Full time.

So after two or three weeks of working on Saturdays, I knew I wanted a job at TTG.

I wrote a letter, asking if they had any vacancies, despite the fact that it would have been easier just to ask face-to-face, but that was what I'd been told in school, so that what I did, best hand-writing and everything...

Thulg, illo by Tony Ackland.

The next time I was in the shop after school, Kate said...
"I got your letter... its left me in a bit of a dilemer..."

"Why?" I wimpered, preparing myself for a big dose of rejection...

"Well" she continued, "your mate Mark asked me for the same thing yesterday as well..."

My life hung on one sentence...

"...but, I think there is something we can do..."

TTG were planning on going though a bit of an expansion, they had started a miniatures range, which was making the 15mm Laserburn minis, a few 25mm sci-fi and a small range of Dark Age 15mm's,
which they had been licensing in the USA to a company called Alliance Miniatures.

Now, it had come down the grape-vine that another US company, Heritage Miniatures, were going bust, and that Alliance in the States wanted to buy up the failed company and license them back to Tabletop for production here in the UK. Bob was already selling quite large numbers of the Heritage Napoleonics through the shop and though mail-order, so picking up on an existing range would have doubled their miniature out-put in one swoop.
So if the deal went through, Kate was sure that there would be work for both Mark and Myself, in the newly expanded Tabletop Miniatures.

As far as I remember, the deal was still to be finalized in the US, but Kate said if I could do a few days casual work, in the casting room, to see if I was up to the task, then the job would be mine when I finished school...
Casting???
Well I'd seen the machine and moulds in the back-room but I'd never done it at that time, but yes, " I can do that" as Yosser Hughes would have said, "Gizza job."

As it turned out, the deal with Heritage fell though, someone else bought the failing/failed company and their big selling Napoleonic range would remain with Skytex (the UK agent) for a while yet, but Bob, indomitable as he was, made his mind up overnight, with the aid of Alliance in the US, that TTG would start their own range of 15mm Napoleonics, using their great young sculptor Aly Morrison who was already working on a Medieval range of 15mms.

If anyone reading this has any more details about Alliance or Heritage in the early 80's I would be delighted to hear from you... I owe my Life in Miniatures almost directly to these two American companies, and I'd love to find out just exactly what went off in June or July of '83, I heard that Alliance were out bid, is this the truth? Who did pick up Heritage? What happened to them? I don't think that they are still out there... all information gratefully received...

So, short of doing a few trail days in the casting room I had a job... £35 a week for 5 days, 40 hours Tuesday to Saturday.

Saturday, Saturday, Saturday...

I did already have a Saturday job, in late February of '83, Mark had got me a job on Arnold Market, working for a flower seller, but in truth I hated it... fetching and carrying for a couple of '80's barrow boys, in all weathers was no fun at all, so after working on the stock take, I asked Kate if they needed a new Saturday-boy to fill in for Robert (who's second name I can remember), the lad who had done the job for the last couple of years and who was finishing his A levels and heading of to Bristol for Uni...

 

an afternoon tipple

Kate gave it a thought, I assume asked Bob, and said yes. The Saturday post was all about watching the shop whilst Kate got on with a day-to-day life, which from what I remember was sitting with her feet-up, drinking coffee, or after 2pm a barley-wine, and reading the paper... Bob, most weekends would be away at a Wargame Show (a what?), so Kate liked the idea of not sitting in the shop all day whilst he was gone.

'Watching the shop' suited me down to the ground...
Plonked on a tall stool behind the counter, I would sit and read game books, or White Dwarf, or whatever came to hand, and wait for the bell to ring to announce the entrance of a customer...
Saturday Mornings wouldn't be too busy, opening at 9, Kate would fulfill whatever mail-order she could that had arrived that morning, but mostly it was only a light trip to the post office before the last collection at 11.00am, and then a day of waiting for customers...

Trying to remember back to those early weekends, I don't think we ever took over £150, some weeks much less, which doesn't sound like a lot of money these days, but it could be quite hard work when we were selling 15mm minis for 7p (25's for 30p)... and even a big sale, a boxed game or D&D book, might only be £8 - £10, getting to £150 wasn't easy...

The thing that made it for me was the customers, mostly they were fabulous, people wanted to be enjoying themselves when they arrived at the shop, so every-time the bell went, there would be another happy Wargamer delighted to have found a little Aladdins cave of stuff...
 And OK, we did have our share of 'characters' though the place, (more of whom later), but mostly customers were bright, knowledgeable and funny, and I couldn't think of a better way to spend my time on Saturdays than fishing around in the figure cabinets for missing T72 turrets, or dusting down copies of Starship Troopers, or whatever else the customers wanted...

