Sisyphus no more

A gnomic title I grant you, but if the UK’s current Crime Minister can flaunt his classics knowledge then so can I. 

I have begun to discover that living in an area of outstanding national beauty or an AONB as I believe they are called, has its down sides. I am currently on week 4 of a seemingly never ending parade of relatives who thought they’d just pop by to see us (and coincidentally…the beaches). It seems that as soon as one lot empties the fridge the next lot arrives to suckle at our teat instead…urrgh. 

I’d been happily going at full modelling and gaming throttle, when whammo..the brakes have been suddenly and unceremoniously applied. 

Dining table - forget it. 

Spare room - fully occupied. 

Office - camp bed central… you get the picture. 

Add to that the never switched off lights, the disappearance of charging cables, and the constant requirement to be entertained and you have the misanthropes perfect nightmare.

The enforced gaming / modelling hiatus has however allowed me 5 minutes to reconsider what I enjoy about the hobby and like a number of others (cough - Lee and David) I’ve taken steps to change a few things. 

I’ve always found the process of painting two armies (the curse of the solo player) to be a total grind that takes me so long that even before I grimly reach the end of the process I’ve lost interest in the very forces I’m assembling. It’s always felt like pushing an enormous bolder up a hill, only for it to roll back down when I start another project. The double curse is that I’m pedantically driven to complete a thing before I allow myself the pleasure of any diversion…lol.

Faced with an unmoving lead pile and my current inability to do  much about it I came to a previously unthinkable (but logical in these entitled times) conclusion - someone else should take on my burden and make it their problem.

Luckily our Lee over at a figure painting therapy project has decided to devote himself to the painting of miniatures rather than gaming. It seemed a match made in heaven… 

You can be certain that I intend to ruthlessly exploit…sorry,  casually take up his generous offer of support, from time to time.  Suffice it to say that quicker than I could clean my brushes he’d knocked out 37 of my VSF Prussian forces to a better standard than I could ever manage. 

I suspect he’ll be seeing a lot more of my stuff in the near future!

Anywhoo…coming back to old Sisyphus for a mo, my wonderful iPad has decided to “theme” pictures from my photo library and show them to me every day - for some unexplained reason. 

The first to appear was  this one.

While resident in France the current Mrs Broom complained that having a largely inoperable spinal tumour meant access to the house down a slippery mud “path” was less than ideal. I was reluctantly forced to agree…and thus began “operation step”. 

Each level involved digging out large irregular rocks, with hand tools, down to a depth of a foot, before the accumulated aggregate could be smashed into hard core and relaid as a base for the pouring of concrete. There were 12 steps in total (each 2m x 1.5m) and starting from the bottom it took two months in baking heat to mix over 10 ton of concrete by hand - on my tod (my mixer died on day two). Now that was a Sisyphean task I can tell you. 

Here’s a few more pictures to have a titter at:

This one is of course a “classic” from the old blog where I graphically described the day the septic tank pipe got blocked. I’d like to point out again that not all of the brown stuff on my clothes was actually mud. Apart from 73 being my favourite prime number it was also the age that I had advanced to on that terrible winters day.

What’s next, oh yes. Boris. 

A neighbour and I agreed it would be a good idea to share the rearing of a couple of Turkeys that would be ceremonially “topped” at Xmas. Given the brexit debacle I called mine Boris. 

When the dreadful day came for “lights out” Boris and I went into the barn…for a chat. Now obviously I had an axe but given the size of the bugger it was still touch and go as to who would re emerge into the daylight. For the record he came close to felling me with at least one swift right cross but thankfully he never made a move for the axe when he had the chance. Tricky buggers, Turkeys.

The photo was taken at the moment when Madam Tranquart (out of shot) enquired if I would like a chicken sandwich. My expression says it all. Most of poor old Boris remained in the freezer for over a year before he was given away. It’s amazing how killing and dressing your own meat makes you feel a lot less like eating it.

I suppose one more won’t hurt. This is taken from the day of divination as it became known.

I’m long enough in the tooth to know that two copper rods cannot detect water, whichever way around you hold them. Jean Pierre was convinced it had worked for him though and here I was “having a go” to keep him happy. I think I’m saying, “what like this?” but I’d concede that “altogether now” would also work. 

The rods did not pick up the septic tank but the two continually crossed each other when I walked over a corner of the back garden to the right of the picture. I laughed it off at the time, but a little while later as part of “operation wall” I had cause to dig in that self same spot. 

First thing I found was the sole of a shoe, then the shoe itself, then some bone, a sock, the remains of some trousers, and finally some dentures. I was alarmed and called Lionel our Gendarme…who laughed. 

The copper rods had found the site of the well that had once been on the property. When mains water was piped to the hamlet in the 1950’s the stupid paysan who owned the place dumped all their rubbish down the well and covered it over. Sure enough a little more digging by Lionel and I produced a broken crockery layer and eventually a broken wine bottle layer that I never got to the bottom of…surprise, surprise.

So much for CSI eh?

I think I owe you a proper games or miniatures post next time…

TTFN