The Actors: Kaiser Sebastien (Central Powers) and Tsar David (The Entente) lined up against each other on a bitterly cold day.

The Venue: The Old Star Free House in St James’ London

August 1914:

Kaiser Sebastien launch his barbaric hun army across the border of neutral Belgium, the Krups siege guns destroyed the fortress in Liege, the German 1st, 2nd and 3rd armies wheeled to attack the French 5th army in Sedan. The German army attempted a flank attack but the French were prepared and struck the German 5th army a heavy blow on it’s flank before the Germans were able to respond (failed German flank attack, Sedan result Fr roll of 6 Gr roll of 1)

The French responded by beginning what was to be a disastrous strategy of stripping her border fortresses by moving the 3rd army from Verdun to support the 5th army.

Russian forces attack an destroyed an Austrian corp advancing into Austrian territory.

The allies play Moltke in the hope of slowing the German advance to the west, Germany immediately results with Falkenheyn – with the bonus effect of pushing the German War status to limited war.

The German Offensive restarts with another attack against the crucial Sedan this time the French armies are pushed back but the Germans too suffer loses and as a result are unable to advance. The French leader rallys his troops and demands that they stand and die rather than giving ground (and die they do!). Sacre Bleu 2 French armies flipped.

The French appeal to the Russian allies for help to halt the German steam roller. The Tsar responds by sending two armies around the southern flank of the Austrians – they prepare to move forward but halt due to bad weather.

The turn ends with a final German attack on the western front, against the Dijon fortress – with losses on both sides but no advance. The French play a card for Replacements (which they sorely need having 4 flipped armies. )

Turn 2 – September

Much needed replacements & re-enforcements arrived to strengthen the French front line.

The September rains came and went but the Germans stayed and stayed. A new German offensive against Dijon caused huge French losses but failed to take the fortress.

On the Eastern Front Russian forces broke through the Austrian line and encircled the Austrian 3rd army. Valiant attempts were made by the Austrian forces to break through  but the attentions of Kaiser Seb were fixed on the Western front.

A further attack on Dijon caused the city to fall with the loss of the last remaining French defenders. New British re-enforcements were mobilized across the channel but it would be some time before they could play a part in the battle for France.

Meanwhile the Austrians launched a successful attack against Belgrade

The pictures below reflect the position at the end of turn 2 & 3 on the Western and Easter Fronts. As you can see the Germans have broken the French line completely. ON the eastern front the Russians have shattered two Austrian armies and threaten the rest of the Austrian position.

Turn 3 & 4

The Germans move to Limited war – the Ottomans join the war a month after they had agreed.

Heavy German attacks continue against the French with the remenant of the French fort line falling into German hands.

In the East a Russian attack encircles another Austrian army but it looks like i’ts too little to late. CP victory points are a 14.

German reinforcements and replacements begin to appear on the Western front in strength. They feed no re-enforcements to the Eastern front at all.

The British finally joint the war in strength with two British armies being shipped across the channel. In response the German high command mobilizes her last reserves (4 corps) – All Austrian and German reserves have now been called up.

In the East – Belgrade falls to the Austrian armies – a Serbian force retreats south to Nis to continue the fight.

After telegraphing their intention the BEF slowly moves in for the attack against the German front below Brussels. In-spite of the lack of surprise the British inflict heavy losses on the Germans but take some losses themsleves.

The Germans respond with a thrust against Brussels which catches the British on the hop and shatters the BEF army. By this stage the French army has completely collapsed as fighting force after a failed counter attack on Dijon. The French garrison in Verdun finally surrenders after holding out surrounded for 3 months.

There are two remaining French armies blocking the path to Paris and when their counter offensive is shattered by the German 4th army its all over for France . The German 4th army attacks Paris, but fortune similes on the defenders and the city holds out. A British army relives the French defenders and the city hold outs for another day.

A desperate Russian offensive in the East destroys three Austrian corps but fails to distract the attention of the Germans from the prize.

The smell of sauerkraut and sausages can be smelt by the starving defenders of Paris. The brave British 1st army know it’s only a matter of time before Harry the Hun is goose stepping down Haussman Blv.  Finally Gen. Gort in order to save the city for future generations surrenders to the Prussian high command.