Not only was I doing something well with-in my skill range, I had started to enjoy it too.

The first days work

Pathetic Stock-taker!

Right-o then, fast forward a couple of years, '81 to 83, me and my best mate Mark Weston were in and out of TTG two or three times a week, several things happened in this two year period, expansion, Laserburn, to mention two, but I'll get to these later...

In March of '83 Kate Connor asked me and Mark, if we'd like to help with the stock taking in the shop. He and I lept at the chance. I think that we did two days, Tuesday the 29th and Thursday the 31st, just before the UK Tax year-end in April..

We arrived at 9.00 and after coffee and a chat about why we were doing the count, we set to totaling up box games, and tiny tanks, Citadel minis and Davco ships, and everything else they had in what amounted to the warehouse space in the back of the place. TTG did quiet a number of rule sets and micro-games and all these had to have their components counted, books, QR, record and counter sheets...

At lunch time Kate fed us all, Mark and I, and the other chap who was working full-time in the casting room, Richard Evans, something she would continue to do whilst we worked for Her/Bob.
It didn't really strike me at the time, but it was this kind of small thing that made work feel like home, they didn't have to do it, but they did, and even in later years when we 'workers' stopped using Kate's kitchen and living room as a canteen, they continued to provide cash for us to buy food, to cook in the work's kitchen...

I don't remember what we got paid for the two days, or why we weren't in school for that matter, maybe we were on holiday or maybe school was winding down for 5th year exams, but what I do remember is finishing on the second day and being given a little handful of folding cash.

illo by Tony Yates

 On the way-out that evening, I grabbed a couple of Laserburn scenarios that I wanted, Sewerville shootout and Tarrim Towers heist, and asked Bob
"...how much?"
"Oh you can have those", the great man said...

Money and free games, just for standing around in the shop all day, looking at whatever they had...
I think I'd found something in my skill-range...
Result!

Now the only thing was to turn a couple of days casual work into a Career...

A new shop in town...

I've always been of the opinion that Daybrook Square was the centre of the whole wide world, a fact proved to me in early '81, when a wargames shop open there, right on my doorstep, with-in a 100yrds of where I had first played with Airfix Knights and Astronauts on my Grandma's front room carpet...

Once again I think Andy Black was the bringer of the great news, he must have had to walk past it that morning to get to school and by the time D&D club started at dinner time it was pretty much old news that we had our own shop with-in walking distance...

Images stolen from Richard Scott

My first memory of going though inside was one tea-time after a dentist appointment with my mother...
ding-ding-ding, went the the door dell on entry and we were greeted by a friendly blonde lady, Kate Connor, behind the counter who explained that they had just opened, after working out of their house on Acton Rd, Arnold for years.

My Mum and Kate chatted for awhile whilst I shot to figure racks to see what they had...

And they had loads of stuff, everything Citadel had; Adventures, Monsters, Historicals,  plus loads of Ral Partha and others...

NOT my painting

The shop was also full of other stuff, plastic kits and modelling supplies which Kate later told me had been bought it to fill out the space, and also Dungeons and Dragons books and Modules, rules from other people, and 'Wargames Miniatures', tanks for WW2, soldiers for Napoleonics and ACW, none of which I'd ever seen before... and board games, loads of them...

But, on that first visit I only had eyes for the fantasy figures, Kate lent me a chair to stand on, so i could reach the top of the rack and from there I picked my first ever Citadel miniatures... a slime beast with sword (FF2), and a Fighter in plate-mail (FA1), amongst them...

From then on, for the next couple of years, I'd cycle through Arnold Park and down to TTG after school and spend half and hour or so, going through everything fantasy and sci-fi they had... I knew there stock as well as they did... which was handy...

Next, Stock taker!

Asgard for the first time.

Ok, so my first Visit to Asgard was a bust...

But luckily I was making better friends with the lads at the D&D club and on one Saturday Simon Maze suggested that I go with him into Nottingham to have a look at the place...


Now from what I remember this was probably my first trip into Nottingham on my own, OK I wasn't on my own, I was with Simon, but without a parent, if you see what I mean...

I went to his house in the morning, he lived a mile or so from where I did, and we caught the bus in the City Centre... Simon had said that we should save our bus fare and walk, but Nottingham seemed like a million miles away to a lad of 13 so we spent the 7 or 8p that was the cost of the ride and got into the city as quickly as the bus would carry us...

