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Jeff (although for all I know he might be a vixen) sunning himself in the garden this afternoon. Usually I only see him trotting through in the early hours.

Jeff spots me opening the window for a better shot

No rest for the wicked

Review shared from my Goodreads account

Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book did nothing to alter the unblemished record of Persephone books in my eyes. I have still yet to read one of the beautiful grey volumes I didn't like. This one was gripping from the moment we encounter the young intern Doctor Densmore on his journey to a family event in Phoenix. Along the way we meet the first of a number of memorable characters and the crime story unfolds with unremitting tension.

Several of the characters have a life so well drawn that I would have been happy to have met them again in future volumes: The lovely judge's daughter Ellen, colourful lawyer Skye Houston (pronounced Howston in this case) and pragmatic Marshal Hackaberry for example, not to mention his brutal and bigoted minions. I could easily imagine a series based on this community but unfortunately this was Dorothy Hughes' last novel.

The background to the book, (which was first published in 1963, a year seared into the memory of everyone alive at the time) is a South-Western America in a time of huge tension and social change. The story gives us a vivid insight into both changing attitudes to race and class and the reluctance of many to acknowledge these changes. One of those books you long to return to when forced to put it down and one with an atmosphere so real that it and its dramatis personae will live long in the memory.



View all my reviews

Jambo

We followed Memoir '44 with two games of Jambo, including all the elements of the first expansion.

Clearly I had come to terms with these new additions after last week's easy win by Crabro because I won both games.



This time I took as many as three of the relics cards, giving me some degree of control over that element, but both wins were achieved by exceeding 60 gold.

Very unusually this meant that I had won all four games today  but they had been very close fought and I'm sure we both enjoyed the day.

We will fight them on the beaches

Sword Beach scenario set up

 Back to Memoir '44, the Richard Borg game using his card driven war game mechanic in a number of Second World War scenarios specifically related to the Overlord invasions of Europe on 6th June 1944 and their aftermath. Last week saw us tackle the first two scenarios which were based on the airborne Allied landings to secure important inland targets: The Ox and Bucks Light Infantry glider landings to take the Pegasus Bridge and the taking of Saint Mere-Eglise by the U.S. 505th Parachute Infantry.

Miss, retreat, any unit, infantry and armour.

 This week the scenario was the actual landing at the beach codenamed Sword, where British troops supported by Commando units and amphibious Sherman tanks were landed. The set up of the scenario includes all these elements arriving together which is historically accurate as the weather prevented the plan to land the tanks first.

I played the Axis side in our first game and from where I sat the Allied forces arrayed against me looked formidable. The main element in my favour should have been the artillery, dug in a fortification and ready to rake a wide area around it with its long range and immunity to line of site restrictions. In the event this unit got off very few shots owing to the lack of suitable cards and it was quickly over-run as Crabro's troops forced their way straight up through the centre of my lines.

I had the advantage of most of my forces being in good defensive positions such as woods, towns and bunkers which were particularly good against his Shermans which were already up against "hedgehog" tank traps strewn along the beachhead. In the end I took two commando units, a tank unit and two of his ordinary infantry units to give me the game. Despite poor results from a barrage card and some of the usual problems with not having a card to command the units most needed, I had some good rolls, and a close assault card allowed me to finish the job.

Plastic prototype of Crabro's dice tower is useful

 We then changed sides and played the scenario again, allowing me to experience just how difficult it was to make use of the tanks, which were nearly always rolling at -2 dice against troops firing out of good defensive terrain. I made some good gains on the left flank taking me up to 3 of the victory points needed and poised to take a unit and town for the final two...when I ran out of left flank cards. Tantalisingly these final targets remained and were never to fall to the Allies. The Axis played well to recover strongly and at the point when we broke for lunch, each army had four of the five medals required.

Terrain player aids and Shermans

 It was obvious that my next move had to be the win or the Axis would secure victory in the following turn. It fell to two units, one tank and the other infantry, to attempt to wipe out a unit of infantry on the right flank. At the same time I moved a severely depleted unit another step away from the artillery. The tanks scored a hit and his damaged unit retreated but they were still in range of the infantry who luckily finished the job.

Air power wasn't much help to me as Axis player

A completely different game as, far from thrusting up the centre like Crabro, I had as far as possible given the artillery a wide berth which was intact and facing an empty vista at the end of the game.

We are both now big fans of these Borg games and have played Battle Cry and Commands and Colors: Ancients. Memoir '44 is now wetting our appetite for Battlelore.

