The return of the desk!

After what seems like an age we finally have our belongings from the UK. Son in Law Jay drove from Kent to Valencia without an overnight stop, he clocked just over 1000 miles and it took him around 26 hours. My wife has been furiously unpacking boxes since Thursday and it's been nice to see some of our treasured possessions back out again. Some may recognise my painting desk, I must have painted many hundreds of figures sat at it. It was my late Mother in Laws, it's a bit battered from long use but works well for me. It not being a full sized desk I can't actually get my legs fully under the thing, so have always sat kind of side on but that's never really been a problem and is very comfortable now that I am used to it. I tend to have my I Pad set up on the right so that I can listen to and glance at various historical videos as I paint. I just need to find a small suitable painting lamp, although the room is flooded with natural light most of the day, it's beginning to feel a lot like more like home now. The fan in the picture is today being replaced by air conditioning, with the temps in the mid 30's most days - much like the UK at the moment I understand - it's more an essential than a luxury and will create a lovely cool room to sit and paint.

I have now based up the additional 40mm figures, and they are now in the desk drawer as I start to work through getting them finished with texture and static grass. There are around 70 of them, more French than British but I have a good number of unpainted Highlanders to get stuck into next job to make the numbers up. I'm still playing around with ideas on how I want to use them, I'm thinking company sized units, maybe 16 figures per company looks good now, inspired by Big Andy's lovely 'Shinyloo' game on his blog with his 30mm figures. I put the 16 French Voltiguers together to form a company, I think they look good, although of course they could be used as 4 x 4 figure light companies for 24 figure units of 6 companies, the basing is very flexible which is something I like after years spent rebasing multi based figures.

Life in Spain continues to delight us. Attending the local village town hall in Ador to complete some paperwork was an exercise in Spanish efficiency, the staff could not have been more helpful and friendly. It was a hot day so we had a cold beer in the bar opposite afterwards with the customary complimentary plate of nuts and olives. 

More Spanish efficiency, 3 men fitting 3 air conditioning units in one day. This has involved drilling through walls to feed pipework from externally mounted units via bathroom false ceilings, a noisy and disruptive job but well worth it.