Dr Who News

The BBC has released a 6-minute short, a prequel to the 50th Anniversary Special.

Enjoy!

"Walking With Dinosaurs" Figures

Given the interest in my earlier post, it's probably worth doing this == STOP-PRESS == announcement.

In addition to the 'Walking With Dinosaurs' packs I mentioned, Argos are doing a boxed-set of the six major characters from the film for £11.99 - or £15.00 for two.

We might see them elsewhere too, as there seems to be a lot of marketing for the film (which opens in the Christmas holidays).

Dinovember: Trip to Wilko's

As part of my Dinovember drive I popped into Wilkinsons yesterday to see if they still had their £1.00 dinosaurs.  They did - and what's more they're currently on offer at three for the price of two!

So I stocked up...

Sorry about the photo; the flash has bled out some of the colours, but you get the idea.

If you like going Big Dinosaur, they have larger versions at £2.00 (also on offer).

Earlier in the week I was toying with the idea of ordering some of these beauties from Eureka Miniatures, but despite thinking that they are very cool, I'll have to hold off for a while.

Eureka's Stukasaurus

A tip picked up on LAF (where a few people like the sound of Dinovember!) is that you can get BBC Walking With Dinosaur figures in those pig-in-a-poke foil packs for £1.99.  These are apparently on sale in Tescos or you can get them direct from the BBC.  You can also buy a specific pack of three of the cute ones for £4.99.

Blog-Con Birthday Greeting

A big Happy Birthday for James Brewerton and congratulations for making Blog-Con a success!

Happy Birthday too to Gary Amos!

Dinovember!

Well!  At last a 'Month' that I can get along with!

Now we've done with Orctober and Zomtober, the great Mr Awdry has declared it DINOvember.

First he did a transformation

of these...

...to these

And now he's presented us with these darlings...

Now my mind is a buzzing.  What can I do?

Well, thanks to the generous of heart, I already have one set of Dino-Hunters.

• I need to finish painting my other set.
• I need to finish my half-done pterosaur 
• I can assess my existing dino-herd
• I need some suitable Lost World terrain
• I can go shopping!!!
• And read, of course!

And if that isn't enough to keep me occupied for the next three weeks, I can dig out my other Lost World fauna and include that.

"Everything's more fun with dinosaurs"

From the Painting Table...

This week hasn't been a good one for painting.

On Sunday it was sunny enough for me to put the washing out and go to the Shed of Delights to prime some figures.  Then, after walking the dog I was a little tired and went upstairs for a nap.  When I woke up it was dark and raining on both the washing and figures.  Since then I've been suffering from a horrible cold.  I tried to put brush to lead on Tuesday, but made a horrible mess.

Today I seem to have got over the worse of it, and I feel much better.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I can therefore present Lubbock and Agrippa.

If I carry on posting like this, my photography will improve along with my painting!

I suspect that I'm not alone in enjoying painting a figure more when I have an idea of its character.

To my mind, Lubbock hasn't always been a Gentleman's Gentleman.  No doubt he was someone's batman, but I'm almost sure that he was at some stage a Jelly Man.  To be honest, he probably owes something to Magersfontein Lugg in Margery Allingham's Campion stories, though sadly not as played by the late lamented Brian Glover (giving miniatures such a haircut is beyond my rudimentary conversion skills!).  Oddly enough, another of the figures I primed looks a lot like that other great Yorkshireman, Pete Postlethwaite: when I paint him up I'll be able to tell you my Postlethwaite anecdote.

Agrippa on the other hand is like a big teddy bear - he'll rip your face off and steal your marmalade sandwiches.

Welcome Wednesday and Blog-Con

I'm sorry it's been a little quite here lately, but I've had a stinker of a cold.

But I need to do a Wednesday Welcome for 'Sam Wise' (AKA Pascal).  'Sam' has a couple of interesting blogs - Sam's Minis World and The Lost New World.  It's not too late to go to the first of these and enter a draw to win some Mithral Figures.