Power Grid

Belatedly, a note of last week's Thursday game: Power Grid. There were five of us this week, with the Professor absent but MaOldie returned to the fold. I arrived a little late after transport problems to see them setting up the map I had played at Pasteboard and Plastic: Japan. The map is very tight and, with five players, expansion was often very difficult. It seems my experience with the three player game hadn't helped much as I struggled to increase my power supply. There seemed to me a lot more passing than usual as the power stations on offer were unattractive upgrades if they improved things at all. I never had any problem with running my motley collection of wind and nuclear as no one else was competing for my fuel. In the end the uranium restock was comfortably re-supplying my two nuclear plants at no great cost.

Unfortunately the combination was not enough to supply my sad blacked-out citizenry in a couple of places so I clearly was not going to win. I had the opportunity to influence the game only by bringing it to an end in Petra Pan's favour but I left myself one city short of the requirement and her to conclude the game herself. Despite two losses in a row, Power Grid remains one of my favourite games and I look forward to a return soon, albeit perhaps on a different map.

A cinema code of conduct from Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo

A cinema code of conduct from Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo

Borg Game Geek

Today saw a welcome return to Richard Borg's card driven Commands and Colors (sic) style war-gaming. Crabro and I have logged something like 80 games of Ancients and its expansions and have also played a few games of Battle Cry but this was our first session with the D-Day-commemorating Memoir '44. We were very happy to be returning to this type of game (albeit the origin of my "I whinged for Carthage T-shirt) even though we were aware that the older Memoir did not have some of the complexities of Commands and Colors: Ancients.

The game is highly reminiscent of those invented by myself and a friend in our teens, utilising our OO scale Airfix soldiers and a board borrowed from another game. These had started with the use of a Cluedo board which we decided could represent streets and buildings rather than rooms and corridors. Over some months these games evolved into large scale American Civil War battles played on a 3D landscape constructed using an assortment of model railway accessories, Plasticine, small building blocks and other items borrowed from my little brother's toy collection. Naturally it is Battle Cry which is the greatest reminder of this era but the miniature soldiers in Memoir are also highly evocative of those early teenage days.

Today we played the first two scenarios: Pegasus Bridge (an introductory scenario using only infantry) and Sainte Maire Eglise which introduced a tank unit and different terrain.

Things went downhill for me after winning the first battle as the Allies but I did manage to keep the return match on the Pegasus scenario to 4-3. After lunch Crabro's parachutists managed to dig themselves in along a perfect defensive line in woods, villages etc and my little Feldgrau failures were trapped in a pocket and massacred. The reverse of the scenario did not see me repeat Crabro's success with the initial "parachute drop" and after some limited success my hand (consisting as it did of only left flank cards) went against me, allowing the Panzer unit on my right flank which I had been so desperately trying to take out, to mop up the remaining necessary units without serious opposition.

The usual whinging about cards and Crabro's legendary dice rolling aside, it was great fun to return to this type of game and I think we are both very much looking forward to some more before perhaps moving on to Borg's later and more complex game: Battlelore.

To finish the day we added some new expansions into Jambo and just to be consistent I lost again. In a game rather characterised by debate about the correct use of various new cards, Crabro motored to a comfortable win by taking all four of the new Relic cards.

No cause for a llama

Saturday's game, after the usual excellent meal with my friends, was The Princes of Macchu Pichu which I maintain is one of Max Gerdts' rondel games despite the action-choosing "rondel" being in the form of a map rather than round in this case.

It was some time since we had played it and it took a while to start moving as we refreshed our memories over the rules. The first day seemed endless but as the game wore on most of the moves were becoming fluent and even brief, apart from a certain amount of "AP" in the usual quarter and some confusion over which areas were adjacent to which others. I hope my opponents enjoyed it as I did overall though, because it is such a nice looking game with its map and wooden product pieces (llamas, pots, coca leaves and shirts) and I would like a return match before we forget how to play it again.

This game ended with a win for paultro as I failed to take the last virgin in time to prevent Spanish conquest, which then brought gold into the reckoning, trebling his score and causing him to overtake me and disappear into the distance.

Birling on the chalk

Emerging from the cinema into a sunny July day I decided I would attempt a little light birding without my mentor (who was preparing to head for the East Coast for some more serious twitching) so I dived into the nearby supermarket for some sandwiches, crisps and fizz and drove to Birling Gap where I could make rare use of my National Trust member sticker, devour my lunch and take a stroll on the downs behind the white cliffs. There being no birds showing off in the bushes round the car as has sometimes been the case, I carried on reading a birthday present book (Barbara Ewing's The Mesmerist) while I consumed the sandwiches and, foolishly because of their greasiness, the crisps. The batteries in the camera ran out immediately, leaving me to attempt to use the new mobile for that purpose but without much experience of its use.

