Silly After Action Report - Smoking Bridges

A pair of German soldiers gazed down from the hill to the river below.  One of them was slouched low over the handlebars of his motorbike doing his best Marlon Brando impression.  The other was spoiling the image by jumping up and down excitedly.

"Look," he squealed, "a bridge!"

His companion sighed, "Yes, I see it.  It isn't the first bridge I've seen."

"But its not on fire, and we've found it!"

The other soldier shook his head and pulled a book from his knapsack.  He flipped to a particular page.

"What else do you see?" he asked.

The first soldier blinked, "What do you mean?"

"You see that big wooden looking building with the sign saying 'stone building'?  Do you know what that is?"

"A youth hostel?"

"Close, its the Vardar Tactical Training College.  Stuffed, no doubt, with the Yugoslav army's best and brightest."

The first soldier peered at the book in his comrade's hand, "Is that an intelligence pack?"

"No its a Lonely Planet guide.  It tells me we can probably expect some pretty fierce resistance if we try to capture that bridge."

"I don't see anything."

"Well they're hardly likely to put out signs, apart from that one saying 'stone building' for some reason.  OK, off you go."

"Go where?"

"Back to the others.  Tell them we've found a bridge.  You might want to toss in a mention of the college as well."  He got off his bike and settled down on a comfortable patch of grass.

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to keep an eye on the bridge and make sure nobody steals it while you're gone."

So this is The Scenario Formerly Known As A28 - The Professionals which pitches a bunch of battle hungry Germans replete with tanks and half tracks against a collection of green Yugoslavs who aren't.  I've wanted to play this scenario for ages largely because I like saying "Vardar Tactical Training College".  I shall be commanding the Germans who are trying to capture a non burning bridge to keep their advance moving.  Ivan has the Yugoslavs unreasonably obsessed with holding on to this particular bridge while the rest of their country falls apart.

Ivan gets ten green squads headed up by two quite capable officers (a 9-2 and an 8-1).  These guys get a medium machine gun, a light machine gun and a pair of second hand Italian 47mm anti tank guns.  They also have a lot of bottles of slivovitz and a plentiful supply of cigarette lighters.  Ivan's entire force gets to set up HIP.  I have eight first line squads with a couple of officers and four light machine guns.  My armour consists of four PzIVEs and a pair of armoured halftracks.  My job is to capture the bridge, symbolised by exiting an AFV and a squad off the end.  If I do that at any point I win immediately, otherwise Ivan wins.

My entire force essentially enters down one road which at least reduces the number of tactical decisions I have to make at the outset.  Below is the end of turn one where my forces have rolled onto a hill and are gazing down at a suspiciously unoccupied looking river valley.  As per SSR the large building (the college) is stone.  Somewhere down there are ten squads, a pair of AT guns and more molotov cocktails than you can shake a swizzle stick at.

End of turn 1.  Ivan is keeping a low profile

My plan was to park a couple of PZIVs on the hill and attempt to dump some smoke on the college.  While I did that the other two tanks would roll down the left and hopefully get into a position where they could inflict pain on Ivan's defenders, assuming they ever showed themselves.  My infantry would also nose forward trying to find his defenders.  The exception would be a pair of squads riding in the halftracks, these would be my exit force and I slid them down the left side of the map hoping to keep them out of trouble.

Well the smoke plan didn't exactly work. With a smoke number of nine it took effort to run both tanks on the hill out of smoke in the first turn but I managed it.  Apparently there would be little cover for my approach.  With smoke, briefly, out of the equation I eased my foot mounted infantry nervously forwards and rolled my hilltop tanks down for some more direct fire support.  Over on the left I raced the other two tanks up near (but not onto) the bridge.  I was certain there would be a 47mm gun sitting in the building covering the bridge entry hex (for once I was right).  The two halftracks kept out of harms way.

