Procopius

As of May 1939, allocated to ground instructional duties with the serial 1211M.

Don't worry about them, you can do what you like to them, they don't feel pain as we do.

For you? Anything.

I anticipate we'll see another one of their 1/48 1950s-60s jets scaled down to 1/72. I would hope for the Javelin, but question whether they feel the Harmonious Dragmaster would sell well enough. Maybe the Sea Fury, as a follow-on to their Typhoon and Tempest.

In fact, the FG.1 I got was indeed Black Mike! I'm going to do an RN FG.1, though. I do what I can to rectify the balance of payments for the UK. Every dollar helps.

Buoyed up by what certainly seems like a hugely promising kick-off meeting for a $210,000 procurement project I've lead, I decided I needed to be foolish about 1970s RAF jets, and picked up: 2 x Airfix Phantom FGR.2s 1 x Airfix Phantom FG.1 1 x Airfix Buccaneer S.2C 1 x Airfix Buccaneer S.2B AND! Because I like to pretend I'm not total garbage. a shipping label to send John his Mustangs.

"I saw the best[*] minds of my generation destroyed by madness..." * Results may vary.

Norman Friedman's British Submarines in the Cold War Era (which makes me feel impossibly old -- as a boy I used to check out the library's copy of Jane's Fighting Ships 1986 -- their most recent edition -- and lug it home on my bike to imagine the apocalyptic second, infinitely more decisive, Jutland). It has this fascinating aside on NATO's plans to storm the Soviet SSBN bastions in a general war: Also, Mikro Mir's 1/350 HMS Resolution, my favourite warship name (along with, for radically different reasons, the armed trawler HMS Morris Dance). I'm always interested in doing ship models, but I lack the courage, skill, or time to do them. A submarine is effectively a big black rod...wait, no, this isn't sounding good at all. Anyway, it seems easy to build in a theoretical sense.

Still useful! Yes, and you'd think there'd be more decal options for some of the ZK-serialled aircraft, but no dice! Almost everything out there is for display aircraft or F.2s. You can certainly look forward to me buying stuff to do one, blathering endlessly about it, and dying of a stress-induced heart attack thanks to the awful family I've constructed for myself, but know this: I will be glad to go.

I was indeed going to use the Hase kit. Thank you!

Purely out of my strong desire to support the freedom-loving people of Ukraine, and not out of a sordid urge to merely own lots of kits of big jets I'll never have time to build, I bought a 1/72 BPK P-8 Poseidon. My advice to anyone doing so is to go through ebay rather than the BPK site. Two Arma Sea Hurricanes. The Silent Deep, by Peter Hennessy, which is reputedly a dry and exhaustive history (the way I like 'em) of the Cold War-era Royal Navy's submarine force. The Age of Invincible, by Nick Childs, as I've been really interested in the process that lead to her being procured in spite of the improvably-named First Sea Lord Sir Varyl Begg's opposition to carriers, and I hope the book touches on it. An Xtradecal sheet with an IX(B) Typhoon, so I can build a Meteor-armed QRA jet. Finally finished paying the last of the hospital bills for the baby: the total was somewhere in the region of $2,600 after insurance. Hold on to your NHS, folks. Things I have not bought: a shipping label to mail John Laidlaw the Mustangs I owe him, because I am a small, stupid human being, and it's easier to buy something than to fulfill my obligations to others.

Thank you, thank you. Ten seconds of pleasure, a lifetime of regret, etc.

Thanks Bill! My baby-addled brain didn't even think of using Scalemates. It looks like the "British Military Air Arms Update Set 1" from Air-Graphics might be my only shot -- they have ZJ924 of IX(B) Squadron in 2019, after the Meteor's IOC date, and she seems to still be in the same markings as of this spring. Barring any uniquely British economies ("Well, actually, we only have four Meteors, and we gave them all to XI(F) because we liked the squadron flash more"), I think that's my bird.

