Ouch

.....always cut away from your fingers

Camouflage

I did the following figure from Warlord as a test for the more complicated German pea dot style. I have the H&C book on WW2 uniforms and some of the pictures have some very clear detail on camouflage patterns. The challenge is deconstructing this and painting it in a sequence that creates a realistic picture whilst recognising that you are not ever, ever going to get all the dots in.

Anyway, you do not have to experiment with colour shades. Vallejo have done all the hard work for us. Their VMC range are called German this and that for a good reason. All the camouflage colours used here are straight from the bottle.

Sequence was:

1. Pale brown base layer
2. GW earthshade wash
3. Pale brown highlight
4. Beige 'splodges'
5. Occasional black-brown 'splodges'
6. Pale brown dots on beige and brown bits
7. Beige dots on brown and pale brown bits
8. Brown dots on beige and pale brown bits
9. Bright green dots across all bits but not too many
10. Job done

Etiquette

Behold! Several sheets of Foundry Roman shield transfers which have recently gone astray on the Ebay trail from UK to Belgium. I got a good price (some may say too good but I wont entertain such thoughts) for them and duly entrusted their safe passage to the Royal Mail. It simply did not make economic sense to send them as trackable and so rather like leaving a boat passenger without a safety vest, I left them to it.

The dread words 'buyer has opened a case' appeared shortly thereafter. I guarantee that everybody's heart sinks at this point. There is nothing you can do except wait and I'm willing to bet that a minority of packages are actually reported as turning up. So I steeled myself to make the forlorn journey to Paypal to reimburse the buyer. The Belgian postal system could offer no comfort and when I was informed that 'no, it still hasn't arrived', I duly pressed the right buttons and returned the complete sum. P+P as well. It's the right thing to do isnt it?

I have no truck with eBay or Paypal. I do not subscribe to 'evilBay' school of thought. I am a grown man and know what I am doing. If I assumed that eBay truly had my best interests at heart then I would be a fool. They provide a service and this comes with an associated cost. The burden of risk is a little one sided but it's hard to find an alternative. Higher commission fees? No thanks.

What really rankles is that the buyer did not even say thanks. Not even an acknowledgement. If I wasn't thinking dark thoughts before this I am now.

Now here's the thing. Almost exactly in parallel I had taken out my own case against a seller who hadn't delivered. They were brilliant and resolved the issue immediately. But were they equally suspicious of me? I hope not but I understand if they were.

Irony

I tend to listen to Radio 5 in the morning when I'm walking the dog. It makes me suitably grumpy for the day whereas Radio 4 shifts me into angry. Anyway they had a report this morning on the Andy Murray game in Melbourne where apparently the temperature was very hot and immediately followed it with a piece about the release of the 1914-18 unit war diaries by the National Archives.

There was much hand wringing about a tennis player who had fainted, one who had vomited and one who had burnt her bottom on a piece of exposed metal. In breathless tones the idiot presenters argued whether it was too hot to make people suffer in this way. Maybe it was but I suspect that given the choice the soldiers who wrote the war diaries would have opted for the Australian heat over the wet and damp of the Passchendaele Ridge and a thousand other places. Radio 5 switched effortlessly from the tennis agonies to those of France and Flanders with no apparent sense of irony. Guess which item had the greater air time.

I dont condemn the tennis players. They appear to be getting on with it. It's the media that create the problem in their desperate attempts to report on something. Perspective, balance, common sense - they all seem to be lost. See, I told you it put me in a bad mood.

Homage

I make no bones about it - this one was inspired by the recent painting competition winner on the Steve Dean website. There were 4 Artizan Germans of whom one was wearing autumn camouflage whilst another had the more ubiquitous splinter cam. And they were fantastic. If you haven't seen them hop across to site now and prepare to be impressed. I was quite pleased with how he turned out. There's also a WSS youtube contribution on painting paratroopers which will also provide some encouragement and is well worth 20 mins of your valuable time.

He's on eBay at http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/281240530379?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649