Turn 2, still no sign of the Yugoslavs

Turn three rolled around and I finally found some Yugoslavs.  Ivan had his mmg, guided by his 9-2 leader, set up to fire down the long road leading to the college.  Naturally I found this out when a halfsquad took a 4-4 shot as it was ambling inoffensively down the road.  Less forgiveably I forgot about the damn thing next turn and moved an entire squad into the firing line.  Casualty reduction was a lenient punishment for this piece of idiocy.  My 8-0 officer obviously thought so as he murdered the survivors while trying to rally them.  Another halfsquad paid the ultimate penalty to discover a green squad nestled in a wooden building.

Meanwhile closer to the rivers edge I dismounted a squad from a half track and started ploughing through the forest.  I sent the halftrack to back up my two tanks who had so far met no resistance.  The other halftrack (still with a squad on board) rolled as close to the river as it could get and started edging its way past the forest in bypass.

My luck with the smoke had been bad so far but that was about to change.  My two tanks near the bridge dropped a pair of smoke rounds around the approaches (admittedly yet another tank ran out of smoke in the process) and one of the others found some vehicle smoke to help my surviving infantry get forward.  With a pair of smoke hexes shrouding the way I took a chance and rolled my empty halftrack through the smoke and onto the bridge.  It only got halfway when Ivan blew it to scrap with a 47mm round from the expected building location.  The other two tanks I rolled forward towards his positions in the college.  I knew what I was going to do now and all four PzIVs were expendable.

Getting close

I trailed my coat shamelessly and Ivan couldn't resist cranking his 47mm around to take a shot at one of the tanks menacing the building.  He missed it on the first shot but would kill it in his next prep fire phase.  I wasn't concerned, his covered arc was now two hexsides away from the bridge.  My other tank in the vicinity then broke its MA in the defensive fire phase.  OK, maybe I was a little concerned at that point.

Turn five rolled around and I made my move.  Refraining from repairing the broken MA I instead gunned the vehicle forward, dropped some smoke to annoy his mmg crew and then rolled around to challenge the gun.  Ivan fired and missed.  Then he intensive fired and hit but the round bounced.  The AT gun was out of action.  Somewhere there was another but I was just going to have to trust to smoke.  Of my two tanks down near the water's edge one dropped another smoke round to further shroud the bridge and the other rolled forward to occupy the mind of any nearby AT gunners.  Then the driver on my squad carrying halftrack stamped on the accelerator.  Ivan howled in despair (poetic licence may have been used in that description) as it lurched out of bypass and towards the impromptu smokescreen.  Desperately he revealed a hidden lmg team in my rear but the rounds failed to penetrate. A nearby squad fired on my boys as they charged past to no avail.  Then with machine gun bullets bouncing off the rear armour and rifle fire spattering against the sides my halftrack rolled into the smoke, slewed right and roared off the bridge for the win.

Yes, a win.  How about that

Ivan was rather shocked by the abrupt end to the game (to be honest so was I), about half of his force and most of my infantry never made it into the game.  Somewhat at a loose end we made awkward small talk for about ten minutes before we thankfully severed the connection and returned to our lives.

Major Teege looked about his recently victorious command.  He had ordered that the two soldiers who had performed the initial reconnaissance be brought to him for personal congratulations.  One rather shabby soldier with a Lonely Planet Guide to the Future Former Yugoslavia tucked under his arm stepped forward and saluted.

"Ah soldier, where's your comrade?"

"He wandered into a machine gun firelane.  I have what's left of him in this matchbox if you'd like to see?"

"No thanks soldier, just post it to his family there's a good chap. Well done on the reconnaissance by the way.  We'll have conquered Yugoslavia in no time."

"Indeed sir, and once we've done that we should probably leave immediately.  It isn't the conquest that's hard.  It's finding safe accommodation afterwards."

It Makes You Proud to be Australian

I seldom pause to reflect on how fortunate I am to live in Australia.  Even our self destructive idiocies are less harmful than elsewhere.  In Britain Theresa May is attempting to push a Brexit solution so wretched that the Europeans actually agreed to it and in the United States Donald Trump is using on would be immigrants the sort of crowd control techniques that are normally only available to citizens.  Meanwhile in Australia our government lurches from crisis to crisis, largely of its own making without it seeming to have too much impact on the country at large.