Secondly, I'd like to do a big shout out to anyone attending Blog-Con.  Have fun chaps!  I'm impressed how this has sprung up from a Good Idea to a fully-happening event, with some impressive-looking games and demos planned.  I would really like to have been able to make it.  I'm relying on some good blog coverage and photos.

In the meantime, James has been pondering the future during the wee small hours...

Books and Stuff

A regular round-up of my book news.  I'm changing it to a monthly rather then weekly feature, as it must be getting rather repetative.

What I've read this month...

I carried on with Paul Vallely, Pope Francis: Untying the Knots and started Cressida Cowell, How to Seize a Dragon's Jewel.

I finally finished A Pound of Paper.  It's an interesting read.  It's a sort of memoir by an Australian who's saved from suburban drudgery working as a railway clerk by his love of writing science fiction and collecting SF magazines.  After ten years on the railways, he chucks it in and moves to London where he becomes involved with the bizarre (and frankly shady) world of book collecting.  He becomes a broadcaster, spends a year teaching in an American college, and ends up in Hollywood.  At the end of the book, he's moved to Paris with a new (fourth) wife and is settling into the bibliophile scene there.

I had to check that the author of all this, John Baxter, was a real person.  Apparently he is a respected critic and writer: author of books on film studies, erotica and at least another three volumes of memoirs.  Not a person I'd like to spend much time with, but an engaging raconteur nevertheless.

What I've bought this month...

Kenneth Floyd, Floyd on France - £1.00
Kenneth Floyd, Floyd on Fish - £1.00
Bruce Fogle, The Dog's Mind - 50p
M Haag, Templars: History and Myth - £1.00
A Satterley & G Scott, Battlefield Bravery: The Courage of Ordinary Men, 1914-1918 - £15.01

Giles Foden, Ladysmith - 50p
E M Remarque, All Quite on the Western Front - 60p

This Week's Interesting Obits

Bert Evans (d. 1 Oct 2013)

Survivor of the Wormhouldt Massacre

Daily Telegraph 29 Oct 2013

The Interesting Obits page

New Lead and WIP

It's been a tiresome working week.

I've not been feeling too well, and got seriously behind schedule with a couple of commissions.  Luckily one (now completed) was for an understanding friend and regular customer.  But I had to postpone a visit to London and also been having problems with e-mails rebounding on me.  All very frustrating...

Hobby time to the rescue!

A parcel arrived today from the lovely people at North Star/Artizan 

They're for my Egyptian Pulp project.  I think these will do

for my Cairo Police unit (including the elusive Gaffir) and 

a few other characters who I'm sure will be fun.

And the brushes were even out last weekend!

I was quite pleased with the results

I'm looking forward to tackling the new pieces.

New Look at BfC

What could it be?

Go and look

Welcomes and Loki's Giveaway

First the welcomes, always a nice part of blogging.

Two new followers have joined the gang:  Karen Prestwidge and Sofie Vandersmissen.  Sofie runs an interesting-looking blog, Sofie's Paint Blog.

I have a long way to go before I catch up with Loki, who's celebrating his 200th follower with a giveaway (y'see what I did there?).  Loki (AKA Andrew) will be giving the lucky winner a limited edition figure that he's painted himself.  Details on how to enter, etc are here.

New Vacancy in the Order of Merit

The death of the sculptor Sir Anthony Caro on Wednesday means that there are now three vacancies in the Order of Merit (the last was created by the death of Lady Thatcher).

Which serves to remind me that I way behind in my intentions to blog on the Orders of Chivalry, and that I've been promising a post on the OM for about a year (I have actually got a draft I last edited on 29 Dec 2012).

A-Z Reading Survey: Part 2

For Part 1 click here.


Major book hangover because of:

Not sure what's meant by this.

The last book that made my head spin when I finished it was All My Sins Remembered by Joe Haldeman.

Number of bookcases you own:

Fifteen, some of which are double-stacked, plus all the boxes in the spare room and my mother-in-law's garage.

