I AM A WARGAMER

Unlucky Wellington

Just thought I'd share a couple of quick thoughts which really came home two nights ago when out at dinner with old friends.

I've been in the workforce since 1988 and in my current occupation for coming up 30 years. Mine is an extraordinary job which has given me experiences most people don't get and its taken me around the world. I have just got home after a 3.5 year posting to the Kingdom of Tonga. I am in my mid-fifties and one of my peer groups favourite conversations is our impending retirement.

Not everyone is either in a position to retire any time soon. What's even more curious to me is that I have a number of friends who have no plans and no real idea what they will do with themselves when they no longer work. This is when I really realised that I am truly a wargamer and in many ways it defines who I am.

I don't just mean that I like to play wargames - that's way too simple. I am many things, a partner, a son (still, thank goodness) a father and of course my work also defines me. I hope I am a good friend - something I strive to be. But if I were to be best defined by what takes up most of my personal time and consciousness, then it's that I am most definitely a wargamer. For me, this is multi-layered.

My passion for history started when young (primary school) with books, transfer books, toy soldiers and the board games I played - remember Escape from Colditz and Campaign? Even my Action Man was armed to the hilt for which I had the Colditz set and even an armoured scout car. This single-mindedness in turn influenced the TV I watched and the movies I saw. After school, I studied history at university and majored (twice) in history and once in politics. It's the only fiction I read (on the rare occasions I bother with fiction): Alexander Kent and Bernhard Cornwall regularly featuring with a side-line in Robert Howard and the Hyborian age.

My wargaming impacts on my considerable book collection (small library, really) which is totally dominated with reference works on armies, flags, uniforms and histories. I love the research. Military history and wargaming dictates the Podcasts I listen to and it's what directs my tourism. I only generally travel to see museums, castles, fortresses, battlefields - other stuff too of course, but it's the military history which directs and triggers the travel in the first place.

Most of my paintings and prints are military history themed and my prize decorations are my reproduction swords, bayonets and daggers (only a few choice pieces) but hell, I even have a mannequin fully dressed as a Norman Knight circa 1066. Even my home  requirements are that I need a large wargames room and workshop with a house wrapped around it.

I confess I even did night classes to learn how to Photoshop just so I could do goofy things like putting my face and my mates faces into famous portraits and photographs like the one above. 

I have so many passions and major projects within my hobby they only ever crawl forward as each new idea manifests itself and has to compete with the growing list of armies and battlefields I plan to realise on the table-top. To be frank, work is just getting in the way. Even though I can't imagine a better job or career, it doesn't float my boat near as much as my hobby does ... how could it?

I seem to have a fertile imagination and a creative mind with some small amount of artistic talent. I cannot imagine getting bored. I even Blog about wargaming, modelling and some history which in turn spawned an interest in macro photography.

So, when any of my friends look a bit puzzled when they try to envisage their post-working world it's not a predicament I share. This is the greatest hobby, pastime, activity and even way of life I can imagine. I only stalled after school and before marriage when my twenties were dedicated to other hedonisms but since about 28, I haven't stopped.

I'm looking forward to my retirement like crazy - and maybe that's what I will become. BUT, what a beautiful madness.