“Spring winds”, with thanks to Nevrax for the underlying loose sketch.

The old-school fantasy Midlands role-playing game Midderlands runs on Swords & Wizardry Complete… but is now Kickstarting for a Midderlands D&D 5e edition. I’m no expert on tabetop RPGs but it looks like this will convert the existing game and its material to run with the popular Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition, in the form of a single large letter-sized book (the American ‘sort-of A4’). The Kickstarter for this ends 2nd April 2020, and currently looks like it has a good chance of hitting its target.

I have a Midderlands Stoke-on-Trent expansion, for free.

Thanks to Karen Bradley MP for the tip that… “Staffordshire Wildlife Trust are trying to raise £156,000 to buy Gun Moor.”

The Moor is wildlife-rich un-ploughed moorland in Gawain country, above Rushton Spencer in the Staffordshire Moorlands.

The Rushton Spencer Historical Society has a public talk on the 16th March 2020 (7.30pm): “Gun Moor; Past, Present & Future’, with local historian Alan Weeks and Jon Rowe, Staffordshire Wildlife Trust Warden for the Roaches and Gun Moor.

New on eBay, a picture of ‘The Retreat’, kept by the Birmingham Oratory at Rednal in the Lickey Hills near Birmingham. The young Tolkien spent the later part of the summer of 1904 at a cottage in the grounds, and Tolkien would sit on the veranda of the main house with the house dog ‘Lord Roberts’ (*) and Father Francis while he smoked his large cherrywood pipe. Apparently it was only in this place that Father Francis allowed himself the luxury of pipe-smoking. Cardinal Newman was buried nearby, in the grounds.

* The dog’s full name was ‘Lord Roberts of Kandahar’, and according to Tolkien’s brother Hilary it was an Irish breed.