My old boss once texted me -- normally reserved for hair-on-fire emergencies -- while she was on vacation and taking her family to Michigan with a photo of the XP-55 at the Air Zoo. It was unexpected, but not unwelcome.

Hullo all, Most of the sheets for Typhoons out there appear to be for the colourful display or anniversary aircraft, but does anyone know of a 1/72 sheet that has markings for a recent-ish (2018 or later) Typhoon on QRA duties? Much obliged for any help you can provide.

Recently, in a brief spurt of post-baby delusion that I will ever have free time, I purchased many 1/72 curiousities: Hasegawa Eurofighter Hasegawa F-35B GWH F-15C Eagle Two of the new Arma Sea Hurricane (natch) An assortment of decals and etch: Xtradecals Stirling III/IV sheet Xtradecals F-35 sheet Eduard Stirling III mask Eduard F-35B mask and etch Eduard Eurofighter mask Eduard Sea Hawk mask Eduard Tempest etch Kits-World Lysander III 3d IP and belts DK Decals 2 TAF sheet Airscale 1/72 instrument panel decals (I pre-ordered this, I have no idea why now, perhaps a burst of irrational self-confidence) Print Scale Russian Losses in Ukraine decal sheet Caracal Lakenheath Eagles sheet In the more prosaic world of real life, my phone was due for an upgrade and has been duly transmuted into a Pixel 7 Pro and a Pixel Watch.

It was, very reasonably priced.

I'm pretty sure she knows where babies come from, Jack.

It is, because it's off to the Merchant Marine with them. I've made absolutely zero further progress (though a new facemask, canopy glue, and mysteriously, a parcel from Japan in record time containing an F-35B, F-15C, and Eurofighter Typhoon have all arrived at Hedgehog Manor of late) since my last post; parenting has been a full-time job and then some. To my immense delight, I learned yesterday that Winston and Grant had today and Monday off, a revelation that produced an audibly all-lowercase "why" from my lips when I received it. The baby does not sleep well at night (possibly because Mrs P thinks the best time to change her is right after she's fallen asleep, and wouldn't you sleep sounder if someone shoved a cold wet wipe between your rosy little cheeks?), but never fear, Mrs P is on the case, with the side effect that she and baby then sleep all day. I wake up with Mrs P and baby (Mrs P believes that you are not violating the doctor's instructions if you lie about it, and so the baby sleeps, as both of our other children did, in our bed), but then also wake up with the boys at 6 AM as well, which can produce some exciting aural and visual hallucinations if I don't consume enough tea quickly enough. The boys are getting in on the fun too, because if baby cries too much, Grant wakes up, and is extremely confused and sleep-addled. I have no idea what whizzes around in his pea brain at this moment, but I can only assume he thinks he's being challenged for his crown as the loudest organic being I have ever had the displeasure of hearing scream, because he then bellows so loudly the house feels like it's shaking and cannot be shut up for love nor money. Winston sometimes wanders in blearily to let us know there are bugs in the walls (tree branches scraping against the exterior wall) and that he is going to do X or Y, neither of which need to be done at 2 AM. Winston is also not shy about sticking a rigid little finger into an eye to elicit a parental response, which will probably get him killed someday. Today Mrs P slept all day with baby -- aside from thoughtfully going to Dunkin' Donuts with baby right before the boys and I got back from the grocery store, so that they could see she had a doughnut and they didn't, which didn't make my life harder for no reason and the lowest-quality pastries legal for sale in this country -- and exhausted by her labours, she is in bed already. I now head up to join her, my head held high, like a Christian off to be flung to the lions, or a murderer on his long walk to the gas chamber, excepting the fact that I didn't have anywhere near as much say in my final meal as the latter might. (I made brioche French toast with whipped cream and strawberries for dinner tonight, as a fun treat, and the boys bitched like champions that there was fruit.)

A family friend, at his tenth wedding anniversary, remarked, "We've been married ten years, but it only feels like ten minutes...underwater."

