British Infantry

 Here are the "goodies" which held back the French for a large part of my childhood. I notice that the officer's sword has either run through too many Frenchies or has been chewed by a younger me.
I had two boxes of these dudes to fight three boxes of French.  I never managed to get Highland Infantry during my childhood. I did manage to buy a box from an online auction a few years back. Finally the forces are all together to fight in Airfixland for eternity!

The first of the sets which got me interested in Napoleonics

This was an awesome set and I got it when I was about eight or nine I think. Being a kid, the original box didn't survive my messy room and being continuously being opened and closed.  My sister brought back three boxes of Airfix when she returned from her Dunedin Youth Orchestra trip to Hobart and I can still remember the thrill of getting such a bounty from the strange land of Australia. These figures formed the mainstay of my battles for the next five or six years and decades later I actually repainted them (pictures on previous post somewhere). Just seen these figures sends me back to my childhood!  I will post the remaining three boxes over the next few days.

Hiatus again....

Work has been busy and getting the kids back to school mode has been time consuming. Add to that the unexpected passing of my mother and this has meant that for the week at least hobbies take a back seat.  I might add some photos of my 1/32 Airfix Napoleonic boxes to the blog next week.  They are truly works of 1970s art. They have been in my little memories cupboard for several years but it is time they saw the light of day again...

State of the Hobby 2015

So... As I mentioned not much is happening. Took a day off work due to a nasty summer cold and actually did just stay in bed. On the hobby front, I decided to take stock of what I've got in terms of boxed 1/72 figs. These are the ones stored in the laundry. There is another disorganised stash in the sun room. We don't have space for a man cave and for the next few years at least my figs will languish in the dark. Anyway here for public viewing and my own strange fascination are the laundry figures. The images should be better than my normal efforts since I gave my old phone to my youngest daughter and am now using an Android phone with 8. something megapixels.

Mixed bunch of 1805 Arty, Guard cav Heavy ambulance and broken light ambulance + my cool little command tent

Unfinished Spanish Light and Line + Command figs from the Hat Allied Command box

Cool looking British Imex Arty snuggling uncomfortably next to Hat Middle Guard??

Hat Light Infantry looking seriously bitching.

This Christmas' efforts

Marmalukes next to 92nd Rifles? + some French Command stands and British Cav from Waterloo and one from the AWI.

Russian Arty looking a little under loved. These dudes need some TLC

Light Chassuers +Nassau + Wurtemburgers?

French Line + those above from the Confederation of the Rhine

Unhappy little command stands

Yey for the 1805 French Arty from Hat! These were a real treat. Unfortunately they are billeted next to some bedraggled Russian Zvezda Russian arty and some random horses

More French - Cant see from the picture size...

Brits in the Peninsular

French Line

Field works from Esci I think + Middle Guard?

Zvezda Lights + Imperial Guard

Unfinished Spanish

Line

Lancers, Hussars, Chassuers and Guard Chassuers??

Here come the Russians!!

Russian Cossacks, Lancers + plus a few uncomfortable Wurtemburgers

Guard Ruskies

French Dragoons and Curassiers + those dudes in white uniforms whose name escapes me.

Russian dragoons and cuirassiers

Ruskies

Poms

Russian Guars standing next to the stinky Russian levies.

More poms

More Christmas project

ditto

Russian line from Esci I think

Russian Hussars and British Command stands

Even more Russians

Here is the overview of the laundry figs

PS. Oh bugger! After uploading heaps of the photos seem blurry! Blame the Galaxy S5!!...Or a shitty photographer.

Back at work for a whole 6 days.....

The title says it all. Work is hectic but fun. The hobby has taken second place to buying new IT gear and settling in to the new year. I haven't looked at my figures for a couple of weeks now except for the box that I rescued after my daughter dropped it. (She was using it as a computer resting place in the sunroom. A couple of figures were broken and I haven't got around to re-gluing them yet.

Even my reading of Chandler's Campaigns of Napoleon has ground to a halt.

I ordered a 6 boxes of static grass from the states a week back so they are the only signs of life in the hobby... Yip. Well.... That's it from me. Maybe another post when things settle down.

This is the new ginger beer I'm drinking at the moment. Pretty nice really.

New Books From My Best Friend

Thanks Amazon.

The holidays are drawing to a close and on the hobby front not much is happening. I have read as far as the Battle of Marango in the Campaigns of Napoleon and I am finding out a lot that I had absolutely no idea about.  As I have mentioned previously, my book knowledge about things Napoleonic is pretty pathetic but one of the great things about being of so little knowledge is the constant discoveries one makes. I am interested in the various sieges of Mantua so now I am eyeing some books on my new friend Amazon.com which I might purchase. Speaking of books, I rediscovered a couple of interesting books which have been sitting up at my mum's house for the last 25 years. Here they are....

The first is a book called Tales of Waterloo by Maxwell. My edition is an 1854 version published by Bentley. I picked it up from a 2nd hand store in the '90s.  The prose is very dated and to be honest I couldn't actually read it! The next book is The Road to Waterloo. This is a disparate set of essays published under a pretty misleading title - again from the early '90s. I will take these back home on Sunday to reunite them with my small but burgeoning Napoleonic library.

So today - packing/cleaning and getting ready to migrate the family back home again. In the coming month I plan to finish my baggage train and get some more static grass from the US. After that...I am gaing to start a 1800-1805 army to fight all the way up to Austerlitz. This is going to be fun!

O\h\zounds! I can't read my way through such writing!

Nice photos in this book - but overall not the best reading.