Today is Police Remembrance Day

Today I took part in the Police Remembrance Day service at the Royal New Zealand Police College where I work.  This day falls on 29 September each year, the feast day of the Archangel Michael – the patron saint of police. 

The official service honours the New Zealand, Australian and South Pacific police officers who have been slain on duty.  It also remembers New Zealand Police staff – serving and retired, sworn and non-sworn – who have died in the past year.

I formed part of the kapa haka group at the service – my first official function with the group since joining a few weeks ago.  While I’m not a religious person, I found it particularly moving being a part of the group singing the Lord’s Prayer in Māori in front of a crowd of several hundreds.  

Something that made the service even more moving for me was that the very first name read out was my wife’s great-grandfather. Constable Neil McLeod is believed to have been the first New Zealand Police officer slain on duty, shot on board a steamer at Dargaville on the night of 29 July 1890. 

Since his death in 1890, 28 more New Zealand Police officers have been killed while on duty, with three of them being killed in the past three years. Here is the full list of slain officers and their stories.

 The symbol of Police Remembrance Day is the chevron-embedded huia feather, which is worn as a pin by officers, family and others as a mark of respect.

Considered tapu, or sacred, by Māori, the wearing of the huia tail feather as ornamentation is considered a great honour. The tail plumage of the huia bird, now also lost to us, is extremely special.

The incorporation of the New Zealand Police chevron symbol into the huia tail feather, with the small cut at the top signifying loss, communicates the honour and loss of someone special to police.

More painted Māori, colonials and British by Empress

Here are a few more shots of my on-going New Zealand Wars project, photographed with my new little camera.  The figures are all 28mm Empress Miniatures.

British 58th regiment of Foot (The Black Cuffs) – two privates, a bugler and a sergeant.  And, yes, that’s our real horse you can just see in the background!

Colonial militia.  I like the way Empress have given them each different personalities – the grizzled veteran on the left, and the kneeling young recruit.  You can’t see it in the pic, but the firing figure (whom I’ve painted two of) has a dapper Napoleon III beard.

 Māori toa (warriors), some in flax skirts, other in linen kilts, armed with tomahawks, wooden clubs and muskets.

More toa with a mixture of dress and different weapons, including two with bone patu (clubs).  Some of my figures are adorned with intricate tatoos - particularly visible on the thigh of the figure on the left.  By the way, the camera angle has made the upper bodies and limbs of the figures in this pic look bigger than they actually are.

A fearsome Māori haka from the colonial New Zealand Wars

Keeping up with the colonial New Zealand Wars theme of my recent postings, here’s a terrific version of the Māori haka taken from the 1980s movie Utu.

The scene shows a unit of kaupapa (government-side) Māori in the Armed Constabulary.  This unit is a bit later than my own New Zealand Wars armies, being from the 1860s/70s, rather than the 1840s.  But it is still great to get a feel of the haka as it would’ve been seen in the period, rather than on a modern rugby field!

The clip also gives good inspiration for the rugged campaign look to the uniforms (or part-uniforms, really).  See what I mean in these screenshots:

And here’s the original poster for the movie Utu:

Māori and Prussians and police haka, oh my!

My wife is wonderful!  She came home from a day-trip to Rarotonga today (she’s a flight attendant on Air New Zealand) and presented me with a new duty-free camera.  Nothing too flash – just a little pocket point-and-shoot Panasonic Lumix – but very welcome.    

Recently the two existing cameras in our house have both broken (both coincidently with the dreaded false “battery empty” error).  So I haven’t been able to photograph the latest bits of painting I’ve been doing.

But with a new camera in my hand, tonight I couldn’t resist taking the first couple of test shots.  And, I must say, the results aren’t too bad, considering I just pointed and shot, making no camera adjustments whatsoever.

The first picture is of my partly based (I still have to do the static grass) 28mm Prussian musketeers by Minden Miniatures.  These will finish off the big 60-plus figure battalion I’ve been painting for what seems like (and probably actually is!) about a year now.  Purists will notice they are not totally correct colours for Prussians, but that is because they are based on the movie Barry Lyndon, not on real life.

I’m pleased with the crisp detail and the vibrant colours of this photo.  As normal on this blog, please click on the picture to see a bigger version.

By the way, the figures hidden behind the Prussians are my Foundry pirates and Empress Miniatures British and colonials for the New Zealand Wars. 