Thank you, all of you for the words of consolation and reassurance. They means a lot to me, they truly do. This week is slightly better than last week in some senses (Winston's rash has receded, meaning both boys are back in school, which means the daytime is less hectic; I have restarted my diet after six months -- I got down to 186 from 236, but'm back to 201, pounds, not stone!), and slightly worse in others: Madeleine is not sleeping through the night. This morning at 4 AM, as I struggled to change her diaper in low-light conditions, a shadowy figure flitted into the room. Soon this apparition resolved itself, in the dim glow of the changing light, as the almost translucent form of my small pale child Grant, perched on the edge of the bed. "This," he informed me, cheerfully, as I struggled to clean baby emissions from secret baby crevices, "is a very interesting show." As a side note, one clear effect of the modern era is that when my children want to pretend something performatively for each other, they enjoin people to "come see this neat video". Only time will tell if this catches on globally. I'm struggling to find time to model effectively right now: I'm usually so tired I'm in bed by 8, and the boys go to bed at 7. I have dishes to do, and when I wake up at 6 AM, I have to make lunches and get them to school, and then when I'm done with that, if I don't watch Mrs P like a hawk, she will attempt to do household chores until she starts bleeding again.

Would you like a baby.

I at least put the front clear parts on tonight. PXL_20221002_021911781 by Edward IX, on Flickr How are all of you? It sounds ridiculous, but I've missed you, my friends (I like to imagine -- I generally never presume to call anyone my friend lest they merely tolerate me, but pray indulge me). I should have had more progress to report, but this has quite simply been an awful year. Quite aside from the obvious anxiety-inducing geopolitical events (though it's I guess reassuring to know that I live two blocks from the entrance to one of the lesser army bases in the country, so will see much light but feel little pain before I'm consigned to the ash-heap of history, should the situation deteriorate sufficently), there is the continuing sense of the old world of my childhood sliding away into oblivion, to be replaced by whatever the hell it is sliding out of the womb coated in the black blood of historical inevitability. This is something every man approaching forty has to face, I suppose, and ones who have immersed themselves perhaps too much in history more than most. I'm a fool to be surprised. A boy born in 1923, in love with the era of his grandfather, would experience far more shock at the world he stood on the cusp of facing in 1963 than I would in 2023. But it's hard. The future of the UK, whatever the hell is happening to my own country, even if it's never felt like home (and if it hasn't, I would be deluding myself to think anywhere would -- outsiders are outsiders everywhere, as Guy Burgress and his dirty little crew learned the hard way), and whether human history is going to abruptly become a lot more exciting. And then there's my own life. Work has been a series of petty defeats and my usual experience of being totally outmaneuvered on the administrative front as a re-org is planned, killing my hopes of getting a raise of more than 5% when inflation is above 10%. And of course Mrs P went into labour very early on the morning of the 19th, and delivered the baby after less than three minutes of pushing at 8 AM precisely. The situation has deteriorated since then. First off, Mrs P claimed to have calculated the numbers and determined we would be perfectly fine financially if we had a baby this year. That should have been my first warning sign, because she's terrible at math, but dangerously self-confident, in this case a lethal combination. Our savings took a huge hit when the pipes in the basement backed up and flooded it not once, but twice in the space of a month, and I had to replace drywall that got soaked in sewage. (In a subsequent attempt to discuss our finances and the need for economies, Mrs P accused me of wasting a thousand dollars on room in the basement nobody else uses, This is sort of true, in the same way it's true you could step out of a spacecraft onto the Moon without a spacesuit: some key information was omitted, to wit, that room is my office, where I work from home four days a week at the job that provides the majority of our income and all of our health insurance, and which enables me to be available to take care of sick children, let tradesmen in, etc. and additionally, that if I died from black mold, she might find life slightly more difficult, given that she doesn't know how to check the balance on our bank account and cannot open a jar herself. And the reason I spent a thousand dollars was because if we had someone else do it, we would pay two thousand before our insurance covered anything.) Our gutter has separated from the house and needs to be repaired before it tears itself