Amazing what you find…

…when looking for something else.

First, apologies are due for my lack of response to comments. I am adjusting to having to wake at different times each day this week so I might fall asleep spontaneously.

There seems no point lambasting the politicians today. They are doing it to themselves very nicely. Today, Cameron has found his party won’t let him make a law that says future governments have to give away 0.7% of every penny the country has, since we don’t have any pennies to start with. Clegg has now shouted that he will have this in his manifesto next election. Excellent. He’s going to promise to give away more money that we don’t have. That should bury his lot forever.

Tomorrow I have to be up early but it’s not work. Friday I have to be up early but that’s a good thing. I have a day off Saturday so Smoky-Drinky was planned for Friday night. The trouble was, I was working until 9 pm originally. By the time I got home, changed and ate something, I would not be at Smoky-Drinky until after 10 pm and they’d all be absolutely plastered by then. So now I finish at 5 on Friday and will be drunk at the same pace as the rest.

No, it’s not work tomorrow. It’s fishing. Haven’t been for ages. I have spent most of the evening looking for my scattered fishing gear – the fly fishing stuff. Found it all at last but on the way I also found this –

I knew I still had one somewhere. It was in the old fishing bag and was full of flies on lines wound around cards. There is a faded health warning on the side of the tin but nothing on the front. Ah, I have a ‘new’ baccy tin! Well, after a bit of a cleanup.

Then there was a box of ships. Many, many years ago, I was involved in a global conflict with a few friends. I had control of the German and Italian navies in that tabletop war and I find I still have all the little ships. Loads of them. Here’s a tiny sample –

Clicking might make them less tiny.

In the middle is Bismarck and to the right of it is Graf Zeppelin, the aircraft carrier. Above those is the Italian battleship Littorio and those tiny lines are Type XXI U-boats. I was fond of U-boats so there are quite a few in that small box.

These ships were, I think, made by Davco and are cast whitemetal. They were supplied unpainted. Just bare metal.

Yes, I was once capable of that kind of painting.

There are a lot of cheat boats in the box too. We had a rule that if you wanted to use a vessel, you had to have the physical vessel to place on the board. If you had Bismarck in the Atlantic, you could not transport it to the Mediterranean, it had to sail there and that took time. If you also had Tirpitz then you could have that one in the Med. Likewise with the U-boats. That’s why I have so many.

The cheat boats came about because I discovered that I could make good copies of the original boats using plastic resin, and plasticine as a mould. Painted up it was hard to tell the difference – so I was not constrained by spare money for the real models.

I’m not going to get involved in sea battles again so I’ll sell these off as soon as I find time to catalogue them and list them on eBay. Some I have trouble identifying, so it’ll take a while. The cheat boats will be included as free extras because they aren’t really worth anything.

Bismarck is three inches long. I can’t remember the scale, I would have said 1/1200 but that sub I’m drilling for a smoking captain is bigger than these. Anyone know? I know U-boats weren’t very big but surely modern subs aren’t as long as battleships?

Well, best wind down for sleep. A hard morning’s fishing lies ahead, before a relaxing four-hour shift in the evening. With luck, I’ll have a trout feast in between.

Normal service will resume… eventually.