In Memoriam…

It has been a sad week or two chez Polemarch. We have had to say goodbye to an old friend, who has featured a couple of times on this blog.

The above is a picture taken when she was in her prime as a lady feline, although it has to be said, Piper never lost her basic suspicion of the human race. Anyway, we noticed that she was rapidly losing weight a couple of weeks ago, and a visit to the vet did not resolve anything very much, except to confirm there was nothing wrong with her mouth. Nevertheless, more of the food ended up on the floor than being swallowed, and she was very hungry and alarmingly thirsty.

The vet suggested that we try some food for convalescing animals, and she did eat it, but that did not stop her from losing weight and energy. She stopped sleeping in her favourite places, and neither of us heard her purr any more. So, we had to make a very difficult decision, and it was made. On July 23^rd, Piper took her last journey to the vet.

We had her, it seems, for nearly 18 years. She came as a rescue, aged 1 year (but no one who saw her then thought she was anything more than 6 months old) from our local RSPCA centre, and, after she settled in and decided that these humans were not so bad, she was one of those animals that was just always about. As a very timid little cat, she was rarely out during the day and liked nothing more than to sleep under my legs when we were watching TV. In a sense, she was more like a little dog than a cat. Her humans seemed to assume the role of protectors for her, especially as she was small and found it hard to fight her corner against the local moggies.

In a way, we are still reeling from losing her; she was simply part of our life here. As I tried to explain to someone, ‘We’re not missing having a cat. We’re missing having that cat’. But, as someone else said to me, it was the last act of love we could do for her as she failed, and how we feel about it afterwards is the cost of that love. But we still miss her and look for her in all her familiar sleeping places.

Rest in peace, Piper.

Instead of moping, the Estimable Mrs P and I have been getting on with some of our various projects. The Estimable Mrs P’s are all nicely erudite – learning Latin, translating texts from the late classical world, and so on, while I have been sent off to ‘do some soldiers’. In this case, the ‘doing of soldiers’ has consisted of further adventures in reducing the footprint of my collection. The aim has been to halve the number of infantry bases for my armies, without reducing the number of models.

In short, I have been de-basing my early Imperial Romans, the auxilia, legionaries, archers and skirmishers, and rebasing them in two ranks, or, at least, with double the number of figures per base for the skirmishers. The cavalry has been left alone, because I cannot jemmy any more than 6 figures onto a 40 by 20 base, and the light horse at 4 per base looks OK, I think. Or at least, I’m used to it.

The same has been done for my Celts. The foot and skirmishers now have double the figures on them, and I have managed to preserve the wavy line effect of the tribal foot, which I found rather pleasing and a good counterpoint to the serried ranks of Romans. The reduction in footprint is not so dramatic as the Romans, however, as the Ancient Britons and Gauls have different mounted components. Mind you, I do seem to have far more cavalry than I really ‘need’. Maybe doubling the figures on the light cavalry bases should be an option.

Anyway, having gone to the trouble of all the rebasing and repainting (the cavalry bases were repainted for a more uniform look), I decided to indulge in a wargame. I discovered a few things. Firstly, it must be a while since I did anything ancients. I had forgotten the rules and also forgotten that I have no quick reference sheet for them, which has been a boon for the early moderns. I was also casting around for a scenario, not having done the work for a campaign yet. After a bit of base counting and consulting the DBA and DBM army lists, I came up with a four army action – three ancient Britons and one Roman. It was sort of based on the battle of Medway, if indeed such a battle took place, where the recent money is that the outflanking force, usually ascribed to Batavian auxiliaries, could well have been Celts.

The terrain rolling was interesting. I came up with a load of streams, a central hill and some woods. There is always a bit of juggling to be done to make a practical table out of a terrain roll-up, and this one included getting rid of one arm of the streams. As it turned out, that went in the Romans’ favour. Or maybe not, as the ensuing wargame told.

The above shows four armies deployed, ready for battle. On the right are two armies of Ancient Britons. On the far side, the tribal foot block is on a hill in the centre. To the left, the Romans are deployed on the far side, infantry in column opposite the hill, with the cavalry to their left. On the near side are the final, Roman-allied Ancient Britons. Actually, we should probably call the Romans the allies of the Ancient Britons. It goes to show how easy it is to slip into a sort of colonial language, because the written sources are all Roman.

Be that as it may, I treated this as a test action to see both how the rebased armies look on the table (not bad, even given my painting) and also to try to relearn my own rules. Let’s see what happens next….