Defending the throne
With the Andrex Wars well underway, Roger Field considers how best to protect his hoard and flush out any offenders
ONE of my soft southern chums is worried that I might fall prey to brutish gangs of marauding Midlands zombies, desperate to track down those of us who have stockpiled multiple ‘jumbo’ packs of bog rolls. (Why this obsession with loo-roll hoarding as the virus panic accelerates?) Back in my Army days they issued us with small sheets of scratchy, crinkly paper – we called them airmail letters because they were of a similar construction – in our ration packs. They did the biz and they certainly didn’t make us inclined to linger over that biz. Maybe we’ll revert to them when all the Andrex has disappeared; the last remaining rolls on the planet being auctioned off by Sotheby’s and Christie’s to the super-rich... Anyway, “Worry not,” I replied to my chum. “I’ve been following (some of) my own advice in these columns and I am ready with a staged response to said zombie invasion.”
Stage One: hammering on front door; loo-roll crazed thieves outside. ‘Greet’ them with the 16th-century halberd I bought off Thomas Del Mar a couple of years ago. With its axe on one side and ‘beak’ on the other, plus spear in the centre for lunging and puncturing, this is a three-headed slasher and splitter; a killer snip at £500. However, as brawny peasants back in those halberdwielding days discovered, polearms have a major flaw. Whilst one can, literally, hew a body in two, once an assailant steps inside the cutting arc of the head it becomes all but useless. Drop and move to Stage Two: close combat. I have been studying my sword collection; much better for confined-quarter fighting. Conclusion? The 15th-century wakizashi (Japanese short sword) I bought from Mallams a couple of years ago for £1,100. Not only is the blade lethal – it is viciously pointed and razor edged (my son once, after much strong drink had been taken and his mother had rashly decided to go to bed, shaved his forearm with it) – but it has proper heft. Post circa 1600 Japan entered a long period of peace and many swords – whilst traditionally made – became as much decorative as warlike. However, pre-1600 the Japanese were busy slicing and dicing each other as if auditioning for a Hollywood Ninja film and the blades on these old-style swords (called Koto swords) reflect that. I would not want to face me waving that wakizashi.
If things get even more pressed and I find myself fighting for my loo roll in the downstairs loo, even my short sword will be too long. I have a large-bladed, Bowie-type knife – I couldn’t resist internet buying it from Antony Cribb for a measly-looking bottom estimate £60 (although it then cost about £30 to send it on to me) – but the far better solution is the Dudley Robbins World War I Trench knife that Holts sold on 10 December. Those guys in the trenches really did know about close-quarter fighting and this example is a horror: six-inch, doubleedged blade, pointy end (good for slashing and poking) and a metal hand guard, which turns it into a sort of knuckleduster. Perfect for when in extremis. It beat its £700 top estimate to sell for £900.
I suspect some are reading this and thinking; “Only an iriot [sic!] lets bog-roll nickers get in that close.” And I concede the point. I should not have sold the naval cannon I used to have mounted outside the house for just such an eventuality. So, here are some suggestions. “Time spent in recce is seldom
wasted,” as we used to say in armoured recce. What better way to keep track of the mob that has just been turned away from Aldi or Tesco and is now rampaging out into the countryside than a Mark 1 (no turret – that is the Mk 2 – but with fittings to take a .30 Browning machine gun) Ferret armoured car? They were last used by the British Army during Gulf War I; typically as armoured liaison vehicles – much safer, and punchier, than a Land Rover – and are still, apparently, used by various foreign armies. They are great vehicles. I used to motor around in a Mk 1 Ferret so can vouch for them. Rollsroyce 4.25 litre ‘straight six’ petrol engine; really quiet if you keep the revs down. It will go almost anywhere if you know how and when to welly it, and reasonably fast if you are running away. Always useful in a lightly armoured vehicle. In fact, the engine is so good that a naughty chum of mine once popped one into a knackered Roller and flogged on the now purring barouche. Very chipper he was, too, at least until the car went in for servicing and an eagleeyed mechanic pointed out the ‘crow’s foot’ stamp on the engine block (meaning it was military property) to the proud new owner.
