taken down. This really pisses me off, as someone who paints every day over 46 weeks of the year and who has done so for well over a decade and for 30+ years on an ad-hoc basis before that. As I have covered previously, there was a certain painter whose 'schtick' was the dead relative ruse, which when the same relative dies three times, becomes a bit of an obvious load of bollocks.  I tried to help him out and stopped him getting himself de-bagged, but he then went back to his bad ways and the rest as they say is history. When you do something for a living or purport to be 'professional' you should by instinct, treat y...