I can't believe we've been in the new Cassa Rousell for a month now???
where the hell did that time go?
I'd done enough moving and opening boxes to have a little room to bring home all my wargaming goodies.
We've not had any games in Posties Shed because of all my err..........stuff!
Apart from the two chairs at the front everything else had to go.
There's a lot of stuff to move.
Good ol Postie, moving 2 boxes of my jungle terrain!
I'd bought the works van home for the weekend, to bring everything to its new home..
I didn't want to stack everything to high, so it took three trips to move everything. Here's some of the gear in Posties back room.
And here it is magically transferred to its new home!!
The garage is split in two at the moment. The previous owner used this part as his office, the otherside of the white wall is another 7 foot of room. I've gotta wait for planning permission to change the garage door to a door and window, then I can take the studd wall down. Just dunno how long its gonna take??
And most importantly here we have a little work station set up, Nothing been painted yet, but I'll soon rectify that.......he says not in ear shot of Mrs R!!!!
I cannot believe I've been boring you all to tears for 15 years now???
It all started out in 2010, me and Fran were having a chat at work about starting up a blog, just to catalogue our games and what we were painting at the time, Fran's blog The Angry Lurker has lain dormant since 2019, after he buggered off, back to Ireland, had mega internet problems and basically gave up, but you're in luck, I'm still going strong!
I've 869 official Followers
1187 posts
3,722,132 visits, thank you bots and spammers!
& 44725 Comments, although half of those are me answering you guys!
Its pretty obvious that most of my top posts are from years ago, back to when Blogs were THE place to go for what's called "Content" nowadays. Personally, I think Blogs are still a very valid part of our wargaming world, but they certainly have been overtaken by Podcasts and Vlogs.
So I just wanted to thank everyone who visits my little corner of our great hobby, and I look forward to my next 15 years blogging......I hope!
The move went well, a few things have gone missing though as they do, I still haven't found my electric shaver, so I've been walking round all unkempt, so I had to go old skool and buy a wet razor. That's a tenner less on figures now!!
The pic above is my soon to be Wargaming Room, but I think my soon, is a completely different soon than Mrs R is thinking. AS you can see its still full up with unopened boxes. Now a lot of these are mine, I used to collect 45 records, back in the 80's and 90's, but when Abi, Daughter no2 was born in 1994, they all went up in the loft, now I knew I had a few, but didn't quite realise there were 46 boxes of them!!
So these need sorting out, I thinking of selling some and hiding the rest back up the new loft, but who knows???
We were waved off by Postie and Alison as we drove off, Posties not happy I'm moving away, and I will admit its gonna be strange not having my pal living next door anymore.
Postie and Alison shedding a tear!!! Yeh right!!
We're a week in after the move and its not a lot better, still got tons to do, just to try and get straight, so there's not going to be much hobby time for me, although saying that, some of the Rejects met up on our Monday paint and chat and had another go of Reject Richard's 16th Century Navel rules, he's a clever chap our Richard, he does have the knack of writing a decent set of rules, Here's a link to his write up of the game on his blog,
Its been a very busy few weeks at Casa Rousell, The Rousell clan is on the move so there's been a lot to do.
We finally have a moving date which is this coming Thursday the 3rd July, so wargaming and painting has been pushed to the back seat, apart from the markers above, which tbh were painted a few weeks ago, and I didn't get round to posting them. At Partizan me and Lee decided to buy some Warbases counters to use for Shock markers in our up and coming, Retreat from Moscow shenanigans using Sharpe Practice. Lee's done the same, but he was a tad more creative than me, putting different things on his, logs, wheels, dead and such. I went for stones, nice and easy.
Organizing moving and sorting all the crap that you've accumulated over 35 years is difficult enough, without Mrs R pre-booking a weeks holiday with her Mum, to Spain for the week before we move, (she wasn't to know that at the time though, of course) and my daughter doing the same, sunning herself in Cyprus.....again! I'd already booked the week off, when Mrs R and my Mother-in-Law, were away, I had planned a weeks worth of fun and games, but the moving date destroyed my plans.