The Asgard shop I first visited was on Commerce Square, which I was lead to believe was their second shop in roughly the same area of the City, off High Pavement, in what was then, quite a run-down area called The Lace Market.
The Shop, which was really nothing more than a front to a warehouse or old mill, was up a couple of big stone steps, with what I assumed was a little workshop and storage space to the rear...
The walls were lined, as was the fashion in those days, with a large areas of 'peg-board' racks, on which were hung all the miniatures they had in stock... Some Citadel, mostly fantasy adventures, some Ral Partha, and loads of Asgard minis they had made on the premise... and that was about it... No painted minis that I can remember, no gaming tables, no racks of rules and modules, just minis and a few old copies of White Dwarf magazine...
The chap behind the counter, I later learnt was Paul Sulley, who at this time owned Asgard...

I'd seen White Dwarf at the D&D club, someone would always have the latest copy, but a back issue took my fancy, so I came away with one mag and one mini... The front cover of the mag that had taken my interest was issue 20 something, with this excellent Les Edwards Ghoul on the Cover...

And the mini... well it was this this Ogre, FM63, a cracking model with tonnes of character...

 

So, I'd broken my duck with Asgard, it really did seem like a cool place, hidden away as it was, filled with all this stuff, and inhabited with what looked like an 'interesting' crowd of people... but little did I know that at this point, that the next time I was going to set foot in a wargames shop it wouldn't be Asgard but a new shop, almost on my doorstep... TTG was just about to come into my life..

My first metal miniatures

These are they then...

What Andy Black was showing me were these three (and I suspect a fourth, now broken) minis, wrapped in tissue paper...
They blew my mind....
We'd used bits of graph paper and the odd small dice or two for working out tricky D&D stuff like combats and party order and stuff, but the prospect of adding little men to the games was a terrific idea, more like the Miniature Wargaming I'd seen in the Airfix guides.

I wanted these, and I wanted more...

The two (badly) painted chaps on the flanks here, are both from Ral Partha, although a swift search fails to reveal which codes they are, or who designed them (help Dave please), but the chap in the centre, stripped clean of my childish gloss paint, is by Asgard miniatures, DA25 Gnome which is probably still on sale today...

Turned out Andy had bought these from Asgard, a shop, "near the courts", in Nottingham...

From what I remember, this revelatory experience was close to the end of summer term in 1980, and over the summer I promised to my Mum that I'd keep up the writing exercises that I had been given for my Dyslexia, if she would take me to Asgard to get me the D&D books before the new school year started... I did the exercises.

I got the books, not from Asgard, we couldn't find it, turns out I was by the wrong Courts, der... instead we got The Players Hand Book from Nottingham Model Soldier Shop and the DM's Guide and the Monster Manual from Beaties.

I can't say why I was less than excited by these other shops, NMSS had lots of minis, but they were mostly Minifigs historicals, which were of less interest then... Beaties was the biggest toy shop in town, but not cool...

So Asgard would have to wait for another time... I had a few tiny toy chaps, I had all the rules I needed... 3rd year was going to be a good year for D&D.

My writing and spelling improved too if you are interested, now I could write and spell; strength, intelligence, wisdom, constitution, dexterity, charisma, experience, armour class, hit points, equipment and "miscellaneous items", quite fluently...

Arnold Hill D&D club

So my first ever game of D&D was with Andy Chambers, and a lad called Grant Wesselby.
I was given a Half-Orc character by Andy, and unusually we were in a wilderness adventure.
It took me 20mins of so for me to get the jist of the role-play aspect, I just though Andy, the DM was doing a lot of talking about the set-up, but after I got-it, the world(s) just opened up...

TSR's advertising tag-line for this period was D&D; A Gateway to Adventure, which is pretty good, but for me D&D proved to be a gateway to imagination.
The possibilities were endless, just by imagining what we were doing we could be anywhere doing anything... and OK, mostly we'd spend our times in imaginary 10' x 10' dungeon rooms killing Goblins, but in theory we could have been doing anything...

And it wasn't just D&D, there appeared to be loads of these types of games around, Gamma World, Tunnels and Trolls, and more traditional board games with sci-fi and fantasy twists; Rivets, Ogre, Dungeon, loads of them... and we used to make games up... all this stuff  stuck me as a perfect way out of dull Thursdays (any day!), so everyday from then on, it was off to L7 for an hour or so of escapism...

One morning I came into school, and fellow D&D'er Andy Black said, would I like to see these... and in a old bacca-tin  he had three or four tiny model dwarves, he said he'd got them from Asgard...

I can't remember if I gave him my dinner money there and then, but by the end of the day those minis WERE mine...

Next up... My First Minis & Asgard, where was this mythical place...

A chance encounter

I came across the Arnold Hill Dungeons and Dragons Club by accident...