I hesitate to comment on what is currently going on with our government as by the time I finish this sentence whatever I say will be out of date.  So I won't.  Suffice it to say in the past couple of months our government has changed its leader, lost its majority, seen its counterpart in one state annihilated at an election, lost even more of its non existent majority and decided that the next election will be a popularity contest between whoever is leading the party at that point and the opposition leader.

Meanwhile everybody else in the country keeps puttering on living their lives, doing their jobs and generally behaving as though the actions of our political leaders aren't actually terribly important.  In a way they're absolutely right.  While the introduction of bills and the enacting of laws is (or at least can be) very important and certainly the way our nations leaders interact with the leaders of other nations can have an impact on our lives how the political parties handle their own affairs is a monument to triviality.

As I've watched our government unravel over the last couple of years I often catch myself wondering why this all seems familiar.  Part of the reason, of course, is that the previous Labor government did exactly the same thing but there's more to it than that.  More and more I was getting a feeling of deja vu.  It took me a while before I realised the answer.

The outrageous posturing, the flamboyant manoeuvres, the ridiculous, unbelievable storylines and a whole cast of idiotic freakshows for the crowd to cheer and boo as it pleases?  The Australian government is channelling World Wrestling Entertainment.  It can't be too long before someone is hit with a chair.  It would, of course, be utterly irresponsible of me to indicate which of our venerated lawmakers I wish to see hit with a chair but on a completely unrelated note I see that Peter Dutton is currently on "I hurt myself" leave after injuring himself trying to mend a fence.  It's probably the first and last time he will ever attempt fence mending.

At the end of the last battle royale Malcolm Turnbull was tipped over the top rope but just as Peter Dutton was reaching for the belt Scott Morrison slithered into the ring and blindsided him with the bell while the defeated Turnbull clung onto Tony Abbott's leg to stop him getting in to help.

Since that moment the government has spent its time braying about how competent it is while simultaneously losing its majority in parliament and tanking in the opinion polls.  It’s nice to see they got back to normal so quickly.

I’ve long been of the opinion that one of the great benefits of our system of government has been that it occupies the time and energy of people you don’t want wandering around loose but can’t quite justify locking up.  Meanwhile up in the Senate one senator accused another of slut-shaming her and her party leader got tossed out for calling said slut shamer a pig.  In the midst of all this apparently some laws got passed which is proof that our politicians still have too much time on their hands.

Silly After Action Report

Major, the Honorable Evelyn Augustus Roderick Percy Slovenleigh-Attyre frowned in irritation.  Around him the men of his company huddled under burning trucks and attempted to avoid the German bullets zipping in from all directions.  It was fair to say things had not gone entirely according to plan.  It wasn't really his fault, thought Slovenleigh-Attyre.  After all he certainly wasn't the first person to hold a map upside down when giving his orders.  Dropping a cigarette into the back of the ammunition lorry hadn't been ideal but the Germans had already ambushed them by that point so they would certainly have hit it sooner or later.  Now his men expected him to get them out of this mess.

"Righto chaps," he called striving to make himself heard over the crackle of automatic fire from front and rear, "we need to push through this."  He had had concerns about calling his men "chaps" it seemed to invite far too much familiarity but then he had realised that if he called them chaps he didn't need to remember their names.  Now his company had more chaps than a leather bar.  They certainly looked ready to push through something but they were waiting for him to give a direction.  Indecision gripped the major like a vice.  Then one of his corporals approached.  Slovenleigh-Attyre seized gratefully on the distraction.

"Ah, Corporal, er, um chap," he said a little desperately.  "What do you want?"

Astonished that the major remembered his name Corporal Chapp saluted and pointed to the north.

"Look sir, the armour."

Slovenleigh-Attyre blinked through the smoke and saw tanks of the 1st Armoured rolling north to hit the German positions.  That was it, if everything went haywire he could just say he was supporting the armour and blame them for what happened.

