Sitting here waiting for the gas company’s emergency callout team to arrive (yellow in the gas flame = not good), whilst the builder works on an ominous crack in the lounge where the bay window hangs off the front of the building, and my missus recovers from breaking her arm on Saturday night (yes, her right, sewing arm, not good for a self-employed seamstress), I thought I’d turn my mind to cheerier matters in the form of forthcoming podcasts.
So, recording this week, we have Peter van Dop, who runs a company in Holland (BelloLudi) that runs team-building wargames for businesses.
Then next week, I’ll be chatting with veteran wargamer Andy Callan, whose name has been around the hobby for a long time, most recently in connection with the medieval ruleset Never Mind the Billhooks, which we shall be discussing on the show.
And then, in the first week of December, I’m delighted to welcome well-known BBC journalist, writer and, yes, wargamer Mark Urban onto the show! We’ll be chatting about his latest best-seller Red Devils, but also his previous terrific histories such as Rifles, Fusiliers and Generals.
As always, if you have any questions you’d like me to put to these worthies, then pop them as comments under this post and I’ll do my best to include them.
And finally…
Like many others, I’m deeply saddened by the chaos that has followed its takeover by Elon Musk. Wargaming Twitter has become such a lovely haven for those of us who pop in there regularly for a quick chat and a bit of show & tell, and I am personally grateful to so many of its inhabitants who were amazingly supportive during my struggle with cancer and, subsequently, my mental health challenges.
And don’t forget that I was one of the early adopters, opening my first Twitter account in 2010. I even wrote a column in Miniature Wargames with Battlegames (remember “World Wide Wargaming” ?) explaining how to tweet, retweet and so on!
I have opened a ‘just in case’ account with Mastodon, but clearly, it works in a different way to Twitter and won’t have the same feel, just like Facebook and Instagram have a different atmosphere. Whilst many of us initially balked at the character limit of Twitter, it gave rise to what has been an inventive, witty, chatty and often moving venue where I know I have made real friends, many of whom I would never have met were it not for the platform’s often quirky algorithms.
Fingers crossed, then, that sanity will prevail, not just for us wargamers but also for millions of others for whom Twitter has become a lifeline to the outside world, particularly those living in dangerous and difficult places. And for the time being, until the curtain falls, I shall be staying there as @battlegames and enjoying the banter and genuine comradeship that has grown up there with others.
Henry
P.S. if you’re interested, my Mastodon account is as shown in the pic below.
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