How To Follow And Not Miss A Post And A Bit About Me And My Hobby

 Well, even after over a decade of maintaining this blog it still confuses me! So I have had the subscribe buttons for a long time but to subscribe you have to join one of two groups, which might explain why my followers did not increase from twenty until recently.

Now I also have a 'follow' option which you will see to the left if you keep scrolling down. You don't have to join any other group to follow. Since I added it a couple of weeks ago I have an additional eight followers. I like that Idea of having followers, although it has overtones of Jim Jones.

On the other hand, since I deleted my twin blog which was started in 2011, at the same time as this one, my blog does not appear in search engines as an available blog. The exception is you can get into it from Google images by clicking on an image and I am mentioned in other people's blogs.

By the way,  the photo of me is from a Borduria versus Syldavia wargame taken last year. It is taken in one of my connected 'war rooms', in this case the 'rumpus room'; the other room is the garage. It is one of those rare games where I used aircraft and tested some of Paul Wright's inter war plane rules. The table is made from table tennis table and various addons. Below the table are countless boxes of toy soldiers!

You are probably trying to work out what is on the shelves. The big black model is a Star Wars walker converted into a Prussian style (Herman) steam punk walker. There are Prussian looking troops with it. On the other shelves above and below are ACW troops. In the middle are my Blusians. Above them are some very assorted large scale figures (large scale for me means 70mm and up). Further along are my ancients and Aztecs. around the corner, opposite me is my Wild West town and American Indians. In the little cupboard is my African Jungle display including King Kong and an assortment of Tarzans!

That pith helmet I picked up at a disposal store and it is not my usual headgear but it was donned to get into the spirit of things. In my 20s I used to wear a Confederate cavalry officer uniform when I played ACW but it does not, alas, fit me anymore.

So here I am at 63 'still playing with toy soldiers'. I am always fascinated to see people's reaction when I tell them. It is kind of an experiment where I measure people's intelligence. The uncomprehending, or worse, disdainful, get relegated to the very low IQ bin whilst the impressed get elevated to the genius category. or, at very least, the pleasant category.

Having been retired for several years gives me even more time to indulge my hobbies that include painting, collecting and playing with toy soldiers and drawing cartoons. When I was a teenager I stopped calling them toys and insisted that they were 'models'. But with age comes the 'couldn't give a stuff'' what people say attitude. 

As it happens, though, quite a few people, who never even had toy soldiers 'play with toy soldiers' in computer and online fantasy and historical games. Many also know of Warhammer figures, shops and games so it is not quite so strange to hear of someone who collects and plays with 'minis' (miniatures), a term, incidentally, which I never use.