I then went for a little stroll up towards Belle Tout lighthouse which is the one that was moved bodily back from the cliff for some temporary respite from cliff edge erosion and which recently appeared as Hasting lighthouse in the remake of Brighton (or rather Eastbourne) Rock.

I could swear I had seen a Red Kite earlier (are there any other likely raptors with forked tails?) but didn't see much on this little ramble. After all the displaying and singing of the spring followed by the exhausting period of constantly finding food for insatiable chicks most of the birds seem to be taking a well-earned rest somewhere, but I did see some Swallows and a number of Skylarks in addition to a lot of gulls. They seemed to be Herring Gulls, both adult and youngsters of various ages but no doubt my expert friend would have spotted more interesting things amongst the crowd. Aside from the usual Magpies, Crows and gulls I did see an LBJ sitting up on top of a bush quite prominently tweeting away but could I identify it? No I couldn't. Come back soon birdmeister I am not yet ready to go it alone.

I returned via a silent Horseshoe Plantation but I did see a number of butterflies on the walk. There were several different species blue, white and brown and yes, I am even worse at identifying them than I am at identifying birds - for that I again need my bird tutor or his wife.

It was a very pleasant stroll and largely solitary as the large number of people about (including the usual German school coach) confined themselves to the Gap itself and the beach (which pretty much ruled out seeing any waders there).

Pottering (Hello to Jason Isaacs)

I went to see the final part of the Harry Potter saga on Friday: The 2d version, which is the one where it turns out that Hermione was the evil one all along and Harry and Ron live together happily ever after in a civil partnership while, full of remorse they become full time carers for what's left of Voldywhoshallnotbebreathingverywellthroughthatnose and fill their remaining hours with games of bicycle quidditch and Snapes and ladders. It may very well be the same as the 3d version but with it being so dark already, no-one is going to be able to tell with those glasses on.

Who am I to argue with the general reaction of critics and public alike that it is a well made and appropriate ending to a landmark cinema franchise? I can't find much fault with it at all (except for my doubts about the Hermi one ending up with duff old Ron - even Neville would be more credible)...but, I somehow didn't feel that engaged. It may be pointed out with some justification that I am not the target audience of this film but I think the answer is simpler even than that: There were no shocks or surprises because I've read the (enormous - was the editor over-awed by billionaire businesswoman Jo?) book. I wish I wasn't able to look at it objectively but, as I am, I would say it is a very good film, made by a team who care about it, the franchise, and probably each other, but a little clunky in places from its awareness that it has to tie the whole rambling saga up definitively. This includes allowing each of the characters to take a bow. Never mind the Deathly Hallows, it's more like the deadly goodbyes: It's goodbye from Jim Broadbent, momentarily on camera rhubarbing away, and it's goodbye from Miriam Margolyes similarly and so on. The chaos of the latter part of the film (I'm desperately trying to avoid spoilers for the one person who hasn't read the books but still, for some unfathomable reason wants to see the finale) is used as the attempt to cover this but it still feels artificial. The various love plots are tied up in surprisingly perfunctory manner too but then there were a lot of special effects to cram in.

What am I saying? I liked it. I liked the books (although never understood why they made the crossover to a wider audience when so many brilliant children's books with at least as much merit do not) and I liked all the other films to a greater or lesser degree, but I'm rather glad it's over and hopefully the, now not so young, actors can manage to make a career out in the world of muggles. They are surely too old now if JK has a change of heart and writes more of her Hogwarts.

Having said that I am rather looking forward to being able to watch the whole saga again on DVD in the not too distant future. It will be interesting to see the progression and to compare the work of David Yates and the earlier directors.

A Win for the Whinger

Shot with new 'phone sorry about the reflection

Last week for Android and I played a different character again. This time Floyd the 'droid, an investigator both helped and hindered by being bound by three directives which are presumably a nod to Asimov's famous Laws of Robotics (The philosopy behind which is beginning to be debated more seriously as we enter an era of increased use of military robots or drones). The game was once more engrossing. This time the murder scenario's own variations of the rules included the repositioning of leads followed on Earth to locations on the moon where possible, and a slight easing of the time restrictions on traveling between the two via the Clarkian "beanstalk"

At the time we broke for an excellent pizza lunch I was unsure of who was in the ascendancy. My opponent, this week playing Rachel the greedy bounty hunter, appeared to be doing well for favours but I was unclear about what was unfolding as far as the suspects were concerned, especially as my own placement of leads had included a lot of bluff early in the game to avoid tipping my hand early.

