The Bide-a-Wee Rest Home for Retired Gentlemen

Time went slowly at the Bide-a-Wee Rest Home for Retired Gentlemen, with only the muffled ticking of the old grandfather clock to indicate that it was even moving at all. That was until, deep in the shadowy recesses of the reading room, a shrivelled figure broke the timeless silence with a ‘harrumph!’

“Look at this!” he exclaimed, the few wispy white strands of his otherwise bald head dancing above the top of his newspaper. “Some bounder’s raided the post office at Stoke Edith!”

“What? But that’s only just down the road!” retorted a craggy-faced resident from the depths of his armchair.

“I heard about that,” said another, “Matron’s beside herself.”

“Something must be done!” someone croaked, to murmurs of general approval.

“But what could we do? Our day has long gone.”

“Bah! You sound just like my son: ‘It’s time you went out to pasture and let us youngsters run the show.’ Well I for one am not sitting here while the country goes to wrack and ruin any longer!”

“Here here!”

“I say Morrison, isn’t your nephew still in the munitions business?”

“When he’s not trying to wheedle his way into my last will and testament, yes – what of it?”

“Well with all these militias and whatnot springing up, maybe we should… you know…”

“Ooh, I think I’ve still got my old rifle stashed away somewhere…”

“And I could borrow one of our Frank’s shotguns for ‘rabbiting…”

“I claim dibs on the hand grenades – I used to be quite the beamer in my youth.”

“What about uniforms?”

“Yech! I swore never to wear a uniform after the Sudan!”

“Well I’ve still got an account with Moss Bross…”

“But what would Matron say if we all started swanning off?”

“We’ll tell her we’re all off to the bingo.”

“Oh no, not bingo!”

“Well cribbage then! Hang it all, let’s just say ‘we’re definitely not going out to shoot at some ne’er do wells’ and leave it at that! Now are we going bally well to do this or what?”

I’d bought some second-hand golden oldie Grenadier gangster figures via the Lead Adventure Forum. Originally they were just going to be a bunch of gangsters who’d somehow wound up in Herefordshire, but as I was painting them it struck me how venerable they looked, and so I decided to morph them into a group of elderly chaps – Last of the Summer Wine with guns!

The eagle eyed among you will have also spotted a Saddam Hussein figure from The Assault Group – given away free as part of their Facebook promotion!