Author Archives: James - Page 125
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CLWG June 2010 Meeting
What you missed at Sunday's chestnut lodge meeting (unless you were one of those present) were some good conversations and two games: Come One, Come Eorl - another megagame tryout from Andy Hadley; and D-Day beach landing - an improvised game by Jim Wallman We started with a chat as Jim, Mukul & I watched some of the Stalingrad episode of World at War which Jim had on DVD on his laptop. This while we cut out some of the cards for playing Come One Come Eorl. Once John Rutherford, Andrew Hadley & Brian Cameron also arrived we started ; Come One Come Eorl This was another tryout of the streamlined rules using the Welsh part of the game. I found that it was relatively easy to pick up, although there was obviously come benefit to be had from having…
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A long time…
It has been a week since we got our shiny new government and already it feels like we've set the calendar back 13 years or so. The language has changed, we're now supposed to talk about 'the public' instead of 'customers' and 'operations' rather than service delivery'. Not only that but we've got a Lord Chancellor and a Department for Education back ;Also there is a very strong possibility that my performance related pay is going to be taken away, even though the year is completed and I have performed very strongly (in the top quartile). That said I'll still be better off than many of my colleagues who have been informed that they are at risk of being redeployed, for some of whom that will mean to another career. Although I suspect we'll be allowed to go back to…
Siege Engines R Us – quick build toy siege engine
Alexander got a new castle playset today, and on the front of the box were pictures of more things than were actually in the box. In particular there was a catapult (in the style of an Onager) and a few other siege engine type things. So in typical four year old fashion Daddy was asked to help with construction of a replacement. To start with we had some string and some lolly sticks, but those were just too difficult to work with, the lolly sticks were really too flat to be able to get the right sort of shape. Fortunately I remembered that we had some wood left from an ash tree that I had cut down and that some of those were about finger thickness. So I popped out into the garden and cut some of the wood up to…
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War in the West: German Plan
Alex Kleanthous, Trevor Duguid-Farrant and I got together a couple of weeks before the megagame to do the German the planning session we had a discussion about the plan to use, we were constrained to the historical planning directive issued by Hitler, but not to the historical operational plan. After a debate we decided not to follow the historical plan as that would allow the Allied player the option to use hindsight against us. Instead we developed a different plan with some different groupings of forces, and also changed the positions of the Army Groups and Armies outline, the main thrust is against the Belgians and it is intended to push onto the Belgian coast west of Antwerp and then sweep down the channel coast to the west (destination Dieppe). The thinking is that the Allies will not allow the…
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Identity Card Application
I went today to apply for a UK Citizen Identity Card. I've been meaning to do it for ages but finally got round to it because of the chance that I might not be able to after the election if the conservatives cancel the identity card. I doubt that if the scheme was cancelled there would be the appetite to recall all the cards and provide refunds for the people that got them, so it ought to be a cheap way to extend the life of my passport (which expires in a year's time). I can use the identity card for travelling to Europe, which is the only place I seem to go these days. The process was pretty smooth, and in fact I spent longer waiting in reception than I did being dealt with by the staff. I turned up…