And, I've been looking after Prince Bodie, my Mun in laws Poodle, who thinks he's human and doesn't do a bloody thing he's told too either!!!
Me and Lee did manage to get a day in Posties shed, to work on some of the terrain we've been buying. We chose one of the hottest days of the year to work in Posties shed, I don't think I've ever been that hot, it was like working in a bloody sauna!
Lee, the tart that he is made a short video of the day that he posted the other day, on his YouTube channel. If you haven't seen it take a look. We were both very pleased with what we managed to get completed. Firstly of 7 foot x 7 foot, wargaming mat, which started out life as a 7 foot square throw from Dunholm.
To this we patted on grey paint, then two layers of white paint. When that was all dry we spayed the mat with 2 cans of GW white spray, it may well need another going over??
Before
During
After
The other major job we did was to paint up all the luvvly Last Valley river sections we purchased at Partizan in May and another lot that came n the post too! Andy does make Snowy river section already, where he just doesn't paint the gound, which was perfect for us, so we matched the ground in with how we'd based our figures. I will admit to being very pleased to how these came out. They're a perfick match!
How we bought them from The Last Valley
With a base sand added.
All the white has been painted Earth Brown
After giving the Earth brown a heavy drybrush of white, we them wacked on our snow mix.
Lastly we bought loads of sabot tree bases from those great peeps at Warbases, they come in 2's, 3's 4's and 5 trees to a base. Why do you need sabot tree bases you ask?
There's an easy answer.......storage. Instead of having bases with a few trees on which will be a nightmare to store, we or rather (I) decided this was the way to go, all the bases can go in one box, the trees in another.
Easy!
So there you go, a very busy few weeks.......which is gonna carry on for the next few weeks after I move.
Its going to be strange not living next to Postie, like I have for the past 35 years, it was always so easy to pop next door for a game or a cuppa.
The gate in the middle of our fence, where I will no longer go through to play a game.
Think Posties gonna nail it shut!
Well that's me for today, I have got other posts ready and raring to go, but they'll have to wait.
After 10 days in hospital I finally got my "Get out of Jail", card stamped yesterday evening.
I'm back home with Mrs R and the kids with a bag of medication and a long list of do's and don'ts.
I'm not 100% out of the woods yet, but I feel a hell of a lot better than I did 10 days ago. But I suppose I would with pneumonia and blood clots in my lung.
So I'm not fully back in the saddle, but will over the coming weeks ease myself back into painting and gaming, while wrapping up warm and dosing myself up on blood thinners for 6 months.
I'd like to thank everyone on Rosewood Ward at Darent Valley Hospital, for putting up with me and helping me on the road to recovery. I often hear bad things about my local hospital, but cannot praise the Doctors, Nurses and other staff members enough, the NHS is a wonderful thing, even when its down to its bare bones.
So thank you.
Also a big thank you to all you readers who sent me your best wishes either here or on any other platform. They were all greatly appreciated.
Thank you one and all.
Ray
While in hospital I learned of the sad passing of Graham Cummings. I started following Graham's adventures on his blog Scotia Albion, back in 2010, when I started my blog journey. I never guessed I would one day meet him and have a chat face to face. Which I'm pleased to say I did several times. A true gent
There's not been a great deal going on in the Rousell paintshed for a while. It has something to do with me being whisked off in an ambulance with a suspected heart attack last Friday.
Good news is is wasn't a heart attack, bad news was I have blood clots in my lung and pneumonia!
Things are looking up though, the meds are doing there thing and hopefully I'll be out of jail by the end of the week.
This I can't breath properly thing, is not a whole lotta fun.
I still can't quite believe that England are through to the semi finals of the Euros, but what a fantastic win that was last night against Ukraine. I was quite confident that we we win from the start, but not 4-0 and not the way the team played?
You know what, I don't wanna say it but it may well " Be coming home!"
And to make the weekend even better, the Rejects are back together again at Reject HQ for our first game together in person since the 7th March 2020, that's a ridiculous 484 days!"
Unfortunately some of the lads can't make it, but it'll be a massive Napoleonic bash 2 v 2, starting at 10o'clock this morning.