In the end I think we had both successfully misled each other but Crabro had misunderstood the purpose of alibi tokens and the two he had placed were having the opposite effect to that which he had intended. Had he not made this mistake it could have been a very different outcome but as it was Floyd won by 46 points to 36 with both of us steering our own plots to a happy conclusion but also both my hunches having been correct.

Rachel had considerably more success with bonuses from uncovering the conspiracy and gaining favours, especially as Floyd had been restricted to owning only two for part of the game and had therefore been spending them quickly.

I very much enjoyed the game again but Crabro feels it is time to move on to his new purchases and sell Android on...possibly to me as I am reluctant to say goodbye to it despite the unlikelihood of being able to play it with either the Saltdean or Hove groups. Looking forward to all the new games, which include Battlelore, Jambo expansions and Dominant Species.

Button Undone

Photo: Rego Korosi Creative Commons Licence

I wonder how often that has been used as a heading... After a day's gaming, a day's sport I thought and despite a headache and general lurgitude I was anticipating an enjoyable day as a telespectateur in front of "Le Tour" and hours of British Grand Prix coverage. My own laptimes between kitchen and sofa were looking very respectable and my timing of the now traditional brunch was impeccable, with eggs, bacon, toast and fried tomatoes trayed-up with steaming cup of coffee and arriving at the couch on the parade lap as planned. That was about all that did go to plan though.

The race showed huge promise with a rather damp quali having mixed things up a bit, (Webber on pole instead of the lad from Heppenheim, Hamilton way back in tenth and Paul di Resta in a stunning sixth place) and Silverstone was enjoying two different sorts of weather simultaneously, with heavy rain at the old pits end while it was bone-dry at the shiny new startline area.

Silverstone purists may not like the changes made to the old warhorse over the years but the efforts of Mr Hill and the BRDC among others have at least secured a Grand Prix in Britain for some years to come it seems. For myself I am still sad that it is impossible to run these cars at Brands anymore as that circuit always felt like home to me and much more friendly and welcoming.

Pasteboard & Plastic XV

"Caylus with guns" First game

 Pasteboard and Plastic is the name of the games days organised by Crabro and held three times a year in the scout hut at Saltdean to raise money for the local (42nd Brighton) scouts and of course to provide geeky fun for local gamers. In this case lots of gamers in what looked at times to be a record turnout, certainly for the Summer event when even geeks may emerge blinking into the sunlight for holidays.

I turned down an offer of a place at another game of Rise of Empires as I wanted to get myself a cuppa and have a browse through the games on sale. I can't resist a Western theme though and first game of the day for me was Carson City, a game memorably and accurately described by one of the players as "Caylus with guns". I had forgotten a lot of what I had learned in my previous plays of this some time ago and didn't cover myself in glory. I played a fairly solid game I thought but was lulled into a false sense of security by the almost pacifist play in my last experience of the game and consequently missed the arms race which left at least two of my opponents able to automatically win duels against me without needing to roll a die. Enjoyable but rather more serious than I am used to with genre games. Not a "yeeha!" or "Draw ya varmint" to be heard. An expansion featuring ladies of the night was mooted however. Thanks to my opponents, Kevin, Simon and Steve.

Just some of the games on sale

Between games, I was drawn back often to the games on sale. There was a mouth-watering array of shrink-wrapped new games on display in addition to a well-stocked second-hand sale or trade table. My indecisiveness eventually cost me a nice cheap copy of Ra - a game I like, and possibly Airships, an attractive looking new game. I drooled over several big, high production-value games dripping with cards and miniatures (e.g., Castle Ravenloft, Mansion of Madness and a Heroscape basegame) as well as some expansions to games which I already own, like Ticket to Ride and Carcassonne. In the event I persuaded myself that I could not afford to buy games and expansions which I knew would not be to my groups' taste and would sit forlornly on the shelf unplayed. Hard not to point birthday money at Ravenloft given that it can be played solo though but as would be expected of such a big game, it was quite a lot of money despite the very competitive, and of course postage-free, prices of BoardGameClub who were supporting, and joining in, the event again.

Second hand games - I wish I'd nabbed Ra!

Power Grid was the second game I played I think, but on an interesting map I hadn't played before: Japan. I didn't stand much of a chance against young agile minds but it was a very enjoyable return to a game I really like. In the end I was able to have built and power 17 cities but in the same turn both my opponents built up to 18 and could power them all. First and second was decided on money and was, I think, won by Waaru by four electros.