"To the north chaps, support the armour."

Corporal Chapp frowned as the company shook out and moved northwards, Slovenleigh-Attyre bellowing his desire for stealth and secrecy at the top of his voice.  The corporal did in fact think this was the right move.  He was just a little concerned at the decision making process that had produced it.

It was Ivan's turn to pick the scenario and after much deliberation and shuffling through options he simply settled for turning the previous scenario card over and playing what was on the back.  This therefore is ASL scenario J161 - Riding to the Rescue.  Here a bunch of second rate British troops have to try and break through a ring of ambushing Germans with the assistance of a less than stellar collection of British tanks.  Ivan will command the British and I the Germans.  Since the British appeared to be the less favoured side we gave them the balance, swapping out the 7-0 leader for a 9-1.  The dice presented me with the Germans so I discreetly turned my head while Ivan set up his British.

As the German I had ten first line squads, a trio of officers led by a 9-1, a medium machine gun, a pair of lights and an antitank rifle.  Supporting this force are a pair of early model, open topped armoured cars carrying a 20mm cannon.  Ivan has eight squads of second line British troops led by a trio of officers including the balance bestowed 9-1.  These have a pair of light machine guns and an antitank rifle.  These set up surrounded both by burning trucks and only slightly less incendiary Germans.  Supposedly riding to the rescue are a trio of Vickers VIC tanks.  My father will know what they look like, I gave him a Dinky Toy version of one for Christmas (or possibly his birthday) one year.  On turn three he gets another pair of tanks, an impressive (for the time and place) A13 and what is basically a self propelled smoke mortar on tracks.

 To win Ivan has to exit nine VP worth of non crew personnel either off the south edge or off the bridge in the north.  Additionally at least one tank has to have either exited or at least still be mobile at game end.  Thus killing all the British tanks is an automatic win for the Germans.

Set up, my troops are in the wrong place

Above is the initial set up.  Ivan set up his troops first, then I set up mine.  Finally Ivan set up his three at start tanks.  I have to admit Ivan faked me out.  Looking at his set up I assumed he was going for the southern exit and I set up the bulk of my forces to prevent that.  I had only a small force in the north plus the two armoured cars that have to set up there.  Having thus seen most of my troops including my 9-1 and mmg set up in the south Ivan promptly did an about face and rushed north while I stared at the map and shouted that that wasn't fair.

And now my armoured car has broken its gun.

Ivan left a delaying force so that I couldn't simply race after him and pushed towards the distressing close bridge.  Meanwhile his tanks rolled down off the hill to challenge my armoured cars.  One circled far to the north to get behind my defences while the other to raced up behind one of my cars which was inconveniently facing the wrong way.  All in all I was off to a bad start.  Which got worse when my badly placed armoured car cranked its turret around for a shot at a tank and promptly broke its main armament.  Figuring that at least we'd be finished in time to play another game I persisted.

Then things got unexpectedly better.  Not only did I repair the MA on my armoured car but the weapon itself redeemed its earlier hiccough by blowing up one of Ivan's tanks.  His squad with the antitank rifle (fearsome against this early war rubbish with tinfoil armour) was broken and ELR'ed.  The reduction to green status obviously indicated the death of the only man in the squad who knew how to handle an antitank rifle because throughout the course of the game Ivan would take half a dozen shots at a stationary armoured car only a couple of hexes away and either miss or bounce every time.

It may seem a little silly not to move the armoured car since there was a nearby squad taking potshots at it but the truth was I had so few troops up north that I absolutely needed it to help cover the road Ivan needed to take to get onto the bridge.  Meanwhile Ivan, rallying gamely from the sudden death of his tank abandoned his positions in the south and threw his entire force northwards leaving my troops down there literally choking in the smoke of burning trucks.