Now I gotta be honest, I'm still a little delicate after last nights win, so I'd like the other side to be a little kinda than the England team was to Ukraine last night......
Can't see that happening though?
So bring on the game today, (I do feel quite excited) and bring on Denmark on Wednesday!!!
I hadn't really planned a post today, but I was given this info yesterday about my Great-Great Uncle Arthur. I knew he died during WWI and his name is on one of Gravesend's many War Memorial's, but I knew no information about him at all.
I was chatting with a work colleague Debbie, who gave me a book that her husband Andrew was giving away, in was a collection of WWI soldiers dairy entries. Debbie then mentioned her husband also raises money and restores war memorials in the Gravesend area. I explained that I had two relatives on a memorial at Windmill Hill in Gravesend, giving the names Dryden and mistakenly Hopson (after speaking to my Dad it should have been Dadson).
Anyway Debbie came back the next day with a booklet that Andrew had written and published himself about the sinking of the SS Minnehaha on 7th Sept 1917. In the booklet was the above information..........how fantastic!!
A mini blogger meet up occured last Thursday evening. Bloggers Tamsin, Lee and myself met up with the Uber Geek himself, Miles Reidy. Miles was over in the UK from the US on business and contacted us all to see if we wanted to meet up. As Tamsin knows London a bit better than me she suggested a Greek restuarant near Charlotte Street. Don't ask me what its called, I couldn't tell you?? I'd never been for a Greek meal before in the UK, apart from our local kebab shop of course, but I was told, that doesn't count!
We all had a great evening talking all things wargaming. The grub was very nice indeed, don't know why but I seemed to pick all the hardest things to pronounce from the menu, and made a right tit of myself trying to say them. Hopefully we'll do it again one day. And if Miles can sort it, he may even come over in April for Salute and a game at Reject HQ!!!
Thanks for a great evening everyone and thanks for picking up the tab Miles!!!!
..................when they drop 5 file boxes full of figures!
That's when!!
As I'm painting up some Moors for Tangiers I thought I'd have a look in my shed
to find my EL Cid/Moor collection, just to see what I actually have. (They've not seen
the light of day for some time??)
I was quite surprised to find 7 file boxes full to the brim with figures, all from my WAB days long ago. There were even some painted by Fran, that I'd forgotten I even bought??
While some of the other
figures need to go on ebay fast, they were painted in my early wargaming days with what
looks like a 4 inch brush and a tin of Dulux!
But........while sorting through the 6th box I knocked the bloody lot off my desk.......
%$£*(&@^$£"!!!!!
I cannot type what I said
but I think you can probably guess.
I looked down at the mess on the floor and could of cried!
When I'd recovered from the shock and the mourning set in, (which was around 2 hours)
I tried to put them back in their boxes , it took me well over an hour to put all the figures minus spears, shield's, swords and Christ knows what else, back in their boxes!
Now I gotta admit, some looked a hell of a lot better all smashed and broke.
But to say I'm gutted doesn't quite cut it!
But on the bright side, I've ripped up my Gripping Beast shopping list for SELWG next Sunday.
As you may now all be aware, the Mad Irishman Fran is back. I spoke to the old git yesterday, he said he'd be online in around a week, but the lying git is back now!!! I'm sure over the coming weeks he'll explain his near 9 month absence from Blogland, the tit!
You really could write a film about his exploits!
Anyway, he said he's been going crazy with no internet these past months, but at least he's hit the brush bigtime, (unlike myself!) painting nearly all his leadpile, including the lovely placard holders above!!! ggggrrrr!
The Arse!
Lastly Loki, posted this pic on Facebook, he's painting up these Warfare Miniatures figures and others representing Kirk's Lambs & the Tangiers Horse for some lucky sod's Donnybrook excursion???
A big thank you goes to all of you who contribute to my little part of the blogesphere and its my pleasure to dish out some prizes to some of you. 50 bloggers entered the fray, some won more than one prize as well!!!
Could all winners please contact me on my email address at rousell68 ATgmailDOTcom with their name and postal address, and I'll try and get your winnings out in the post asap.