Crabro & others at the back prepare the raffle

At some point I stopped for tea and sandwiches and retreated outside to check the state of the Tour and then decided to stop trying to read the F1 quali on a phone screen in bright sunlight and spent a few minutes back in the car with a cuppa and Radio 5's coverage of the damp ten minute final session. Result - Hamilton rather a long way back but a brilliant run by Scot Paul di Resta for sixth in his Force India.

Returning to help with the raffle set up I then watched the intriguing "Bag O' Geek" and San Juan, among other goodies, go to other ticket buyers but at least I managed to pass on Bionicle to perhaps a more appreciative owner. It has some nice and potentially very useful bits if nothing else.

Raffle prize donations

Last big game of the day for me was my own Pillars of the Earth, a worker-placement game I really enjoy. We played my German version but with no trouble owing to the beautiful card and board paste-ups by its previous owner, Carver, designer of Warrior Knights. In keeping with my general performance this week, I came a none too convincing third despite having acheived my aim of maxing out my gold, owning several blue ("metal") cubes and obtaining both the cards needed to convert these riches to victory points. Very enjoyable nevertheless and always nice to play with MaOldie and her offspring, in this case Waaru. Matthew made up the group I think.

My German copy of Pillars of the Earth

After this there were a number of more "filler" type games including Wyatt Earp, unofficial member of the Mystery Rummy series, (yes I came third/last with only $17,000), Spoof of which I think I may have actually won a game, and Flaschenteufel which was sadly abandoned after one hand owing to the arrival of hot food from the local takeaways just as the rules were beginning to come back to me. Chips and cards do not mix unless they are poker chips, however.

Glory to Rome: mrwendal, Waaru and Petra Pan

One of my current favourite games and rather more than a filler really, Glory to Rome hit the table and I was very pleased to finally have a proper win. albeit shared with waaru who had ended the game without realising I had equaled his score.

Finally I got a couple more of my light games played. Diamant and Guillotine require almost no rule learning and very little thought about strategy so were ideal for the end of the day and were played in suitably light-hearted fashion by myself, Waaru, Petra Pan and mrwendal to continue the practice of using "geeknames", plus Abby and Mickey whose alter egos, if any, are unknown to me.

I left slightly before the final die-hards around midnight but feeling rather guilty about not staying for the wash up as I usually do, did clear away one or two tables and chairs to appease my conscience.

Another very good P&P thanks to Crabro, BGC, and everyone who played, brought games to sell, donated prizes etc. Hopefully, a substantial amount has been raised for the local scouts.

If anyone ever reads this and is interested in the event, there are "geeklists" on Boardgamegeek.com covering most, if not all the past P&Ps and a metalist here. There is also a Yahoo group which will keep you up to date with details of future events here, run by Crabro's alter ego Sevenwattbulb. Mike, sporting one of his trademark colourful shirts in the picture above also writes the events up on his very interesting website: Theblisspages

Martin! Why have you done this to me?

Same game, same cube but pictured at the Saltdean games day

This Thursday's only game was Rise of Empires by Martin Wallace, and the title above is a partial quote from my own whinge (what me?). My opinion improved later but initially I felt that for once I was not enjoying a game, which is particularly unusual for a Martin Wallace game. He is very popular with our usual host "Crabro" and  I very much enjoy, for example, Tinner's Trail, Last Train to Wenslydale, Brass and the similar (Brass Lite?) Age of Industry. I clearly wasn't at my best last night because we were mostly new to the game and were all still learning the rules.

What helped the game length but not my stress levels was the introduction of the game cube timer which the group had clubbed together to buy for our host's recent **th birthday. It is a very clever little device particularly suited to reducing the Professor's "analysis paralysis" although, once he found that the stand (with which you can pause the device) was situated near him, he still managed to find time to debate strategies and query rules. Personally it didn't help my early game at all, as the one minute allowed didn't give me time to think about the misconceptions that were taking my first era down the pan. Once I realised that, although not too far behind on score, I was way behind on resources and the means to obtain the cubes needed for a presence on the map, I could not see a way back, hence the: "Martin! Why have you done this to me? I've always really liked your games..."

In the final era though I began to recover somewhat and scored the highest number of victory points in the B turn of that phase. Not enough to move me from last (completely the opposite side of the board from the Professor's position on the score track) but enough to make me feel a little better disposed to the game. Despite the use of the cube, it was rather a long game and didn't finish until long after midnight. No fillers this week.

