Wives are a Godsend...sometimes

Now you may not know this, but I have a man cave which is known by the family as Narnia because they have to go through the coats to get down the stairs...clever ennit? When we moved here in February last year all my stuff came down the stairs and was stacked or shelved anyhow. To give you an example: I have five shop-bought bookcases which I naturally assumed were fine for my books. Put them together, set them up against the wall and found they were only good enough for paperbacks! So my main collection was lying flat on the shelves making it an absolute bu**er to find anything. There were boxes everywhere and it was almost an assault course to get to my computer and painting tables. Plus it was damp because the bloke before had filled in the cellar window with dirt so there was no through draft to keep it dry. It's has been on the to-do list since last summer.
    Three weeks ago I was given an almost brand-new piece of carpet plus underlay that would fit, a new double-glazed window and my mate over the road gave me a 20l tub of white satin finish paint. None of this was lost on Ma Subs!
   Last Thursday I had to go to a specialist docs about the old ticker which was shown in a previous x-ray to be a bit bigger than it should be. So, with no small amount of trepidation, off I went to the vets for an ultrasound scan thing. Shouldn't have worried, the very nice lady said that apparently x-rays are notorious for enlarging things...no, don't even go there!...and that there was absotively nothing wrong with the old ticker. So there I am at a bus stop after just seeing mine disappear around the corner and I do the decent thing and clock in to give Ma Subs an update. Everything was going swimmingly before she says 'By the way, you are starting on Narnia when you get back  and we are all helping.' When she says 'we' she means our lad, my mate and his missus and her good self. What a bombshell! Now she knows -bless her heart- that I need a kick up the jacksy to get started on a project of this decorating magnitude: so I got one. Despite my weak and insincere protestations we got going and now it is nice and airy now the dirt from the basement window opening has been shifted (a mare of a job), painted, carpeted, shelved and even better, I have a large enough space in the middle for my wargames table. Result! The amount of cr*p that has been binned is amazing as I have been ruthlessly downsizing. When it's done I'll put up a couple of pics, (I forget to do the 'before' bit so you'll have to use your minds eye to visualize that state it was in before...and believe me, you won't even get close.)

...So that's why it's been quiet...

The second article about Leignitz of the second series of my Mongols in Europe has been published in this months Miniature Wargames/Battleground so I am quietly chuffed. That nice Mr Henry Hyde has used some of my pics as well. I have some ideas for a third series but I'll have to run them by him first.

Happy painting,

MickS.