Bah Humbug!!!

You know I sometimes wonder if old Scrooge had the right idea about Xmas! As I write myself, SWMBO and Holly have all been struck down with the dreaded lurgy and so festive cheer is in pretty short supply in deepest, snowbound Rayleigh. We had to go food shopping and so the car obligingly needed a twenty minute warm up and scrape (Honda Civics do not appear to cope with the cold as well as Volvo Estates.........) with yours truly wishing heartily that he was back indoors, in the warm; preferably under a pile of duvets. To be fair, it was actually quite painless when we got to the supermarket but when we returned home I was presented with a couple of cold related DIY jobs. To start with the lock to the back door had frozen solid and the cat flap was in a similar condition. I discovered the latter when the offending feline, Misty, our nine year old Persian Tom produced a lake of nature's finest the size of Tanganyika behind my back. He then calmly went to the back door, miaowed to be let out and so I duly obliged (this was of when I discovered the cat flap was stuck). I turned around to grab my trusty tin of WD40 and saw the said lake. Why the stupid b*****d hadn't done this the other way around will remain one of life's unsolved mysteries - its probably a cat thing and my last sight of him was of him picking his way gingerly across the lawn avoiding the snow with the amount of dignity only a pedigree cat could manage!

Cursing a cruel fate I set about tackling each of the tasks in turn and was well into them when the thought suddenly struck me. This minor weather blip has caused all manner of mechanical glitches of the frozen kind so how must it have been on the Russian Front 1941 - 1945 when temperatures down to minus plenty and then some were the norm during winter. It certainly puts a perspective on the sheer scale of the weather issue. If a simple thing like a back door lock and a cat flap can keep me amused for a couple of hours whilst suffering from a relatively minor winter ailment imagine trying to get a tank moving whilst suffering from frostbite, bronchitis and sundry other more serious cold related unpleasantness whilst people were busily trying to perforate you in numerous and interesting ways..........

Anyone that has not read Guy Sajer's - The Forgotten Soldier should do so for a fraction of the point I am clumsily trying (and he was much better able to) to make. It is also something that should realistically be factored into any winter or extreme weather games - the issue of winter mechanical reliability.

As mentioned yesterday, my new Bulgarian 75mm artillery has arrived for the Balkan Wars set up so I can at last tackle the serious business of preparing to get them (and of course the Turks) painted.