The next shot is also New Zealand Wars -  my 28mm Māori toa (warriors) by Empress Miniatures.  Again, pleasing how the camera has picked up the detail.  And I feel the close-up hasn’t exposed my rather impressionistic painting style quite as much as my old camera used to.

By the way, the above group is slightly more meaningful to me today, as this afternoon I joined the Royal New Zealand Police College’s kapa haka group, which is practising to perform traditional and modern Māori music and actions in a inter-government department ‘competition’ in a couple of weeks (well, it’s not actually supposed to be a competitive show, but you know how these things go!).  As I don’t sing or do actions well, I’m just there to boost numbers in the back of the group! 

I must say the official Police haka sounds and looks terrific – almost as good as the All Blacks’ one in the Rugby World Cup!  Here’s a YouTube video of the Police haka being performed on another occasion (not by me!):

Finally, a slightly more distant shot that includes the two above groups of figures, plus whatever else happened to be sitting on top of my workdesk tonight:  more undercoated Empress figures of British and colonials to face my Māori toa, the Foundry pirates, and the painted Empress Brits and militia.  Also a neat (and appropriate) card my lovely daughter bought for me on her recent school-trip to France.

I’ll take some more detailed shots of these latest projects over the next week or so, as I explore more of what this little camera can do.

The funniest captions ever for tour of a tank museum

I stumbled across the Revenge of Carlos Plynkes blog tonight, and hidden away in its archives is this treasure of a tour of a tank museum, in France.  Great photos, but even better captions.  Fantastic stuff … and the rest of blog is a hoot, too. 

http://misterplynkes.blogspot.com/2007/08/saumur.html

Tartan decals for kilts

Och aye, man!  Battle Flag have produced a set of transfers to use on the tartan kilts of Victrix Napoleonic highlanders.  The decal set also includes the bonnet and sock dicing, along with the pack and water-bottle numbers, for the 92nd Gordon Highlanders.

What an excellent idea!

http://wargametransfers.blogspot.com/2011/09/28mm-scale-tartan-for-wargame.html

My 18th century French march again

Looks like my old 28mm eighteenth century French will get an outing again soon. This was the first historical wargames army I painted when I returned to the hobby after a 20+ year break about a decade ago. For the last few years the army has sat in my display cabinet gathering dust, while other projects have come and gone in its place.

But it looks like this year the wee chaps – er, ‘petit garçons’ – will come out of hibernation to fight at FreddyCon, the Hutt Valley Wargaming Club’s annual Seven Years War convention. FreddyCon is to be held at the St Brendan’s Hall in Upper Hutt (near Wellington, New Zealand) on 8-9 October, and will be based around the Die Kreigskunst and Black Powder rulesets for 28mm figures.

Black Powder is, of course, right up my alley.  So FreddyCon will be a great opportunity to test its recent 18th century supplement, The Last Argument of Kings.  

If it all comes off, my gaming buddy, Scott, will join me in dual command of ‘les sujets du bien-aimé Louis XV’, because his own eighteenth century army based on Wargames Factory’s War of the Spanish Succession plastics is not off the painting starting blocks yet. 

Talking about my old French army made me re-visit the website I put togerther back in the early 2000s when I was painting these figures.  I hadn’t been back to the site in quite a while, so it was a nostalgic trip back into my first flush of enthusiasm for this period.  The site’s pics still show the jewel-like characteurish charm of the Front Rank figures that first captivated me back into the hobby.

However, time has taken its toll in some ways.  I now realise that my painting style, of which I was so proud back then, was rather crude, with simple block colours, big googly eyes and messy detail.  My visitors at the time must have shook their heads with disbelief at what I was trying to show off!  Still, everyone has to start somewhere!

It was also one of my earliest efforts at website design using DreamWeaver.  Overall, it still doesn’t look too bad, though the much larger  modern screen sizes do make the text look quite narrow and the background repeat. 

If you also want to re-visit the old My French Army website, click on the screenshot below:  

Tamiya’s ‘conspiracy’ sprues – JFK, Roswell and the Moon Landing

I love these conspiracy ads developed by Ogilvy and Mather for Tamiya.  They’re not real kits, of course … though many would like them to be!

The Moon Landing (click on the image to examine in more detail):

The Roswell Incident:

The Assassination of JFK:

There are also two other ads in the same series, depicting the conspiracies around the deaths of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis.