O is for "Oi Frenchie, Gi'ass a go in your boat?"

A talk about scale on the 'Prometheus In Aspic' blog (see left) turned to the subject of factionalism in the course of which Tony (MSFoy) pointed out that today is a special day...

As regular readers of the blog will know I have displayed an unhealthy interest in finding reasons to have a go at the French in the past, and, given that I'm a bit pissed off with our supine approach to the mess the rich have got us in, and that the coalition Government would now like the poor to buy us out of it, while the French - in a similar position - have taken to rioting...the proper way to do it; I can't resist the opportunity to fling something over the 'English' Manche!! And enjoy a bit of 'factionalism' myself!!

Ladies and Gentlemen...it is...Trafalgar Day! A National celebration of when we gave Frenchie a good spanking! Sadly, he learned little and having talked the Spanish into attending his first spanking (they probably thought it was just a nice day for a sail), he then talked the Danes into helping him have another stab, so we had to give him another good spanking. Did he learn? Did he hell, 1940 comes around and he's thrown in the towel, but wants to hold on to his ships until Adolf can have a gander, so, despite asking for them nicely, we had to give Frenchie another bloody good spanking...hummm, lets be honest, we blew him out of the water.

Which seems like a reasonable reason to look at sailors, everyone loves a sailor, except the French who probably wish they were land-locked sometimes!! Especially when the R.N. hove into view...

Lone*Star; Not a full set, nor the best paint, but for a set that suffers brittleness it's a good sample. The driver? pilot? Coxswain? Steering-wheel-man is - I think - the only one who was issued in brown, probably with the fold-up cardboard landing craft (for liberating Frenchies!) packaging, which otherwise came with combat infantry.

The Brittleness has struck the Officer of the Watch, and while I've got the spigot glued back on I don't trust it to take the weight of the arm, or indeed the strain of putting it back on!

A white semaphore signaler, my mate John has a box full of these, and has quite a few white ones, including the officer. The black one is an uncommon Hong Kong copy, while the blue one is a re-issue, I've seen the re-issues in a soft PVC as well.

Charbens had a go at Naval figures too, and here we see 5 of six poses, I haven't a clue what the other pose is, another rating I guess, I could always go and look at the Plastic Warrior check-list in the 'C' file couldn't I? Oh, all right then, hold on...

...Oh, well, there's four missing!! Three divers (which may be in another box, but I'm not going to photograph them now) and a chap with a cutlass who's actually in Trafalgar garb! Bottom right looks a bit like Churchill but is probably meant to be 'ABC' - AB Cunningham our successful Mediterranean commander in WWII, or WWI's Jellico?

Clearly Nelson is on the right in the upper photograph, while the left-hander looks like Jellico in his captains uniform (as he appeared on cigarette cards) which would leave the first guy as Cunningham. Bottom left is a home-paint using the well known 1970's stab-and-prey method!

A few other figures, on the left a Timpo hollow-cast Rating coming from or going on leave, A nice Spanish Pottery figure, an unknown figure with a hole in his base that's similar to the hole in some smaller figures by DeLuxe Reading and some HK racing personnel?

The figure on the far right is a notoriously brittle Marx 19th Century American sailor, and he's lost the eye-piece of his telescope and his pointing finger. I mean to try this two-part epoxy plastic-metal for mending engine-blocks, to have a go at making the missing parts as it may be this colour when dry?...this colour'ish?