The Waving Flag: Salad Days?

Friday 13 November 2020

Salad Days?

Am I regressing to my youth as I approach retirement?  I think I may be.

When I was in my early teens I was a keen modeller spending a large part of my pocket money on at least one Airfix kit a week.  Of course I also had lots of the HO/OO plastic Airfix figures. I had both sides for the American Civil War (ACW) and the Western Desert in WWII.

After a while I discovered Military Modelling and Battle.  This lead to me investing in metal, professionally painted Hinton Hunt figures: all six of them.  Next came some 6 mm WWII tanks.  Finally, I could afford Minifigs 25 mm Napoleonics.

 

Fast forward a few decades and I'm now a dedicated 15 mm wargamer with multiple medieval and renaissance armies.  However in 2011 a slight shift occurred.  It started when I developed a craving for some WWII troops and started painting 8th Army figures from Peter Pig.

Since 2011 my Western Desert project has changed from a wargaming project to become more of a reading project but I'm still plugging away doing a few figures once in a while.   You know how it is.

My most recent project has seen a diversion into the American Civil War.  It started when I watched, for the second time, Ken Burn's excellent documentary series and finally tipped into action after reading John Keegan's 2010 "History of the American Civil War"; one of my better charity shops finds.

I started small.  I bought and painted some second hand Confederate Generals from AB.  I sold them via eBay because "I only wanted them to paint not lead an army.".  Stupid boy.  As regular readers will know such stern resistance didn't last and I now own my own pile of 15 mm ACW lead.

So there you have it.  With all the periods and figures now available to wargamers today I end up with projects in the theatres that I enjoyed with HO/00 Airfix figures in my early teens.

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