Move forward a few days and the hero of our story is buried, with much gnashing of teeth and wailing from his relatives. Said hero was a successful businessman and even El Presidente Basescu attended his funeral. It is customary in Romania to be buried in your Sunday best wearing your usual jewellery (Romanian men tend to wear such a profusion of rings, necklaces and bracelets that even a rapper would look cheap by comparison).

He was somewhat fortunate that this is the custom in Romania as we shall shortly see. Gravediggers are probably not the most highly paid people in any society and the same applies to Romania. It seems the two fellows in this case were supplementing their income by a bit of moonlighting. Gheorghe & Petru (their names have been changed to protect their identities) our intrepid grave diggers decided to return later that night and ensure that the gold which had been buried with our hero did not go to waste.

Undre the cover of moonlight Gheorghe and Petru stole into the graveyard and started digging up the grave. They laboured intensely for 20 minutes stopping for breath and for Petru to take a whizz in a darkened corner. Gheorghe was getting impatient for Petru to come back but he lit himself and cigarette and thought about the girl he would be spending his money on. He decided he would pick a blonde this time, a Ukrainian.

The pair got back to work and finally uncovered the coffin. This coffin was an expensive one it was made of the finest wood and had fancy brass fittings. Petru quickly unclasped the clasps on each side of the coffin and then Gheorghe wrenched the lid open while trying to balance with the torch in his hand. He failed and dropped the torch. The old fashioned torch immediately went out.

A sudden chill caught Petru and he felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck. An owl hooted. Gheorghe farted. “Scuzatz I always do that when I am nervous.”

There was a sudden movement from the coffin. “Where did you drop that torch Petru?” “I though you had it?” said Petru who was scrambling around looking for it, he picked it up and turned it back on. Petru shon it back towards the coffin and dropped it immediately; when he saw that MR Vasilescu was sitting up in the coffin.

“Vampire, Vampire, Cura Mate!

The both scrambled out of the grave and ran into the night in fear of their lives.

Mr Vasilescu managed to stagger down the road and got help.

As it turns out Mr Vasilescu had fallen into a coma after having had a reaction to some of the drugs he was given at hospital. The incompetent staff has simply assumed he was dead and carried on with their work.

The next day after being re-united with his family Mrs Vasilescu asked her husband if he wanted to call the police to go after the would be tomb raiders. He emphatically refused pointing out that they had saved his life. God Bless Romania.

You will find me shouting along with the kids and have a hoot. This year is was the very musical Jack in Beanstalk with the fabulous Clive Rowe at the Hackney Empire. I’ve actually seen Jack at the Hack bit a long time ago in a magical land. Many folks here have been complaining about the snow and cold but I quite like it. It’s far better to be cold and sunny with a bit of snow than dark, wet and miserable but 6 degrees! Anyway I hope everyone has a super festive season.

A colleague of mine mentioned the other day how poor quality programmes on the history channel were so I decided I’d have  a look for myself. For those of you who know me well you’d be aware that I am a big fan of history and knowledge in general. I flicked through the programme guide for History and found one programme after another with titles likes this “Atlantis in the Andes”, “The Dragon’s Triangle”, “UFO Files” and “Lost Cities of the Ancients” take a look for yourself: http://www.history.co.uk/tv-schedule.html I had a look at “The Dragon’s Triangle” it turns out this show is about an Asian equivalent of the mythical Bermuda triangle, there were a number of on screen “experts” who were given air time to say come out with the most absurd “theories”. For example had a bearded fellow who was from the much admired journal UFO weekly (oh please!) recounting a story which he had heard from an air force pilot (who could not be named) who had heard it from another chap that he had seen a UFO!

I was appalled that this sort of trash can be passed off as history. Naturally this channel is from the US but even so when there is so much quality programming and real history is so much more interesting than fairy tales why show this trash.  Sadly I’d say there answer is that lots of people are interested in this sort of nonsense, the fact that books such as the Da Vinci C ode or the Chariots of the Gods became best sellers speaks volumes for peoples thirst for nonsense. It does not have to be that way though. I’ve started watching the excellent series the World at War from the very start.