Subsequently we have received a somewhat tongue in cheek email from Crabro saying that he got a fundamental rule wrong and apologising to the Professor that the game was therefore null and void. I think we need to play it again after all having a look at the rules again and perhaps strategy recommendations and clarifications on "The 'geek" before we can really assess it. I want to like it as I'm genuinely a fan of Mr Wallace's clever games. I'm not sure I want to spend time on it tomorrow at the next "Pasteboard and Plastic" games day to the exclusion of other new games experiences though, especially as I've already committed to a multi-player game of Android at some point.

Sad for Brad

Photo by Drew Withington used under Creative Commons Licence

With the weather being changeable to say the least, the birders turned into couch potatoes for the day and consumed large quantitiies of tea and excellent cheese toasties while watching the Tour de France on television.

Things went according to plan for HTC Highroad's Manx Missile, Mark Cavendish, after another textbook example of team riding launched him over the line for his 17th stage win and his second of this Tour. Sadly, things didn't go so well for the UK's sky team with their leader, who has been on the form of his life, crashing out and others, like "G" (Geraint Thomas) losing over 3 minutes as they delayed to see if they could haul their fallen leader back into the battle. It wasn't to be, with Brad clearly in agony with what proved to be the cyclist's bane, a broken collar-bone. Afterwards Mark was giving his usual forthright opinions in an interview after the race, but looked pole-axed when he learned the news about Wiggins. "Oh sh*t!" he blurted before going on to say that he was "gutted" as British Champion,Wiggins had been on such good form and a genuine contender in the GC. After such promise in these early days of the 2011 Tour, today has been a terrible blow to the Sky team and to British fans of the Tour. We still have Millar high up in the GC and Cavendish on top stage-winning form but what Geraint can do to that three minutes I don't know. To add to his woes he has lost the White Jersey, at least for the moment.

Tomorrow the Tour begins proper for me as we see the beginnings of some decent climbs. The Tour really comes alive in the mountain stages of the Alps and Pyrenees and it is sad that we won't get to see what Brad could do there. A long way to go and lots more excitement to come though and if I stop being partisan for a moment and see things through, for example, through Norwegian eyes things are looking very good at present with Hushovd still in yellow and "Wonderful, wonderful" Boasson Hagen picking up a popular stage win yesterday.

Going on a Quail Hunt - Blustery Birding

Taken through the windscreen

Yesterday was a birding day, someone on the Sussex Ornithological Society website, having reported Quail requesting “wetmylips” on the Sussex Downs. My birding guru picked me up, telling me it was going to be the best weather of the available days this week, and whisked me to Coombes. Discouragingly, the windscreen wipers were needed several times during the journey.

Rats at the same banquet

Having found somewhere to park, and seen a hunting Kestrel on route, we sat in the car for few minutes while the sky cleared. Immediately in front of us we were treated to a busy coming and going of assorted Robins, tits and finches as someone had spread a banquet of seed on the top rail of the fence. They weren't the only diners though as two rats had been seated at the other end of the restaurant. We then set off for our trudge up towards Steepdown, spotting a couple of Little Egrets flying over on the way.

11th Century Church at Coombes

Beginning our climb up to the top of the Downs, we passed a Norman chapel and couldn't resist a look, reviving another hobby of the past. In my cycling days I was in the habit of seeking the cool interiors, and yew-shaded graveyards, of country churches to revive from the hot work of pedalling and I began to buy and collect the guide books of those visited. In those far off days the churches were unlocked so anyone passing could enter for a spiritual, or in my case physical, recharge. Sadly this is rarely the case these days, but our little church was an exception.

Then it was on, up through the woods, to emerge high and clear with wide views over the South Downs and to realise our first mistake: the wind was quite strong. Nevertheless we pressed on out into the open, stopping to watch several Corn Bunting sitting up on fence posts making themselves heard quite easily above the wind. Skylarks were in evidence as well, and a couple of Swifts flew over.

We began to feel spots of rain and once we had got well clear of any decent cover, the skies opened for a bit. Luckily we had some pakamac-style temporary waterproof clothing. Unluckily, mine was still in the boot of my own car many miles away. We sheltered for a moment in the lee of a hedge, which kept the worst of it off, until fate noticed I was cheating it and caused the wind to drop for a while and allow the rain to fall straight down.

The shower quickly passed though. and we carried on slightly more soggily, to stop for sandwiches, overlooking a fine Sussex view of Downs, sheep, and distant (dry) dew ponds. No Quail to be seen or heard wanting their lips wet though, as we wet our own with something almost - but not quite entirely - unlike tea.