Up north, I had very little space to trade for time but I did my best, slinking and skulking and managing to keep concealment on my main force (a squad, lmg combo led by an 8-1).  My remaining force up there consisted of the armoured cars and two other squads.  Everything else was far south and peering through the haze looking for opponents that didn't come. Fortunately with his troops heading north and his tanks otherwise occupied I was able to dash a squad with my antitank rifle up to the east side of the forest to somewhere at least adjacent to a useful position.  Which was useful as Ivan, showing far more faith in his second rate troops than I would have, had sent a squad into close combat against one of mine and of course, killed it.  I did manage to take out a half squad in return.

Meanwhile the rest of his force was pressing up against my increasingly hard pressed northern defenders.  I had tried sending some of my southern troops north which was useful as it gave Ivan something else to shoot at apart from my northern troops.  He obediently did so and soon I had a pair of squads broken and weeping in the forest.  I moved my 9-1 (with squad and mmg in tow) up to rally them but soon realised that I needed the firepower further north.

As turn three rolled around things were looking bad for the good guys (ok, historically the bad guys).  Ivan had built up what seemed like a battalions worth of troops against my sole remaining unit in the forest.  One of his Vickers had crashed through the hedge in the north and was menacing my units (actually only one squad plus a pair of dummies) in the village and his extra tanks had come on.  His A13 had combined with his other Vickers to catch one of my armoured cars in a cross fire and I looked completely done.

Thing suddenly turned for the better

Do you ever have a day when absolutely everything goes right?  Me neither but my turn three came very close.  I took out another Vickers with an mmg and then a squad with a lmg far to the south took a long shot at his mortar tank and destroyed it as well with a snake eyes and I also managed to extricate my lmg squad in the forest back to the somewhat dubious protection of the village.  Shocked but determined Ivan rolled his A13 around behind my armoured car.  My armoured car was opened topped and his tank was running CE, the end result was that each of us wound up being stunned by machine gun fire which took both vehicles out of the game for half a turn.

Despite my heroics I was in a precarious position but Ivan was running out of time.  The propensity of his tanks to fall apart in a gust of wind wasn't helping his cause and the inability of his atr squad to take out my other armoured car meant he still had to run a gauntlet if he was to get off the bridge.  It has to be admitted that my atr squad wasn't doing any better.  It had broken under a lucky shot before it had an opportunity to do any harm and spent the rest of the game fleeing from one location to another as various units and vehicles moved next to it.

Ivan sent a halfsquad charging out into the open in a mad dash for the bridge but I disdained to fire on it. There would be more juicy targets later.  It almost didn't work out though.  Using his remaining Vickers as an infantry killer Ivan managed to eradicate most of my northern defences.   Fortunately for me rescue was coming from the south.  My mmg team and another squad with an lmg had tiptoed up behind his remaining forces while further to the south a pair of squads had moved into position in the village to the west where they could fire on the bridge.

Ivan has one turn to escape

The last turn came and Ivan made his final dash, first his remaining Vickers rolled up to the bridge in the hope of dropping some smoke grenades.  It failed and, unimpressed, my armoured car shot into its rear destroying it.  This was perhaps a little silly as now there some cover at the bridge entry.  Things got worse for me when Ivan sudden charged his A13 into a forest hex to lock up my lmg team.  Then his boys made their dash for the exit.  One squad made it but my mmg team laid down a firelane along the approaches and my troops in the village broke another that attempted to run the gauntlet.  This left Ivan without enough troops to escape and gave me the win.

End game

Major Slovenleigh-Attyre wrung the water out of his moustache.  After things had gone so badly to pot at the bridge he and a handful of others hand plunged into the river to escape.  Now he had to explain himself to Brigadier Sir Aylwin Hartie-Bellow who had come forward to find out what had happened to the battalion.  Had spent the last five minutes studying the reports on "the incident" and now he looked up shaking his head sadly.

"Pity you were let down so badly by those armour wallahs Slovenleigh-Attyre.  Damned bad show.  I've already had a word with the general, he'll be giving them a rocket.  Honestly, they should go back to horses.  At least they don't explode.  Glad to see you got out.  I've put you in for an MC just to quiet any criticism."

"Thank you very much sir."