Not chez Diplomatist, unfortunately

One book you've read multiple times:

Lord of the Rings (because you have to...).

Preferred place to read:

Commuting on a train - that way I used to get into a pattern of an hour and a half a day.  I miss it.

Quote that inspires you/gives you all the feels from a book you've read:

Pass.

Reading regret:

Not setting enough time aside to read these days.

Series you started and need to finish:

The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher.

Three of your all-time favourite books:

R Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Joe Abercrombie, The Heroes
Sussannah Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

Unapologetic fanboy for:

Not a fanboy at all.

Very excited for this release:

The next Joe Abercrombie.

Worst bookish habit:

Starting a book before finishing the last.

X marks the spot - Start at the top left of your bookshelf and pick the 27th book:

In this room:

HE Cardinale, Orders of Knighthood, Awards and the Holy See
Margery Allingham, Mystery Mile
CS Forrester, The Ship
Patrick O'Brien, Post Captain

Your latest book purchase:

EM Remarque, All Quite on the Western Front

Zzz snatcher book (the last book that kept you up waay too late):

Peter Hamilton, Judas Unchained

Stats Don't Matter

It was recently expressed on a blog (I forget whose, sorry) that, what with various bots, visitor stats don't matter.  Given the frequently of vampirestat as a traffic source in mine, it's a view a can sympathize with.

Despite that, I can't help having a warm feeling when I see that the blog has passed the 30,000 hits mark.  It doesn't seem too long ago that I celebrated 20,000 with much hoo-ha (in fact it was April).

A little number-crunching shows a nice steady rise

To go back to the original point, it was suggested that a truer mark that one should celebrate is the number of comments; as a measure of 'community interaction'.  All bloggers like to know they are being read and prompting thought in their readers.

In that light, I'm happy to say that the number of comments stands at 493 - a smidge off 500.

Why we should like round numbers is another question.

Thanks for visiting.  Thanks for following.  Thanks for all your comments and feedback.

Cairo Police Special Investigations Department

The Bimbashi

Robert Spiers was an Asyriologist working for the Palestine Exploration Fund when the First World War broke out.  Joining up, he found himself serving on Gen Allenby's staff and on detachment to his old Oxford friend Col Lawrence with the Arabs.  This reignited his thirst for adventure, and dissatisfaction with academic life.

After attending the Paris Peace Conference, he was surprised, but pleased, to received a job offer from Allenby (by now a Field Marshall, Viscount and High Commissioner in the new Kingdom of Egypt).  He became head of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Cairo Police, with instructions to modernise the force as effectively as possible.  His successful introduction of forensic scientific methods had quick results, within a year doubling the conviction rates in cases of domestic poisoning.  This earned him the Order of the Nile (4th Class) and the special remit of ferreting out the foreign adventurers who were infesting the criminal underworld.

Cairo quickly learned that the Bimbashi always gets his man...

Despite his successes, Spiers soon realised that this underworld was more organised than had been accepted to this point.  Indeed, he began to suspect that behind the mass smuggling of antiquities feeding Western Eyptomania lay a plot to restore Ottoman rule.  He is to find that the truth is much more sinister and there is a much darker, more ancient evil involved...

The Special Investigations Department

"Spiers' Specials"

Known as "Spiers's Specials" the SID, hand-picked  from the best of the gendarme form an elite with a constant queue of applicants (given the dangers they face daily, this is a good thing!).   Seniority or adherence to protocol are not selection criteria: intelligence, initiative and the ability to get things done weigh much more.

The Ghaffir

They are led by the Ghaffir a NCO of uncertain background, whose years of undercover work has left him with a disdain for hierarchy and even uniform.  He is fiercely loyal to the Bimbashi, whose methods puzzle him but leave him in awe.  The pair have saved each other's lives on several occasions.

With a direct line to the Minister of the Interior and given his personal relationship with the High Commissioner, Spiers knows he can call on support at short notice from other elements of the police and the British army stationed in Egypt.