off.) When we brought the baby home, my children celebrated by getting sick. This happened the last time, too; Winston rode Grant's carseat off a table, concussed himself, vomited, had to go to the ER, caught the flu, and spent a week vomiting all over the house, but not before we got a CAT scan in the mistaken belief he had fractured his skull. I spent my entire paternity leave cleaning up vomit. This year, Grant developed extremely bad asthma and had to be given an inhaler ever four hours. Steroids for children with difficulty breathing, I have often remarked, save a child's life at the price of making it not worth saving, and Grant was unbearable. Then, Winston got some sort of hideous red rash or hives that covered his entire body. Since the rash is only places he can reach, and most severe on the places he touches (face, neck, legs, block and tackle) I have my suspicions as to how it spread, and after three awful days where his face swelled up like Chuck Yeager's after that F-104 crash, we finally got some medicine to help him: yep, you guessed it, steroids. Around this time it came to my attention that Mrs P neglected to mention that for six of the twelve weeks she's taking for maternity leave, she'll be unpaid. Completely fine, I'm sure, except that if you were to express that as a component of a math problem where you subtracted all of our expenses (Y) from all of our income (X), and then added every penny of our savings (Z) it ended deep, deep, in the negatives (F'd). So I had to loot my 401k retirement fund further to ensure we can pay for our house and groceries. This is especially infuriating because if she could just have been happy with her two children now who she avoids whenever possible, we would be in the best financial shape of our lives, as we would have stopped needing daycare when Grant turned five on 14 September. Now we face five more years of grinding financial annihilation, and then, since the wretched school she teachers at only gives free tuition for two children per teacher, we'll have the privilege of paying thousands more to send our daughter to a school I now cordially hate. I had no real opinion on Montessori before this year, aside from the general one, borne of having attended both private and public schools as a boy, that most education at the pre-collegiate level does not improve with increased expense. This is a very controversial opinion in our house, where the round peg that is Winston is being mercilessly hammered through a square hole because Mrs P would hate her job if she taught there and he went to a public school in one of the wealthiest parts of the entire midwestern United States, which has virtually limitless resources to lavish on the difficult children of the rich, and our own difficult child. Mrs P is apparently unaware that almost everyone hates their job. I certainly hate mine, but it's impossible for me to quit, because it supports a life I have increasingly grown to hate and keeps the four other people I never wanted to be responsible for but am fed, clothed and housed. The school itself is the worst kind of po-faced hokum, with a doctrinal rigidity that would put the Austrian army of the 1790s to shame, where five year olds have to lug massive wicker bags ($45, sourced from a single approved provider) full of silver- and glassware and their lunch (no plastic bags, all tupperware) into their classroom in an approved manner. I got a stern talking too by the Stepford Android head of school for giving Grant (who is ludicrously small for his age and can't even lift the bag off the ground when fully laden) a piggyback ride into the building, because decorum is important. But of course he can ride on my back his whole life, whereas he'll only be able to walk under his own power for a few more years. Do I sound angry? I'm not, really. I'm defeated. Utterly defeated. Everything I wanted to do with the rest of my life has never seemed less possible. Professionally I've advanced as far as my skills will allow, and I'm too old and have worked in one place too long to be desirable in my chosen field. I foolishly chose a hobby where I would be younger than most of my friends, and I'm gripped by the fear that I won't make it back to the UK before it's too late to see them again. I've accepted I'll never be able to at least or even retire to the UK; at this point I may not be able to retire at all. I will work until I die for the pleasure of funding someone else's dreams, dreams which have sapped every ounce of joy from my life and which are killing me in very slow motion. I used to be a real boy. I used to have potential. But I passed by the point where my potential could have been realized and did nothing, and here I am. Why bother trying at anything at all ever again. You can see why I haven't gotten much modelling done this year.

It's what we call her too. She's fairly even-tempered, so far. But she was born on the 19th, so time will tell.

A phenomenally expensive miniature. PXL_20220920_212207199~2 by Edward IX, on Flickr Her name is Madeleine.