The walk back with the cliffs of home in the far distance

After lunch we began our return but by a different route, turning the walk into a large circle. A Stonechat, reluctant to be evicted from his chosen territory by us, moved ahead, giving ground one post, shrub or tree at a time, stopping to sit up and sing. I am all in favour of these little chaps, like the Stonechat and the earlier Buntings which sit on top of things in clear view. Yes, Cetti's Warblers, this comment is aimed at you: Stop yelling at me from impenetrable bushes.

Teddie's Bear's Retirement Home (sic)

By the time we had returned to the car, the sky was blue and the sun mocking our hats and jackets. We had been passing through fields of wheat and poppies with views over the distant sea, of the historic airport at Shoreham and the imposing chapel of Lancing College. We also discovered where old toys retire, although it doesn't look entirely voluntary to me. Some House Martins were darting across the sky near here and during the walk we had also come across a number of Linnets and been barked at by Jays.

I am not a wildlife expert, being very much the first year pupil of my birdwatching friend but I am beginning to try and satisfy my curiosity about the insects and plants we see on our expeditions too. The butterflies really did not want to be photographed this time, and the wind was not helping but we did see Red Admirals, Marbled Whites (which I understand are actually “Browns”), Small Heaths and Meadow Browns and a possible Dark Green Fritillary. Amongst the plants were many beautiful Poppies, the orchid above, Birdsfoot Trefoil and Viper's Bugloss. There were also some fungi which made the earlier, damper part of the walk seem disturbingly and prematurely Autumnal. I hope there's plenty more Summer to come first.

I was feeling I had really done some walking again after a few weeks off and we returned home for a welcome sit down and a cup of tea in front of the television in time to see a great stage win in "Le Tour" for the Manx Missile, Mark Cavendish.

Bridesmaids

After games I headed for the nearby Cineworld to point my "Unlimited card" at whatever happened to be about to start. It turned out to be Bridesmaids, which hadn't particularly impressed me when I saw the trailer and for which I presumed I was definitely not the target audience, being somewhat too old and male.

I'm not a huge fan of relentlessly scatalogical "gross-out" films, although at times I like a well done fart joke as well as the next man, and was not encouraged when the entire bunch of matrimonial misfits suffered "food poisoning" with the "gag" underlined by gurglng and flatulent noises to leave you in no doubt that the expensive designer dresses they were trying on, were probably going to be beyond cleaning. Joining the girls in the bathroom where they were vomiting on each other, while the scariest of them defecated in the sink, caused my heart to sink further at the same time as I gave thanks that I had forgone the Ben and Jerry's.

There were some upsides however: While our own Matt Lucas gave a fairly forgetable performance in a minor role, Chris O'Dowd from "The iT Crowd" gave us his State Patrol cop in a strangely compelling way. Totally unlikely as the character was, (Chris remains stubbornly Irish but although Annie, the main protagonist, points out that only citizens of the U.S. can become policemen, and he agrees, how he ends up in this situation is never explained), I was happily complicit in this bizarre warping of reality.  In fact, both he and Kristen Wiig as Annie are endearing despite the excesses of the physical comedy and while the rest of the cast is full of stereotypes and the plot predictable, I could stand to spend some more time with Rhodes and Annie, against all my expectations. I'm still not sure I understand why it was programmed at the local arthouse cinema as well though.

What's that precipitation? Hail, Caesar!

Pre-set up. Conquest map overhangs the table

Apologies for that quote from Crabro's in-game banter. :-) Not much else of note to report on this one. I like it...well I love those lovely galleys, catapults etc., but my opponent wasn't overwhelmed even though he was clearly winning when we ran out of time and abandoned. He felt it was typical of a certain type of  standard war-game and had been improved upon by others of the genre since its publication. A very big game in the literal sense at least as it overhung Crabro's, usually more than adequate, games room table. I remember it being a much different game with 5 or 6 players but a lot of time was spent expanding without conflict in the two-player. As it was the game was stopped after the first major battle and it was decided not to pursue this as the Thursday evening game, with the nod possibly going to Rise of Empires instead.