The Director

The young El-Seyed (top right)

In tackling the illicit antiquities, the SIU often works with, and occasionally reports to Dr El-Seyed, the Director of Antiquities at the Ministry of the Interior.

One of the Director's tasks is to

handle visiting V-I-Ps...

Although from an ancient family of hereditary tomb-robbers, El-Seyed appears to have chosen to be a gamekeeper rather than a poacher.  Back in the 1880s he had been a water-boy during the uncovering of the Sphinx; he soon rose up through the ranks of 'native helpers' to become the youngest Reis, or foreman, in the field.

In an early example of local talent-spotting, he was awarded a scholarship by the Egyptian Exploration Society to attend the University of Manchester.  He subsequently studied at the Collège de France and worked for the Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale.

...but he is also handy

with that revolver.

His appointment as Director of Antiquities, part of the 'Egyptianisation' of the civil service, was a controversial one - European critics suggested that the old Ottoman system of 'promotion by stomach' had returned.  Little do they know that, in addition to his decades of experience of excavation and administration, a big factor in his rise is his membership of a certain Secret Brotherhood...





Ass you can probably see, the Bimbashi and constables will be from the Perry's' Egyptian Army range.  I haven't yet decided about the ghaffir.

Thoughts on the Egyptian Project

The Valley of the Tombs of the Kings - the very name is full of romance, and of  all Egypt’s wonders there is none, I suppose, that makes a more instant appeal to the imagination.

Howard Carter

Given the recent influx of new figures and encouragement, I've been thinking about my Egyptian Pulp project.

A little to-do list...
Red = done; Blue=partially done

(Possible) Leagues

The Cairo Police Special Investigations Department
Create league profile
Write background
Source and buy figures
Paint same

Villainous treasure hunters 
Create league profile
Write background (perhaps)
Source and buy figures
Paint same

St Margaret's Best - Eccentric Academics
Create league profile

Write background (Perhaps)
Source and buy figures - replace the no-shows from Black Cat (GRR!)
Paint same

An Ambiguous Brotherhood

Create league profile
Write background
Source and buy figures
Paint same

(Supernatural) Guardians of the Tombs (?)

Create league profile
Write background
Source and buy figures
Paint same

Passers-By, Shifty Types and Helpful Characters
Dept of Antiquities
Civilians

Terrain and Scenery

Middle Eastern buildings
Set dressing for same
Mummy's Tomb
Set dressing for same
Artifacts


Scenarios

Get inspiration!

EDIT

At The Wife's insistence, I add another league - a group of noble archaeologists collecting (under licence) for the British Museum, accompanied by a plucky boy reporter and his dog.

Please Don't Take the Pith...

By seemingly popular design, here are a few photos of me in a funny hat.

Slightly sinister in this on, I feel.

http://www.hatsandcaps.co.uk/Pith-Helmets-C_PITH_HELMETS/

A New Gang in Town

Investigating rumours of treasure hunters in the area, a group of intrepid explorers enter a newly discovered tomb...

...only to find it empty!  But wait!  Has Scotty discovered a clue among the discarded crates?




Actually, these are the very kind gift +James Brewerton brought with him today when he interrupted his holiday to have lunch and give The Wife and I a painting masterclass.  Any resemblance between us and the figures is pure conjecture.  Apart from anything else, I'm not allowed a fez.

Meanwhile, Somewhere Near the Valley of the Kings

The only question now is how to get the booty passed the Cairo Customs and the Police's finest....*

The Bimbashi always gets his man!

This is my first attempt at the cardcraft Mummy's Tomb by Fat Dragon I downloaded from the Wargames Vault - in fact my first attempt at any cardcraft scenery at all. 

It's rough and ready, but certainly has potential.  I'll have another attempt once I've got myself more card, but I think I'll dispense with some of the modularity, add another pair of wall sections to increase the play area and do the floor a different way (at the moment it's pasted to pizza bases).

*This Blog does not advocate the looting of cultural heritage.