Jeremy in his wargames den.
Today I was delighted to interview Jeremy Short, who arrived in the UK from South Africa in 2017 and now lives in Bury, near Manchester. The difference in climate from the decades he spent living in South Africa must be dramatic!
I took the opportunity to ask Jeremy about the wargaming scene in South Africa about which, I confess, I knew next to nothing before this chat, other than seeing a few photos in books by Don Featherstone and recalling that the great man, with his passion for the history of colonial warfare, had visited the country several times and was well-liked there.
But that was before Jeremy’s day, and hearing what the hobby scene there is really like nowadays, and the strength of historical gaming there in particular, was a revelation.
Even before he moved to the UK, Jeremy had been an ‘early adopter’ of the internet and the extraordinary opportunity it has given us all to reach out to fellow gamers around the planet. In fact, he ended up largely in the company of a bunch of largely British reprobates who were members of a particular forum: WD2, which became WD3 and then morphed into the Loose Association of Wargamers site (LAW), whose members include a number of patrons here and, I confess, myself (though I’m not there very often nowadays because one can’t be everywhere!).
It was his association with the LAW forum that provided him with a ready-made group of friends to welcome him when he arrived in the UK in 2017, at which point he also became involved in the giant wargaming weekends organised by myself and others at Ayton in Yorkshire. The photo below shows him basking in the glory of the occasion in 2018, when he participated in the Dahlia-Chindrastan campaign.
But most recently, he has become well-known for taking on the task of organising Virtual Lard (VL3 takes place on 3rd October), a series of gaming events using Discord, Zoom and other online tools, so that participants can play TooFatLardies games over the internet. The events have become so successful that numbers involved are climbing towards 200 – a successful enterprise by any standards!
Jeremy has also been foolish enough to agree to participate in my ancient imagi-nations campaign set in the fictitious world of Bathelas, so we chat about that too.
So, sit back and listen to the dulcet South African tones of Jeremy as he describes his personal journey into the hobby and the extraordinary contribution he is making to keeping the hobby alive despite the pandemic crisis.
Henry
Jeremy on Twitter @jaje7406
Contact Jeremy to take part in Virtual Lard 3 at virtuallard@gmail.com
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