"Not at all, must stick together what? Off you go and get a dry uniform and some moustache wax"

Slovenleigh-Attyre saluted and squelched out of the brigadiers officer.  Corporal Chapp was waiting for him.

"How did it go sir?"

Slovenleigh-Attyre sighed, "I think it's going to be a very long war."

Birthday Greetings #76

Some imperial dynasties soar, providing leader after leader of great talent before sliding downwards into general decrepitude.  The Habsburgs somehow managed to make mediocrity a survival trait.  Meanwhile the Macedonian dynasty of the Byzantine empire seemed to have a bad case of hiccoughs.  A talented emperor would be followed by some worthless loser who in turn would give way to a man of talent who at the end of his reign could apparently find no better successor than another deadbeat.

With that in mind let us wish a happy birthday to Alexander, Byzantine emperor, scion of the Macedonian house and worthless degenerate toolbag.  Alexander's father, Basil, had founded the dynasty by the simple expedient of murdering the last representative of the previous dynasty and taking his place (although since his predecessor was sleeping with his wife its entirely possible he didn't actually found a dynasty at all).  Still Basil died and the man who was officially his son, one Leo by name, took over the empire.  Alexander was his younger brother and most definitely his father's son (since the only other paternal candidate had been murdered before his conception).

Officially Leo and Alexander reigned jointly for thirty odd years but in actual fact Alexander spent most of the time getting drunk while his brother did the reigning and engaging in serial matrimony (even emperors need a hobby).  When Leo died his son, Constantine, was too young to take over even nominally and so Alexander stepped up to the title role.

More accurately Alexander staggered up to the title role and then threw up on it.  His first act was to toss Constantine's mother (Leo's latest wife) into a nunnery.  Then he sacked all of Leo's advisors.  Then he sacked the patriarch of Constantinople and brought back an earlier incumbent who had been sacked earlier because of his objection to Leo's fourth marriage.

With political and ecclesiastical reform thus achieved Alexander fixed his bloodshot eye on diplomacy.  The principal issue besetting the empire at this time was the Bulgarians.  They had adopted Christianity, conquered some of their neighbours and set up quite a respectable little empire in miniature in the Balkans.  To persuade them to stay there earlier Byzantine diplomats had arranged a royal wedding between an imperial princess and whichever of the Bulgarian royal family had the fewest fleas hopping on him.  To go with the princess was a yearly allowance to enable her to maintain a state appropriate to her rank.  Or to put it another way the Byzantines basically paid the Bulgarians not to cause trouble.  For a while this worked but when Bulgar emissaries came to Constantinople for the next installment of the (let's not call it tribute, living allowance is a much nicer term.  While the allowance was paid Byzantine citizens on the borders of Bulgaria were allowed to continue living) payment Alexander decided on a whole new diplomatic approach.

He raved at them drunkenly, insulted them, their monarch, their people and anyone else who happened to be standing nearby.  He told them they wouldn't be getting a penny from him and finally he told them to sod off.  The Bulgars withdrew and their thoughtful and measured response involved pouring across the border, slaughtering everything breathing and burning down everything else.  With government paralysed, the borderlands aflame and the newly installed patriarch attempting (unsuccessfully) to purge pretty much anyone he'd ever met Alexander decided that the only thing left to do was play polo.  If you're a middle aged drunk in poor health and quite possibly mentally unhinged then a vigorous, athletic game like polo is ideal if you're looking for an early grave.

Right on cue Alexander toppled off his horse mid match and fell motionless to the ground.  To be fair Alexander falling motionless to the ground happened often enough so that people probably weren't too concerned at first.  Eventually they figured out he wasn't drunk (or at least, not just drunk) and dragged him off the field, after all there was a match to complete.  A couple of days later he died.  His passing was greeting with genuine sorrow by absolutely no one.

I'm Just Going Outside, While You Prepare the Sauce

My tech support contacted me out of the blue this morning which surprised me as I thought they had fallen off the face of the earth.

"Guys, where the hell have you been?  I haven't heard from you for weeks."