Cue much shimmying around and handing back of cheques in exchange for promises of omertˆ lest the Military Police come knocking on my mate’s door… Estimated at a ‘wide’ £10,000 to £20,000 (What is a Ferret worth? Answer: what someone is willing to pay for it) by Barry L Hawkins, he smacked down the gavel on 29 February for £15,000.
The auctioneer tells me he was phoned by a widow and asked to value “my husband’s toys”. Assuming he was going to value a collection of Dinky Toys (yawn – but they can be valuable, so…) his eyes almost popped out when, having led him to a large barn, she showed him a collection of proper ‘big boy’s toys’, including the Ferret and a working Fox armoured car. Park a Fox at the end of your drive and you should deter even the most determined Andrex snatchers. The 30mm Rarden cannon is a replica, but who is going to put that to the test? Putting aside that they were pretty poor fighting vehicles – top heavy and therefore liable to roll, and not great across country (ok, sorry if I sound like a know-it-all, but I once commanded a troop of these, too) – they have a brilliant turret, the same as for a Scimitar, mounted with that Rarden and a 7.62 GPMG (General Purpose Machine Gun): both seriously effective weapons. This example has rather dodgy looking ‘Berlin colours’ paintwork – ours were plain green – although it is automotively excellent. You really don’t want this beast going wrong unless you can either fix it yourself or know someone who enjoys doing so. Estimated at £18,000 to £22,000, it sold for £20,500.
“But what if they avoid the drive and come round the sides,” I hear you ask. The ‘Growler’ is one solution. This cast-iron cannon was made for the Crawshay family in 1850; one of a pair cast to defend Cyfarthfa Castle in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales – the Crawshay family not only built the castle but owned the ironworks that made the cannon. It sits on a cast-iron carriage and has a ‘Don’t mix it with me’, 6½ft-long, tapering barrel. And its name, ‘Growler’, spelled out in big white letters across the top. Load with grapeshot, add flame and abracadabra… It sold for £1,800, just under its £2,000 lower estimate at Dukes on 27 February. Or if you want to load ‘ball’, then Tennants on 6 March was the place for you. They sold an ‘early’ iron cannon ball for a bottom estimate £100; making the cannon rather better value than the balls, in a manner of speaking – I’d far prefer to own one ‘Growler’ than 18 balls…
So, they’re past the artillery. What next? A blunderbuss used to be the ‘go to’ closerange, home-protection solution. Those wide, gaping barrels may have had no extra ballistic result but they sure had a sphincter-freezing effect when the ungodly got to eyeball them, up close and personal. On 27 November, Bonhams had a matched pair of particularly elegant, late-18th-century, flintlock blunderbusses, complete with ‘spring’ bayonets for close-range poking. What made these especially unusual and desirable is that they were blunderbuss-pistols, but with attachable shoulder stocks. Estimated at £1,500 to £1,800 it was little surprise they sold for £2,500.
Still coming? Reach for the HW Mortimer (gunmaker to His Majesty), four-shot, 50-bore, flintlock volley (or duck’s-foot) pistol that Thomas Del Mar sold for £8,000 on 4 December, a goodly hike above the £6,000 top estimate. At which point you go ‘cold steel’ and reach for your halberd, and…
Perhaps, before congratulating yourself on your preparations, you want to ‘selfquarantine’, or worry that friends or family might be infectious? Back to Tennants and a rare German World War I gas mask made of grey cloth, with ‘celluloid’ eye pieces, although missing its filter to go over your mouth. Not to worry. Anybody seeing you wearing this will assume you are deranged and will keep their distance. Others agreed with my ‘keep clear of me’ solution as it beat its £400 top estimate to sell for £480.
Given that this may be the end of the world, what better time than to pull up a chair and have a well-deserved glass, or five, of superb, 27-year-old Glenlivet (distilled 1973) whisky, at a not ridiculously priced £350 (Bonhams, Edinburgh, 4 March)? Or maybe it won’t be, and I’ll be here next month…