Still Banging

NO! Before You Ask, And Wash Out Your Dirty Minds
Your Humble Scribe has lost count of the number of times he's repeated the fact that BOOJUM! is O So Very Safe For Work.  Really, you people have the attention span of a goldfish with Alzheimers.

"I must find the corner ..."

     For we are back on the subject of the English Civil Unpleasantness, which is rather a misnomer as it involved Wales, Scotland (then an independent nation) and Ireland (brimming with rebellion as usual).  Like most civil wars it definitely wasn't civil, though it was a lot better-behaved than on the Continent and in later centuries.  For example, the Royalist general Sir Ralph Hopton and Parliamentarian general Sir William Waller had been the best of friends before the war, and Sir Bill wrote a letter to his old pal stating that they were still bestest friends still.  Art?

Sir Bill on a good hair day

     If, as the saying has it, the sinews of war are money, then the bones must be made of gunpowder, which means the aphorismical person had better not get burnt at the stake -
     Anyway, gunpowder.  Once again, Conrad is NOT going to go into the details of it's composition, because UNIT.  At the outbreak of the ECW, there were 3 gunpowder mills in England, at Hull, Portsmouth and London.  The one in London presumably at the Tower, which was a major arsenal.  Fortunately for Parliament, all three towns were in their hands, meaning that they not only had the mills, they had the skilled artisans that went with them.  Gunpowder manufacture - you're probably way ahead of me here - is a risky business even if you know what you're doing.  For one thing, no smoking on the premises; no naked flames; any metal tools used being made of (non-sparking) copper; blast-proof walls between buildings, and so on.

Leiden, flattened

     When a ship carrying 16 tons of gunpowder blew up in Leiden, there was nothing left of it, nor a lot of the town.  The anchor was found half a mile away.  So, one needs to be careful when making or transporting powder, because it only takes a minute girl a single spark and it's goodnight Vienna.
     Okay, enough about gunpowder for this afternoon.  Motley, set off the fireworks!

Czechiangry
And yes, we return to Marketa's list of things that annoy Czechs.  One presumes that every nation has a list of "We Do Not Like This"; here in the UK one of our pet peeves is going abroad and being told we are English, when speaking with a pronounced Scottish accent.  We are BRITISH! thank you very much -
     <ahem> yes this isn't about what annoys Conrad, as that list would quickly fill several dozen pages.  O Marketa!  What is pressing your Angry button today?
     "Confuse Czechs with Russians"
     The last time there was a large influx of Ruffian tourists into Czechoslovakia, they came wearing these -

"Friendly Czechoslovaks flock to greet their liberators" - said the Kremlin

     This happened at the height of the Swinging Sixties and pretty much nailed dead the reputation of the Sinisters as anything but imperialistic bullies.  Also, note the extemporised recognition markings on the Sinister tanks above in white paint; this is because the Czechoslovak army used identical kit.
     The invasion happened in 1968, so Marketa's parents undoubtedly remember it, and not with the kind of rosy-tinted vision that Tsar Putin likes to view the past through.
     Okay! that's one reason she'd have for getting annoyed about being confused with a Ruffian.  In fact making that kind of mistake in Prague would probably earn you a smack around the chops -

A phrase beloved of author Jaroslav Hasek

     Abroad, well, you have to cut us some slack, Marketa.  I doubt Western ears can detect the difference between spoken Czech and Russian*.  If you were writing then that would instantly solve the recognition problem.  As for looks?
     I think we'll have to come back to that one.  Perhaps later today ...

Oho!
Conrad completely forgot that he'd ordered Peter Caddick-Adams "Sand and Steel" on Abebooks when it wasn't in stock, and it turned up yesteryon.  Typically, I immediately turned to the Bibliography to see which books I already had, and, do you know, it wasn't that many.  Art?

I know what you're thinking -

     "Another history of D-Day?"  Well, yes.  This one comes highly recommended, and Ol' Pete's angle for this history is the incredibly thorough and expansive training that the Allied armies went through to ensure the first 24 hours went as smoothly as possible.  This takes up half the book.
     Ol' Pete also has an amusing reference to Young Pete, way back in 1975 when the invasion beaches were almost as they were in 1944 " - where in 1975 ammunition from the war years was still be found, and as much of it as possible transported back to England in my schoolboy pockets".  Bad Pete!  Naughty Pete**!  

Pete with friends

Finally -
I really need to get up another scenario for 'Polemos', which means knuckling down to working out how many bases of figures to use, and how to add terrain to a battlefield, and possibly using some of the Optional rules about weather.  I've done an Advance To Contact, and a Rearguard Action, so a straightforward Bashing Deliberately Into Each Other ought to work.
     I still have an entire French Army of First Unpleasantness circa 1918 to paint, too.  Only thing is, my paints have been neglected for so long I don't know if they're still usable.
     Not only that, I'm going through Darjeeling Loose Leaf at a rate of knots.

Irregular regulars

     And with that, we are done!

*  Forgive us!  Forgive us!
**  Mind you, this comes from someone cooking up home-made gunpowder at the time.