Slightly Intrepid: June 2020

30 June 2020

One of the great tragedies of the Ring

"Introducing 'Miss Zelfredo, the world-famous snake-charmer', the ring-master said: 'It is with great regret that I have to announce one of the great tragedies of the Ring. Doreen Zelfredo's python, which had been with her for six years, died on Friday at Knowle. I am sure the audience will join with me in sympathy for Doreen, and in the wish that she may soon find a new pal. If ever a woman loved a snake Doreen did. Miss Zelfredo will now enter the ring and perform her act without her snake'"

- James Agate, diary entry, 30 July 1942, quoted in Roger Hudson (ed.), The Folio Book of Days, London, 2002, p.186

18 June 2020

Cars and trucks and things that go

Below are two screenshots from my current Transport Fever 2 game on a French-themed map. There's one of a late-model tram plying the busy streets of the city of Deurdan, ferrying people between the southern and northern train stations and the aerodrome on the northern outskirts of the city. And the other shows a massive diesel freight train transporting what looks like a small load - planks, perhaps, I can't see closely enough - as it passes through an intermediate freight station loaded up with ore for another train on a separate route to collect.

I've been playing TF2 since January, having been inspired by the walkthrough videos of vlogger Katherine of Sky, who explained the basics with admirable clarity.

It's not a graphically complex game, but the bones are solid. One of the best features of the game is the player's success or failure in shipping essential goods to towns on the map is the main driving force in how quickly those towns develop. And the game evolves the buildings, vehicles and townsfolk's attire as the calendar progresses through the decades, starting out with horse-drawn carriages, cobblestoned streets and hooped dresses, and eventually graduating to modern cities featuring towering skyscrapers and 21st-century light rail. You can influence the direction the city grows in by spending funds on new roads, but without this input the city will grow organically, with a pleasing sense of realism.

One of the things I particularly enjoy about TF2 gameplay is it's quite challenging to make ends meet for the first fifty-odd years of the game from 1850 onwards, during which time the prevailing technology levels mean you have to rely on expensive and puny early steam engines that can barely haul any cargo, and tiny horse-drawn wagons and coaches that are incredibly slow and have limited capacity. It's really hard to make a living in the early years, and it's expensive to build the rail networks that will eventually unlock the full potential of moving goods and people around the map efficiently.

But when you realise that by filling in the gaps between a bunch of separate rail lines, and adding a few signals and double-tracking tweaks, you can fling a cargo from one end of the map to the other and make a huge profit to boot, it's a golden simulation gaming moment.

I'd best be off: my electric passenger trains are getting old and I'm itching to build a TGV line.

05 June 2020

The siege-breaking balloons of Paris

Important to military aviation in Europe was the founding, in 1870, of lighter-than-air detachments within the Prussian Army. Assisted in their creation by Englishman Henry Coxwell, two Luftschiffer (airship) detachments were used immediately for service during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. However, it was the defenders of besieged Paris that history most remembers.

Cut off from outside help by Prussian forces, the Parisians made use of six balloons held within the city to fly out despatches, often under groundfire, the first by Jules Durouf on 23 September 1870 rising over Prussian lines and on to Evreux. Thereafter, a truly remarkable manufacturing programme was started in Paris, using railway stations and other large buildings to assemble additional craft, with gas coming from the Villette works. By 28 January 1871 a total of 66 balloons had left the city, carrying more than one hundred persons, some three million letters and carrier pigeons. Of these, two are thought to have been hit by groundfire from Prussian guns and seven drifted in the wrong direction. The escape of pigeons had been a vital element of the operation, as chemist Barreswil invented microphotography in October 1870 to allow the birds to return to Paris carrying messages, with the first flying from Tours to Paris on 18 November.

- Michael JH Taylor, Aviators: a History in Photographs, London, 2003, p.89-90.

02 June 2020

Portrait of a drinker

Tonight's virtual film festival outing, Ulrike Ottinger's 1979 film Bildnis Einer Trinkerin / Ticket of No Return, which sees Tabea Blumenschein (who sadly died in March) as the nameless 'She' singlehandedly depleting West Berlin of all its alcohol in a singleminded campaign of surrealist binge drinking whilst decked out in ludicrously glamorous couture straight out of a Duran Duran video. It's probably indicative of an evening going majestically awry if punk poetess Nina Hagen is one of your bar buds, and you decide that crashing through a wall of flaming boxes on the bonnet of a car is an ideal post-pub activity. Absolutely no idea what the hell was going on, but had a great time not figuring it out.

Bildnis Einer Trinkerin can be viewed temporarily on the Youtube channel of the We Are One international film festival.