VoV’s Blog  

My eldest son Luke celebrated his 18th birthday today and we enjoyed a great meal at my parents’ house. As is usual in the Storch family after dinner games is a must. We begun with a few rounds of Werewolf which, if you are not aware is an absolutely blinding, yet simple game. Details of which can be found here . The game is great fun at the best of times but with the ever amusing addition of my grandmother playing it takes it to a different level. Quite simply, each player has handed a card which only he or she can see which let’s them know whether they are a villager, a werewolf or the village seer. It is the villager’s job to kill the werewolf and the only problem is they don’t actually know who it is. Probably best read the rules if you don’t know them and then pretend to be the games master (me) with a player who either forgets what the werewolf does or even forgets to look at her card at all

We then went on to play a couple of rounds of Consequences, which has to be the old favourite. Aled, who is one of Luke’s oldest friends joined us for the evening and was thrust into Werewolf and Consequences and played admirably. We’re old hands at the game and there is a lot of very long running jokes. We really do appreciate that not everyone finds the name ‘Maggie Bwch y Gwynt’ or ‘the unusual shaped sausage counter at the local deli’  gut bustingly funny. Needless to say tonight’s samples were added to the wicker basket in the sky for future reference.

While enjoying my Sultana Bran this morning and browsing the net for pictures of Tiger tanks (as you do) I stumbled upon this amazing German website with a simply stunning selection of models. Thus far I’ve only looks at German armour from WWII and this Tiger has to be my favourite so far.

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 I put my 20+ years of building experience to very good use today by refereeing three under 10 girls football matches this afternoon and most enjoyable it was too. Certainly highlighted the fact that I’m nowhere near as fit as I should be, perhpas the fleece I was wearing didn’t help.

This post was written using an ‘add-on’ for Firefox, it’s so much better that IE it’s scary.

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Inconsistent results with my camera annoy me so much. While on my regular walks around Ddolwerdd snapping away I thought I’d concentrate on taking some close ups of the state of play now that we’re well into Autumn. I’ve had to bin quite a few but here are some of the better results.

Here are some ‘haws’, the red berries of the Hawthorn.

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The TWF Charity Paintathons have recently come to an end and raised a few hundred pounds for some very worthy causes. Here are some of the items that were sold.
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Spent the entire day with my good mate Trev (Hinds not Saunders) travelling up to collect my ‘new’ rotorvator. Thanks to another foray on Ebay saw to it that we made a 380 mile round trip to Southport, which is a little north of Liverpool to collect my toy.

Fortuantely, the implement seems to be exactly as described with the pleasant bonus that it is certainly bigger than I expected. Andy, the guy I bought it off, seemed like a nice bloke and helped us load it onto my trailer using his forklift. An uneventful trip all in all, only wish I’d taken my camera to take some shots of the stunning mid-Wales scenery.

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The ball is certainly rolling as far as arrangements for the European Team Competition (Warhammer) is concerned. This is due to be held in Gorzow in Poland once more after a very successful fist attempt this year. The event saw 14 teams of 8 competing although not all the teams were ‘pure’ teams although the majority were, we should be grateful that the Polish contingent present at the event were happy to help out.

Next years event will see only a few changes which is testament to how good a job Jacek and co. did last year.

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While reading through TWF a moment ago I had the idea for a painting challenge, I guess I’ll have to abuse my admin powers to sneak one in before the rightful bod comes along and picks the next challenge. How about painting up a mini (must be WHFB) as a sort of mascot for the new European Tournament website? He can be in the banner (note: job for Hywel) and even dotted around the site.

Just knocked up a new image for the site but it appears rather dark on the laptop. I’m a bit pants with colours as you’ve proably noticed. Still, it’s better than the blank space that was there before.

Going to get in touch with my sister Anna to see if she want’s to get in on this Blog action, I’m sure she’d love it even though she is (was?) a technophobe. My mother tells me that Rebecca already has one, I’ll see if I can dig that out .

Going to the National Botanical Gardens of Wales left more of an impact on me that I first imagined. Although I had a great time there and was truly impressed by what I saw but I was saddened to think that the place is under threat. The willow structures are fantastic and are what undoubtedly what left their mark, being a builder at heart I felt the combination of nature and building was just up my street. Never even crossed my mind that I had so much of the stuff growing on the land actually not just growing but multiplying unchecked, the triffids has got nothing on this stuff.

A bit of background info: Back at the start of the year I hired a mini-excavator to do some work for a customer, as per usual I pulled all the stops out and finished the customer’s work PDQ and then brought the digger back to Ddolwerdd to carry out some planned tasks, first of which was clearing the ditches at the top of the paintball field. I’d finished one half sometime last year but the next section was all the more tricky because of the way the ditch had not only silted up but had overgrown quite spectaculalry too. With Alder and Willow being by far and away the most numerous but there were also some Oaks which of course remained untouched and some Ash too. With chainsaw in hand I had to quite ferrociously cut back all this growth, how many years worth I couldn’t say but previously had to trach and cut back at least 8-14 feet of brambles just to get at the ditch!

That was some 7 months or so ago, below are some photographs of the amazing regrowth in that time, bear in mind that many of these shrubs were cut down to the base