This is one of the finest documentary series I have ever seen and I would recommend it to anyone.  No doubt there will be a few amongst my readers who are of the opinion that a diversity of opinions is a great thing and why am I getting so upset about this anyway. I have no problem with a diversity of opinions, I’m all for it in fact, however, call a spade a spade. The sort of programming that appears on “History” is not in anyway history. Thankfully Post Modernism has been largely confined to the dustbin of history or else I’d be expecting lots of replies about history being an interpretation of the text or a telling of a narrative through different sources etc. To me this is nonsense – the Holocaust  happened, it’s not a subjective thing.

Anyway to get a bit of an understanding of the world view I have I’d recommend reading the wonderful book the Demon Haunted world: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=q_Fp3tjPnkwC&dq=the+demon+haunted+world&source=bl&ots=jtF0-rdauR&sig=S4S4OwOvkPNQSm6s4z1c-VlXr2k&hl=en&ei=EBPHTKS8EdmV4gba25WvDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAg

I’d especially recommend looking at the chapter called the baloney detection kit – this video is a nice summary of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUB4j0n2UDU

cheers

David

As an aside Ana (my new wife, tis about time I revealed her name:) and I have been busy working on the garden of our East London flat. We have been able to grow enough lettuce to supply all of our neighbours for almost 2 months! At the moment we are awaiting the ripening of our tomatoes, potatoes and beans. We have several different herbs growing. Our basil has produced enough leaves for two 500g jars of pesto (yummy) and we also have rosemary, sage, sorrel, lavender, oregano, thyme and mint (useful for the Pims we had the other day.)

My parents have flown in from Australia, its been great to see them after more than a year. We are planning a few trips away, a long weekend in Cambridgeshire should be super. I’m keen on visiting the house of Oliver Cromwell as well as messing about in Cambridge.

Anyway hope you are enjoying the summer (or winter if you are in Australia).

Cheers

David

I’ll take a few minutes to cock my jaundiced eye at the football. It took quite a while for things to get underway – it was not until the final round of matches from the group stages that things got really interesting. There were a few interesting results from the first round a couple of big teams went home early – Italy and France – although I remember France doing something similar a few years back after being defeated by Senegal.

I had been supporting North Korea – well someone has to! Well North Korea is one of the few workers states still going so deserves to be defended for that. Must be very hard living under the threat of constant nuclear attack from the US.

Anyway getting back to the football, My wife Ana seems to have a knack of picking winners – she does not bet very often but placed a fiver on Argentina to beat Chile 3 – 1 and collected handsomely:) Then tipped that both penalties were missed in the Paraguay/Spain game – sadly we did not place a bet on that one!

My prediction is a Germany – Holland final with Germany winning 3 – 1. I’ll let you know what Ana’s predictions are.

I recently procured a beautiful new smartphone – a shiny HTC Legend.  This is probably the best phone I have ever owned, I say probably as I once owned a Nokia 7200 which I loved (but was no where near as good a phone).

Anyway the key factor for me was the design of the phone – The phone is s single piece of crafted Aluminium with a bright OLED screen. It’s a delight to use and super fast. Android 2.1 is a great OS – and the coming upgrade to 2.1 will be even better. The only criticism I have is of the Android market place – this is a poor relation to the iPhone Apps store. There are a much smaller number of apps and they are frankly not as good. Google is really missing a trick here. Hopefully they will catch up with Apple in this area.

My positive experience with my phone was not repeated with it’s provider German owned T-Mobile. I’ve had three major issues with them and I’ve only had the phone for a few weeks – firstly they cut off my service within a few days of signing up to it. Aparently my account had been incorrectly set up. Then they sent me a bill and lots of text messages chasing me for £250 pounds with no explination of what this was for – aparently it’s a deposit which needs to be paid to allow international calls. Finally they blocked my internet access – this was also policy!

