(no subject)
Been a great, if sometimes complicated, weekend. Short version: more military geekery, beer and curry and a day's airsofting.
Originally seemed straightforward enough. Another proposed Team Sheep outing to Urban Assault today (Sunday). Only my enquiry got a much healthier response than I expected - too many respondents, not enough car spaces! Kate also suggested we combine this with the trip to the RAF Museum we'd discussed and that Simon would be interested in coming up from Somerset for both. Other complication - she no longer lives en route from home to skirmish site, as was the case with Sopley. We eventually managed to sort it out: juggled lift assignments (had to do some swapping of passengers), got Simon to pick up Kate and head up here on the Saturday so we could set off to Urban Assault from here.
They eventually got here just after lunch (after some excitement with some errors/ambiguities in my directions which they were more than happy to give me detailed item-by-item feedback on...), it was off to the RAF Museum in Hendon. The notion had been mooted some time back but I guess bubbled to the top after our visit to the War and Aviation Museums in Malta. Hadn't been to the RAF Museum in years but much fun was had geeking out at all the aircraft, drooling over the Spitfires, Hurricanes, Tempests, Mustang, P-47, Hunter, Lancaster, ME-109, ME-262, FW-190, Phantom and so on. Sigh :-) On the downside, oddly, quite a few galleries were closed (really would have liked to have seen the Berlin Airlift exhibits) and the canteen is outrageously expensive!
Then, back to East Finchley and straight to pub where we had a major geekout session in the first pub because we thought about doing a UNIT Most Wanted deck of cards for Beltring and so started frantically scribbling a list of 52-54 Who villains which left Simon somewhat bewildered. Came up with the obvious suspects (e.g. The Master, Davros, Sutekh, Omega), some personal faves (e.g. The Celestial Toymaker, Harrison Chase) and vetoed a few, fortunately largely unanimously, for being to crap for words (e.g. The Nimon). There's still some contention though as I was keen on including Margaret Blaine the Slitheen but Kate's seriously underwhelmed by the last series. Still, could all be academic as there's not a lot of time to put this deck together!
Next, onto curry house followed by more beer at another pub. Weird thought: I've lived in East Finchley for over 20 years but we ended up in places I'd never been into simply because I invariably meet friends elsewhere e.g. Central London! Curry seemed to go down surprisingly well though, prompting enquiry by Kate if it'd be OK to come back again some time for another. Guess there aren't too many good curry houses in Ealing...
Way too early this morning, up to Urban Assault, picking up DT along the way. Great day's skirmishing (got to use my new MARPAT helmet and vest), apart from the heat making us all rather sweaty and lethargic. One weird thing: the Sheep have always signed in on red team and red has always won the most games each time. Today, due to numbers imbalance, we were put on blue and this time, blue team dominated. We found this very disturbing as we'd been characterised by not taking all this too seriously and admitting we're all a bit crap really (several of us openly state they do not do the running thing). Something is not right here...
Also amused that Cookie has gone from one of the most vocal piss-takers when I got my first set of digital camouflage to buying shedloads of MARPAT off eBay and becoming something of a MARPAT pusher to the rest of the Sheep. Hell, even DT, who'd previously refused to wear any camo, picked up a set of him today! Looks like MARPAT is rapidly becoming our team camo... Simon, Kate and I also picked up sets of 58 webbing and some ration packs for Beltring from him. Believe it or not, the 58 webbing is what was used by the UNIT troops in Battlefield. How sad are we? ;-)
Even sadder, dug out 8-CD 80s set on the way back to London and had a car full of people singing along to the likes of Pat Benatar, Duran Duran and Tracey Ullman!
Only real concerns were with the heat and that we're going to be hard pushed to field more people than we did today without more cars and/or complicated crashing/lift arrangements. Oh well.
Also been prodded by Kate about sorting out Team Sheep and Oliver Reed's Last Pub t-shirts (seem to somehow have become geek fashion designer of choice!) and to investigate sharing an order of Scarecrow and Mrs King episodes on DVD+R from the US. Not really sure that I should be 'fessing up to this last one...