Second year Integrated Studied lessons, a mix of History, Geography and RE, were I discoverer, a bit of skive if you knew what you were doing... If you wanted to wander-off to the library, for research on your project, you could... Same went for 'the labs', large tables outside the general classrooms, which could be used for painting or modeling, drawing-up big graphs and presentation materials, you were allowed to... So, nominally I was painting-up a star map for a project, but in fact I was listening in to a group of lads from the classes next to mine talking about pretending to be dwarves and killing goblins...
Fascinated I poked my head over the intervening bench and said "that sounds fun, can i play?"
They all sort of looked at each other, and at one lad in particular, Andy Chambers turned to me and said "Only if you pass a test... what does XP stand for"... slightly baffled and dyslexic, I stuttered... "Extra Power?"

Chambers stared at me...
He was a big lad then, and always promoted a hard man image, to the extent that he had been banned from the 1st year recreation of the Battle of Hastings, after hardening a tennis ball in plaster and paint, and fixing it to a chain and handle like a flail...

and stared...

"Close enough..." chirped a voice at his side... Simon Maze came to my rescue, "its Experience Points, but it leads to extra powers..." "Andy is starting a new campaign, he needs players..."

and stared...
"12.10, L7" Andy grunted...

I was in.

Bleak times...

It was a rum time for Employment, the 80's...
It would seem, in the two final years of my schooling (82-83), that the jobless rate in the UK was 12 or 13% of the workforce, the highest since the war and with I assume, youth unemployment running at much higher levels, finding any kind of work would be a challenge.
What made it doubly difficult was that I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do.

Mum worked at a builders, book keeping and office work, so I was offered 'trade' jobs, I turned down an apprenticeship with a Joiner, a job snapped up by my cousin Paul a year or two later, and I had written to a local painter and decorator about a job with them, but to be frank, I was delighted when they turned me down...

They sent me to see a Careers Adviser, outside of school, some chap attached to the local Job Centre I would have though, but the poor man, grey and desperately dead behind the eyes, just sighed when I showed him the part-time course in ceramics I'd picked out at Mansfield school or Art and Design...

So, as 1983 arrives with prospects of finding work tough, with no skills, little chance of  serious qualifications, and no idea what the big wide world had to offer, things were not looking good of our hero...

Luckily there was one more thing that kept me in school, apart from the odd game of Wall-ie or Wembley if someone had a ball, or Badminton on a Monday evening... D&D Club.

Best days of your life?

Ok, post two and I suppose I'd better get personal...

30th June 1983 is remarkable for me in three ways; firstly it was my sixteenth birthday, secondly, and completely co-incidentally, it was the day I left secondary school, Arnold Hill Comprehensive, and thirdly it was the day I started full time employment at Tabletop Games.

Its always make me smile to think of myself as working at 16, Old-fellas that you'd hear would say, "I started down t'pit at 14", or "I've been at the factory, man and boy" and although the work that I was just starting wasn't 't'pit' and the factory was only a cottage industry, not some huge old textile mill, I did rather enjoy being thrown-in at the deep-end, a boy in a mans world.

I left school with virtually no skills and very few qualifications, I'd always struggled to write, I'm dyslexic, so getting loads of O levels was never going to be an option.
I scraped a C at Geography on my Boy Scout map reading skills alone, and stumbled over the line for a C in Maths, simply because there were less numerals for me to muck-up, and numbers worked in a way that words never did...
There were I'm sure, other lessons (English Lit & Lang, Physics, Chemistry and Social Studies) but nothing inspired me enough to be bothered to pass the exam... And in the only subject I did enjoy, Pottery, no writing see, there wasn't an O level graded course...
I could see that me and formal education weren't going to get on...

Getting to 16 had been the easy part, getting out of school, only a matter of time, getting a job, let alone doing something that I enjoyed, might have proved more tricky...

In part 3 dear Reader, "Giz a Job".

Welcome.

Hi Everybody,

Welcome to the Life in Miniature blogspot.

This is going to be a blog about my life in Nottingham's Miniature Gaming hobby/industry.

Its been 30 years now since I started work, Thursday 30th June 1983, and a generation has passed since then, literally in some cases, so seeing how memory fades, I thought I'd better get all this down whist I can.
I'll cover the companies and individuals I've worked for and with, and hopefully give a little insight into what has gone-on in this little city's Miniature Gaming hobby and associated trades over the last 30 years.

I hope to deal with things in a roughly chronological order, but as I've a few weeks of catching up to do and an important event to talk about on the 8th of November, expect a flurry of activity in the next few weeks, and then a steady drip-drip of stuff only when changes happen.

:-)

pete