The Loose Association of Wargamers

Whatever the hobby, each one will have it's share of obsessives. My late uncle Bill was a proto wargamer back in the 60's. His conversions of Airfix ACW figures were amazing. He added fur trim to hats using tissue paper. As a modeller he had a display cabinet full of Universal Carrier conversions from Airfix kits. As a railway modeller who specialised in N gauge he scratch built an incredible 10mm model of the church he went to as a gift for the vicar.

FreddBloggs wrote: ↑Sat Aug 03, 2019 6:07 pm Could be worse, could be an angler.....

I am an angler and what is worse, I fish small rivers in the tweed-clad heartland using only the self tied upstream dry fly. These people will lynch you and burn your family for wearing the wrong tweed, let alone fishing a wet fly or casting a bit to the wrong side.

I too am an angler. Salt water and freshwater. Coffee grinder with live bait, fly fishing, rapala, think I must have done them all. Actually quite keen to get back into it now we're here. I’ve not done any since we arrived. Used to have my own boat which I’d take out and go overnight fishing and sleep on the boat. Was magic.

Paul wrote: ↑Sat Aug 03, 2019 6:29 pm I spent 5 years (part time) selling the stuff in a Winchester Model Shop

A shop devoted to selling models of Winchester sounds a bit niche - I'm guessing it didn't survive the invention of the internet......

BaronVonWreckedoften wrote: ↑Mon Aug 05, 2019 1:32 pm

Paul wrote: ↑Sat Aug 03, 2019 6:29 pm I spent 5 years (part time) selling the stuff in a Winchester Model Shop

A shop devoted to selling models of Winchester sounds a bit niche - I'm guessing it didn't survive the invention of the internet......

You'd be surprised, what with all the Tourists and the ancient Charter that states all landowners, holding more than 3 hides of land, must have a model of the town of Wintan Caestre on their table during the feast of Ethelburga.

Ah anglers... Nothing used to please me more than the bluffing twunts of the Teifi Trout Association trying to tell me that it was 'illegal' for me to take my cadets out on the river in kayaks... I used to have a stack of photocopied letters from Dyfed-Powys Police in my car (pointing out that while the association owned the rights to certain beats they did not own the fecking water of a navigable waterway)and a map of the fishing-beats for just those moments (especially when they tried to tell me we were accessing the water from their beat when the map clearly showed they were lying). Priceless... And the cadets did occasionally get to learn some interesting new words...

Kayakers are all armed. Bit like hockey players.

I love this British idea that "These are my commons!"

"Git orff my common land!"

grizzlymc wrote: ↑Mon Aug 05, 2019 2:13 pm Kayakers are all armed. Bit like hockey players.

I love this British idea that "These are my commons!"

Indeed... And nothing is more likely to raise the ire of a local Welshman, whose family have worked the land and the river for centuries (very large family tree, but very few branches) than to be told by someone with a Brummy, Zummerzet, Cockney, Estuarine, Yorkshire or Scouser accent (I've had them all, but never a Welsh one) that it's 'theirs' and that we can't therefore do something that we have an absolute, legal and ancestral right to do...

It's the only time I've ever felt remotely 'Plaid', but the feeling soon passes...

'Stressing and destroying fish-stocks' was one accusation levelled at me, yet strangely the river was absolutely teeming with salmon, trout and sewin in the 19th century when the river was absolutely stuffed with barges and coracles and yet was completely devoid of modern anglers. Funny that. In mediaeval times the river hosted Wales' largest trading port... The boats didn't seem to bother fish then, so were they made of sterner stuff in those days?

Another accusation was that we were a 'biological threat'; I agreed that a few of my cadets could do with a wash, which was an excellent reason to encourage them to kayak. However, as our kayaks never went anywhere other than the Teifi, that argument was bollocks. Did they only stick their wellies in that single river?

[Amusingly the auto-correct just changed 'wellies' to 'willies'. That would have been a far funnier reply.]

Bah!

RMD wrote: ↑Mon Aug 05, 2019 3:34 pm It's the only time I've ever felt remotely 'Plaid', but the feeling soon passes...

Funny, I've got a shirt like that.