Sometimes sanity is not enough

Caprice's player board and sanity indicator

Don't read anything into the fact that I keep playing damaged women. Yes, another Tuesday games day dedicated to an epic game of Android. This time we returned to our first choices of investigators to see if our greater understanding of the game would mean we played them differently. I think we did, but in my case I possibly still strove too hard to maintain Caprice's sanity, to the exclusion of wider movement and following leads. Crabro, playing one-plot Raymond again, got stuck into fitting up his suspect with gusto and eventually it sank in that I wasn't going to be able to recover the situation. Caprice remained outrageously sane though, and this meant that she got full benefit from her plot points. Unfortunately Raymond's single plot provided the same number of points (14). When scoring, Crabro removed all the points from my own suspect with great glee. Apparently they were all the same value and therefore all equal to highest/lowest in strong and weak areas of evidence at the point where these are removed during scoring. We both saw our innocent hunches proved correct. Raymond's rocketing round the board with dropships paid off while Caprice not only never left Earth but mostly hung around the Levy University area. At least she succeeded in obtaining all the favours of Daniel (the love of her life) and several 3 point Jinteki tokens. As usual I didn't get much out of the conspiracy theories. End result: another absorbing narrative experience, but this time a win for Crabro by 38 points to 34...unless he unearths another rule which overturns this later, as before.

Saturday with the Goldstone Gamers

During scoring - Victory points revealed

Only three players on Saturday too, owing to a transport malfunction for our regular fourth. We went ahead with the original intended game anyway and it was the host's turn to provide the entertainment from his hidden store of still shrink-wrapped gems.
Puerto Rico is, I believe, still the number one ranked multi-player game on Boardgamegeek, despite its age (it dates from 2002) and the number of good games which have come along in the intervening years. It, therefore, seems so familiar that I was surprised to see that I had only one previous game logged, back in 2006. It was new to the owner (and eventual winner) paultro and his partner too so play was not entirely confident, flowing or demonstrating consistent strategies. The resulting scores were probably not very high either but they were close and the game was very enjoyable. The conclusion was that, while it was understandable that it was a highly ranked game, we felt that its number two spot (below two-player Twilight Struggle) on "the 'geek"was probably in need of re-assessment in the light of the many good games published since. No filler was played owing to the amount of discussion which took place over tea and excellent home-made cake after the main game. On the other hand I believe we have now solved most of the world's political, social, sporting and financial problems...

Three on Thursday

Several members of the group being absent, three of us settled down to give the new mini-civ Roll Through the Ages another try. mrwendal had not played before but took no time to get up to speed and won the first game convincingly. I trailed in a poor last having struggled for manpower and therefore extra dice. One of the nice things about this neat little game is its portability, with goods and food being tracked on a small wooden peg board and everything else indicated by filling boxes or ringing items in pencil on the score-sheet. This score-sheet doubles as a player aid, tracking developments owned, number of dice/cities and monuments built while also showing turn event order and game end criteria. The second game was comparatively low-scoring, at least partly owing to the hits taken from disasters, as we all seemed to decide not to protect against drought etc. I finished the game off with a fifth development but without much hope with 12 points against me from pestilence and other evils, to find that I had just scraped the win with all scores in the twenties.

Tuesday Games Part Two

The "filler" game on Tuesday, after Android, was Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age. This is a cut down "Civ" game with a simple dice-based mechanic and all-wooden components, apart from the scoresheet/player aid. A quick game and very enjoyable although it is not clear to us yet whether it is possible to score consistently with a deliberately chosen strategy given the powerful random element. In the end my score was considerably higher, it seemed because of the choice of the "coinage" development which increased the value of the coin face of the dice from 7 to 12 each. This enabled the purchase of the highest scoring developments which also entailed an additional points bonus at the end of the game. This path was only successful in tandem with a number of lucky rolls, however, and it is perfectly possible to choose an advantage tied to a particular face of the custom dice only to have it never turn up.

Tuesday Games Part One

The last three of the weekly games days with my regular opponent Crabro have featured Android, the Fantasy Flight cyberpunk detective game by Daniel Clark and Kevin Wilson, the co-designer of Arkham Horror. Given the publisher and designers involved it was of course bound to have a lot of bits and high production values. It can be bought for a surprisingly low price given this pedigree but that is possibly because it isn't by any means to everyone's taste, being a long game with a fair degree of rules complexity.

Spotting it for around sixteen pounds (a very low price for a game like this these days) my friend snapped it up but we quickly realised that it was going to be difficult to table it on a group games night, not just because of the theme (science fiction is definitely not popular with all the group), but for the sheer length. Having had a look at the components and knowing the theme, I was very keen, and we both read the rules and did some research on Boardgamegeek. One surprise was that Scott Nicholson, in one of his video reviews had given it a very definite thumbs down, something I had not seen before. However, we were encouraged that despite its three to five player listing there were comments to the effect that a two player game was not only feasible but an enjoyable experience.