(no subject)

I've decided that I like the directing of Denys Arcand. I think maybe I really like Montreal too, but maybe it's just the Montreal that lives in Denys Arcand's imagination.

Oh, and I got a nice armchair for free when my downstairs neighbours moved out.

When I put a throw over it to keep it from being cat-haired within an inch of its life, we found that the throw extends down to the floor an makes a fort for cats. Phineas is hiding in there, and Nicholas is pouncing on the throw when it moves. So everyone got something nice.

That is all.

sad news for wargamers and historians

Paddy Griffith, a British historian and wargamer, has died. What follows is a remembrance of him published by Howard Whitehouse, another UK gamer and lover of history.

I heard today that British wargames pioneer Paddy Griffith has died of a heart attack.

I am hugely saddened by this news. Paddy was my mentor, not only in terms of designing wargames but as a writer. He told me, "You have a book in you," and promptly told me what it was, then published it - 'Battle in Africa', back in 1988. I took his point. That was six books ago.

We were friends for 27 years, although we probably only ever met on a handful of occasions. Those meetings were eventful, hilarious, and filled with food and wine. He once insisted I take him to the 'Big Chicken' in Marietta, Ga, because Marietta loomed large in his ACW studies, and the idea of going to a fast food joint designed like a giant hen appealed to him.

Paddy was a believer that wargames should be fun, and that tight rules could strangle a game. He was an early proponent of Scienec versus Pluck, and wrote me a wonderful letter telling me how his force had been isolated, run out of ammo, and wiped out. He loved the whole thing. We played a game at my apartment in Atlanta where I kept removing his scout elements from the table. He thought that was brilliant. "I just hope some of them come back, sometime."

I remember staying at his house in Nuneaton and playing a series of demented two-player games involving drawing accurate maps of places I was only vaguely aware of (C17th Lancashire) then being caught out because Paddy plotted his movement on a real map while I moved on my fictional landscape. "That's how it was for the Scots in 1648" was his rationale! We finished that evening in his garden, shooting an air rifle at a model of a cantilevered bridge. Wine was involved.

He and I wandered the North Georgia and Chattanooga battlefields of the ACW on one occasion. He was a terrific companion and extremely knowledgable. Paddy believed it was important to throw stones at long-existing ideas which had ossifed into orthodoxy.

When I was slow in responding in a BPEM game (as mayor of a Spanish city under siege by Napoleon's armies) he inflicted a variety of disasters on me. Eventually, he had me killed. That served me right.

I'll miss him enormously. My condolences to Genievieve and Robert, their son.

Howard