Hello friends:
Three days into the new year and I’m only now wishing you a happy 2024 is about on pace for this sadly diminished blog. I hope that you and yours passed a happy holiday season and for those of you who still keep Christmas, there are devotions and homilies on my other blog, the “God Blog”.
In 2023 my identity as a wargaming vicar weighed 90% on the vicar side, and only 10% on the hobby side. At sixty one I still have energy and enthusiasm for my vocation, but began to notice that the hobby and the friendships that make it so enjoyable have suffered. Until this last week I hadn’t picked up a paintbrush in months, and hadn’t rolled dice in ages.
Case in point, I have kept a model kit in my church office, in the hopes that I would add a part here or there in my spare moments, but hadn’t touched it since the summer. I have resolved to be more attentive to these sorts of distractions in future, for my mental health and overall wellbeing. A thoughtful Christmas present from my wife Joy, a local gym membership, will also be used.
Just after Christmas I hauled out the model kit, an Airfix 1/48 scale ME 109 E3, and finished it on New Years’ Eve. I used the paint and decals scheme for the plane flown by Oblt Josef “Pips” Priller, immortalized in the film The Longest Day.
I’m too old a bunny to try an airbrush on a kit like this, so contented myself with using a brush for the cammo scheme. I did try using a dark ink wash for the panels.
I don’t see any wargaming use for this model, I think it will just adorn a shelf somewhere, and one day sit beside the 1/48 scale Hurricane that is waiting to be built.
I pray that 2024 is off to a good start for you and that we will all be happier and more fulfilled because of the hobbies that give us joy.
MP+
Michael,
ReplyDeleteHappy New Year, you mad thing! I thought when I saw this I hadn't seen your blog for a while. October it turns out to be. I'll be keeping an eye out for further postings. Whatever happened to Captain 'Dicky' Byrd and his Avenging Evangelicals?
Cheers,
Ion
PS - (from something I've just noticed from your previous blog post) I have used calculus to explore an expansion of F.W. Lanchester's 'Theory of Battles'. Even wrote an article on it in the now defunct local war games magazine, 'Southern Sortie'. I must have been crazy. I was also wrong, as it turned out, upon a conjecture I had arising from it all...
Cheers,
Ion
Hello Ion and how nice to see you again! I am hoping I can restart this blog and use it as a bit of a hobby diary if nothing else. Hmmm, "Dicky" Byrd is vaguely familiar. Whatever did happen to him? Banned from the Mess, as I recall.
ReplyDeleteDo you by any chance have that article handy, I'd be happy to look at it.
Cheers and happy new year!
I'll see if I can hunt it up. I do have some old Southern Sorties kicking around here somewhere. The title of the article, if I recall correctly, was 'Somewhere in Outremer...'
DeleteCheers,
Ion
Happy new year a nice model…..all you need is an early WW2 collection and the model will get plenty of use 👍
ReplyDeleteI do have some 28mm WW2 pulp figures, including a rather fetching German Luftwaffe aviatrix from Bob Murch.
DeleteGood to see!
ReplyDeleteMaybe you can nudge that ratio to 80:20, or even 70:30?
Slow and steady course corrections. But first I need to get to that gym!
DeleteHappy New Year, Michael! I hope the New Year is, indeed, off to a good wargaming start for you.
ReplyDeleteAnd HNY to you and yours, my friend. Not sure my gaming will be as prolific as yours, but you've set a good example for me.
Delete