Tomorrow: got to get a tent for Beltring. Any advice welcome...
Originally seemed straightforward enough. Another proposed Team Sheep outing to Urban Assault today (Sunday). Only my enquiry got a much healthier response than I expected - too many respondents, not enough car spaces! Kate also suggested we combine this with the trip to the RAF Museum we'd discussed and that Simon would be interested in coming up from Somerset for both. Other complication - she no longer lives en route from home to skirmish site, as was the case with Sopley. We eventually managed to sort it out: juggled lift assignments (had to do some swapping of passengers), got Simon to pick up Kate and head up here on the Saturday so we could set off to Urban Assault from here.
They eventually got here just after lunch (after some excitement with some errors/ambiguities in my directions which they were more than happy to give me detailed item-by-item feedback on...), it was off to the RAF Museum in Hendon. The notion had been mooted some time back but I guess bubbled to the top after our visit to the War and Aviation Museums in Malta. Hadn't been to the RAF Museum in years but much fun was had geeking out at all the aircraft, drooling over the Spitfires, Hurricanes, Tempests, Mustang, P-47, Hunter, Lancaster, ME-109, ME-262, FW-190, Phantom and so on. Sigh :-) On the downside, oddly, quite a few galleries were closed (really would have liked to have seen the Berlin Airlift exhibits) and the canteen is outrageously expensive!
Then, back to East Finchley and straight to pub where we had a major geekout session in the first pub because we thought about doing a UNIT Most Wanted deck of cards for Beltring and so started frantically scribbling a list of 52-54 Who villains which left Simon somewhat bewildered. Came up with the obvious suspects (e.g. The Master, Davros, Sutekh, Omega), some personal faves (e.g. The Celestial Toymaker, Harrison Chase) and vetoed a few, fortunately largely unanimously, for being to crap for words (e.g. The Nimon). There's still some contention though as I was keen on including Margaret Blaine the Slitheen but Kate's seriously underwhelmed by the last series. Still, could all be academic as there's not a lot of time to put this deck together!
Next, onto curry house followed by more beer at another pub. Weird thought: I've lived in East Finchley for over 20 years but we ended up in places I'd never been into simply because I invariably meet friends elsewhere e.g. Central London! Curry seemed to go down surprisingly well though, prompting enquiry by Kate if it'd be OK to come back again some time for another. Guess there aren't too many good curry houses in Ealing...
Way too early this morning, up to Urban Assault, picking up DT along the way. Great day's skirmishing (got to use my new MARPAT helmet and vest), apart from the heat making us all rather sweaty and lethargic. One weird thing: the Sheep have always signed in on red team and red has always won the most games each time. Today, due to numbers imbalance, we were put on blue and this time, blue team dominated. We found this very disturbing as we'd been characterised by not taking all this too seriously and admitting we're all a bit crap really (several of us openly state they do not do the running thing). Something is not right here...
Also amused that Cookie has gone from one of the most vocal piss-takers when I got my first set of digital camouflage to buying shedloads of MARPAT off eBay and becoming something of a MARPAT pusher to the rest of the Sheep. Hell, even DT, who'd previously refused to wear any camo, picked up a set of him today! Looks like MARPAT is rapidly becoming our team camo... Simon, Kate and I also picked up sets of 58 webbing and some ration packs for Beltring from him. Believe it or not, the 58 webbing is what was used by the UNIT troops in Battlefield. How sad are we? ;-)
Even sadder, dug out 8-CD 80s set on the way back to London and had a car full of people singing along to the likes of Pat Benatar, Duran Duran and Tracey Ullman!
Only real concerns were with the heat and that we're going to be hard pushed to field more people than we did today without more cars and/or complicated crashing/lift arrangements. Oh well.
Also been prodded by Kate about sorting out Team Sheep and Oliver Reed's Last Pub t-shirts (seem to somehow have become geek fashion designer of choice!) and to investigate sharing an order of Scarecrow and Mrs King episodes on DVD+R from the US. Not really sure that I should be 'fessing up to this last one...
Tomorrow: got to get a tent for Beltring. Any advice welcome...