"Sorry, we've been busy with the APEC summit in Port Moresby," they explained.

"Oh, are you doing tech support for that as well?"

"No, we have a Maserati dealership."

As it turned out my tech support had contacted me due to some disturbing internet search terms emanating from my Tasmanian correspondent's computer.  They felt I might like to have a word.

"Why don't you guys do something?"

"Sure; we can launch a drone strike, orchestrate an anthrax outbreak or unleash killer squid on the coastal cities.  Which would you prefer?"

"All right, I'll give her a call."

I hastily contacted my correspondent and tried to think of a delicate way of broaching the reason for my call.

"I've been talking to my kids about cannibalism," she announced which cleared the air nicely.

"Understandable," I agreed, "if they're going to grow up in Tasmania they deserve to know the worst."

But apparently she wasn't referring to the grim realities of daily life in Australia's most remote and desperate province (there would be a reality show but they ate each other).  And it rapidly became clear that she hadn't been talking to her children about cannibalism so much as one of her children (Grace) had been talking about it to her.  With a rather concerning amount of enthusiasm.

In her role as a semi responsible parent my correspondent had been telling her wide eyed offspring the tale of Scott of the Antarctic's doomed expedition to the South Pole (nothing like mass death and ghastly weather to cheer the kiddies up).  She made much of Colonel Oates heroic self sacrifice (which achieved absolutely nothing) and his "I'm just going outside and may be some time" moment.  Grace immediately leapt to the conclusion that they cannibalised him.

"No, no," protested my correspondent.  "He was slowing them down and they were running out of food."
"So they ate him," repeated the precocious eight year old. 

Nothing my correspondent did or said could dissuade Grace from the certainty that Oates' noble sacrifice included him becoming part of the expeditions emergency rations.  I suggested mentioning that since Oates had gangrene he was probably poisonous and therefore unfit to eat.  Instead my correspondent, unwisely, attempted to impress on an eight year old who had already made up her mind the cultural and moral objections to cannibalism.  This went down about as well as one might expect with lots of "but why?" on one side and finally an exasperated parental "because I said so" on the other.

Silenced but not convinced Grace retired and obviously decided to do some research of her own.  Since not even my tech support has been able to design a parental lock that an eight year old can't circumvent this explains the strange search terms on my correspondent's computer.

All of which reassured me but then I'm a safe distance away.  According to my correspondent there's a strange gleam in Grace's eye of late and she's starting to get nervous about taking her on long bushwalks. 

A Touch of the Rural Life

As I walked into the office today heads turned.  Nostrils flared and brows furrowed in confusion.  Was there just a hint of the Australian countryside about me as I passed my fellow drones masquerading as worker bees?  Did some indefinable but undeniable hint of the magnificence of rural Australia make itself present as, with a slight smile on my face and a hint of swagger in my stride, I made my way to my chair and attached the leg irons with aplomb?

Yes, yes its true.  Here in the middle of the city, that crazy, anarchic anthill of some four million people a gentle hint of a better life wafted through the office.  In the middle of this seething mass of crazed derelicts, depraved junkies, morally bereft politicians and vicious gang leaders (to be fair its a little better once you leave my office) somehow a lifeline has been thrown from a better place.

It's all down to me for I have purchased a new soap which proclaims that it has the scent of the Australian countryside.  A hint of eucalyptus, a smidgeon of roadkill, a trace of diesel and perhaps the merest touch of rural poverty and casual racism.  The older staff members went quite nostalgic as the scent took them back to a time when White Australia was a policy not an embarrassment and we were more concerned about women voting than gays marrying.  It's a heady mix and frankly quite a lot to ask of a bar of soap. 

I wasn't really trying to connect with the non urban parts of my nation when I wandered through my local supermarket looking for a personal cleansing product.  I'm not even sure why this might be considered desirable.  However the soap choices were few and most of the rest were loud in proclaiming that washing with them would make you smell like the Botanical Gardens on steroids while simultaneously moisturising your skin, shining your hair and generally making you sparkle like a vampire from Twilight.  None of them actually claimed they would get you clean.