I guess it comes from them being German but T-Mobile have decided that they are the sole protectors of the children of Britain. The blocked my internet access exactly three weeks after I set purchased the phone (well passed the 7 day colling off period). They blocked all access to the net because they had no evidence that I was over the age of 18. No other provider in the UK or outside of Myanmar for that matter has this sort of draconian policy. So I rang them up to organize to have this removed and it turns out that I need to provide them with a credit card which I do not have and secondly they would only remove it if I agreed to the terms and conditions which up front state that the block must be re-enabled if an under 18 year old is going to use my phone.

This is just absurd – who gives T-Mobile the right to determine who can and cannot have internet access. This is descrimination against children (their definition is 18 and under!!!!!) pure and simple. I have no intention of letting any grubby little kids:) use my phone but if I did I would need to ring them up to get the Internet block put back on – I mean how absurd – I would be very interested to see how many people actually do this – I’m thinking close to none – but you never know there maybe a lot of priggish types out there!

Aparently this has been a policy fo theirs for years – I’m surprised that this has not created more of a fuss. There must be large numbers of teenagers who use T-Mobile – do they no use the internet from their phone then? I was thinking maybe they could expand this to include maybe black people or jews perhaps? Who knows what sort of mischief they might get up to using the internet. I’m sure T-Mobile would be the provider of choice in Myanmar and various other repressive regimes.

I’ve seen a couple of movies in the last few weeks both of them pretty good Agora and last week The Ghost. Agora takes a few liberties with the story of Hypatia the ancient Greek Astronomer who according to the film proved that the earth revolved around the sun in an elliptical orbit 1500 years before Copernicus, this is in spite of the fact that no evidence exists for this claim what so ever. The main theme dealt with in the film is science versus religion – taking the side of science (much to my relief). The film deals with the transformation of Alexandria from a cosmopolitan city of science to a backwater of religious intolerance. The alarming thing is how quickly this transformation occurred – the space of a single generation. There are a few too many pointless shots of star gazing to make it a great film but it was entertaining none the less, however, it did leave me seething with anger at the end not all the film but at the foolishness of man.

An equally good film but of a totally different genre is The Ghost this is Roman Polanski’s first film since his arrest by the Swiss authorities.

I am for his immediate release and for all charges against him to be dropped immediately. He has committed no crime, the attack on Polanski very much like the attacks on Michael Jackson are part of a moralistic agenda. The whole purpose of these attacks is social control – Jackson, Polanski and many other are non conformists, that is what made them targets. I say down with the age of consent laws – hands off Polanski.

Back to the film itself. The film is a political thriller staring Ewan MacGregor and Pierce Brosnan. MacGregor plays a ghost writer assigned to re-write the auto-biography of a former British PM played by Brosnan. The similarities between Brosnan’s character and Tony Blair are pretty striking. There are lots of shadowy black cars and faceless secret agents but is a good film because it all seems plausible. It reminded me of that Ken Loach Film about Northern Ireland – Hidden Agenda is the name of it – classic movie about the “Shoot to Kill Policy”. Love the setting of the film on a remote New England Island – I think it’s Nantucket, the house in which much of the film takes place is an amazing modernist join.. Well worth checking out

Of course as you would expect the weather has turned pretty miserable for the the May Day long weekend. Whilst it has been in the high teens/ low twenties for the last week or so the weekend is expected to be around 11 or so. Nothing like a spot of rain to drive you into a museum!

It’s been an interesting few weeks in my personal life, I’ve set up my own company and am now working for myself. My first client is a major high street bank. Working there has been a bit of a trip down memory lane, it’s so similar to when I was working at NAB many years ago.

On the personal front I’ve recently got married! Who would have thought eh? Also been busy in the garden of our new house, I’ve got myself a bit of a vegie patch going. Home grown lettuce is so much better than the stuff you can buy from the supermarket. Started growing some Chinese greens, Pak choi and what not.

One thing I will try and do this summer is travel a bit more around England. Now that I have a bike it will be nice to go out to the countryside on the train and do some cycling. Stop off in a country pub for lunch – almost reminds me of my childhood. I’m also keen to have a look at the Bexhill Pavillion, Ana has never been to Brighton and neither of us has been to South- End (although we may not be missing much)

http://www.koi-hai.com/billhenderson.html