Compared with all of that the Australian countryside was a modest and not particularly intrusive option.  I have to admit I don't know why soap has to smell of anything.  I will agree that it is better that it not smell like an open sewer or landfill and if a little perfume is required to achieve that then go for it.  Now, however, it would seem that soap is something you rub on yourself as part of a beauty regime which begs the question; what the hell do you rub onto yourself if you're practicing a cleanliness regime.

Personally I suspect any cleanliness derives from the hot water washing over me and the soap is just there to make it feel like I'm contributing.  I could probably do without it entirely.  But habit is a terrible thing.  For nigh on fifty years I have been rubbing bars of putative cleanser over myself and now I find that I can't stop.  Even liquid soaps and body wash don't really convince me, how can dirt be chipped from the body by something that looks as though it should be rubbed into my shoulders by a masseuse?  So in the absence of anything else even remotely plausible it is the scent of the Australian countryside for me.

As for cleanliness, well the Maasai take dust baths and that seems to work for them.  Perhaps I'll give that a try.  It would also probably assist in getting a more plausible scent of the Australian countryside than any soap is likely to provide.

A Brief History of Lacrosse

Ah lacrosse.  Is there any more noble game?  Compared with lacrosse cricket is just farming for inbreds and and yachting is piracy where all the plundering takes place before the boat hits water.  How can one match the thrill of watching two high quality teams of lacrosse players doing, whatever the hell it is they do.

Lacrosse is a French word meaning "wave the stick about" but the game itself comes from North America.  Early, apparently French, settlers in North America loosely adapted the traditional indigenous sport of competitive butterfly catching.  Games would go on for days and points were awarded for number of butterflies, variety of species and protein content.  Points were deducted for bruised wings, inadvertently captured bees and hitting your opponent over the head with a stick and stealing his butterflies.

At some point in between giving the locals smallpox and pinching their land the newcomers figured they might as well go for the trifecta and do a little cultural appropriation as well.  For some unknown reason they chose lacrosse.  Also for some unknown reason they chose to call it lacrosse.

While the French may have seen it first (apart from all of the Native Americans who had seen it so often they were probably bored with it) but it was left to an English settler to codify a set of rules that could be used without the embarrassment of asking the natives what to do next.  He was highly qualified for this task as he was a dentist.

There are many variants of lacrosse, all with slightly different rules but fundamentally the game is very simple, not surprising since it was translated from Iroquois, via French into English by a dentist. Complicated concepts would not just have been lost in translation, they would have been deliberately led into the woods and left there to die. 

To play lacrosse you need a patch of open ground, butterflies are now optional.  There is a ball, there are goals, there are sticks with nets at the top and there are ten players on each team (twelve for women's lacrosse).  Advocates of the sport will no doubt go on about the rules and the objectives but essentially it is about twenty people running around in circles hitting each other with sticks.  Think of it as ice hockey for the Summer months.

There is a ball and technically you are supposed use your stick with a net to put that ball into the goal (your opponents goal being preferred).  Of course it is much easier to do this if most of your opponent's team has been concussed "accidentally" as you challenged for the ball.  Pads are worn to protect vital areas and one can almost hear generations of dead Native Americans sneering in contempt.  Even the butterflies are curling their wings in derision.  Traditionally the Native American version went on until the butterfly supply ran out but nowadays sixty minutes is considered sufficient to work up a light sweat before the players get on to the serious business of drinking beer and hitting on cheerleaders.

Attempts have been made to get lacrosse accepted as an Olympic sport.  It was included in the 1904 and 1908 Summer Games and got a couple of demonstration gigs subsequently but eventually the IOC decided that nobody really cared that much about lacrosse.  Considering some of their other decisions this is actually surprising.  Until the heady day when lacrosse players can march into the Olympic stadium butterfly nets held proudly aloft it will have to settle for being played largely in Canada and the United States.  One thing I do know, the moment it is accepted as an Olympic sport Australians will be demanding that we win a gold medal in it.