Hot off the render machine comes the first release from our site! This is a short promo for our upcoming DVD that shows some action from the Blackheart Tier 1 game a few weeks ago. We finally got it approved by the Ministry of Defense!

Location: STANTA, Eastmere OBUA Training village, Thetford, Norfolk.

Following the successful detention of the senior Al Qaeda (AQ) leader responsible for combat operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan – Mullah Kazim Numair, AKA PANTHER was detained during an Extremely High Risk (EHR) Helicopter Assault Force (HAF) raid by Seal Team 6 (ST6) during Operation Rolling Thunder in the KURRAM AGENCY situated in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) – Pakistan.

The CIA Special Activities Division (SAD) have been debriefing and tactically questioning Numair at an undisclosed “Black Camp” in Uzbekistan since his capture September 2011.

After several months of resistance to interrogation, Numair has finally started to show cracks in his resilience, which up until recently had been unbreakable and Numair has finally began to talk. The team interrogating Numair are aware that the information being released to them currently is low level and a ploy to keep them from the bigger players.

However, several names on the list Numair has provided include the leader of at least four (4) AQ IED cells responsible for 100?s of coalition deaths and horrific injuries. Also on the list are 2 AQ couriers and an AQ Quarter Master sitting on a large weapons cache.

To to that end, JSOC has decided to send in Task Force (TF) Seventy Six (76) iot* Kill / Capture the AQ operators while they are still located in the Gambir village, East Afghanistan near the Pakistan border. TF 76 are made up of Special Operations Forces (SOF) operators from SEAL TEAM FOUR (4) and RANGERS from Bravo Company, 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment.

TF 76 are therefore to prepare for an EHR counter insurgency detention mission in a hostile urban environment.

This is a dual editor collaboration. The DVD will contain 2 x 30 minute renders of the footage from the game (one by me and one by Chris). We had filmmakers following both teams, capturing all the briefings, the serial events and all the action in the best FPS Basho tradition – quite a package!

This render is my promo for the full version.

If you are interested in buying a DVD, the price is £9.99 +99p posted to your door. That’s a great price for over an hour of awesome footage, professionally produced, filmed and edited! Fill out this form with your Paypal account details and we will send you a Paypal bill and post the DVD once payment has cleared.

Regards,

Basho

Delhi. Many people say they have “done” Delhi, but in all honesty they haven’t. They have perhaps done the tourist parts of New Delhi, or maybe spent some time in an Ashram there – which amounts to the same thing: a tourist experience. Delhi is so large to be beyond being “done” should you spend a lifetime there.

For one thing there are 16 million people living in Delhi and 249 thousand in New Delhi (the capital of the capital). This makes Delhi the 8th largest metropolis in the world (we will visit the largest towards the end of these journals), and once something gets that big you know that no two stories of visiting it will be the same. Each will be a “slice of life”, a “moment in time” and a “vision” of the city. Also, like other gigantic cities, it is more than possible to leave with a very un-favourable impression. Walk down the wrong street or pass by the wrong district in any major city and you may not come out the other side alive, but perhaps in Delhi of all these places are you risking coming out a different colour.

That is because coming here during the Hindu festival of Holi, white and vulnerable, must make you a serious paint target as if you are running the gauntlet of 16 million amateur Jackson Pollacks’. That’s what first went through my mind when we arrived on the train, our last train journey in India.

As our tuk tuk wheeled through the city centre traffic towards our hotel I considered Delhi. It has been a city for over 3 thousand years and classical Hindu belief is that it is even older than that (being the capital mentioned in the Mahabharata). Given that huge mountain of history  each conqueror had controlled the city for only a relatively brief moment, but they have all left their scars on it. None more so than my own nation, the British, who built buildings and monuments of Victorian scale everywhere you look. The Victorians had a wonderful sense of history and how to make their mark on it before becoming it in the past tense. The British wanted everyone to know that while Gandhi was right when he said, “All empires rise and fall”, that the sun setting on the British Empire was going to be remembered.

Indeed in this the British were right. The passing of the British Empire will forever be held up as exactly how not to do such a thing. Muslims and Hindus, suddenly deprived of their common Christian foe, turned on each other in weeks of violence that led to the murder of Gandhi himself. This was followed by over 2 million dying during marches to found the new nations of Pakistan and India, and an arms race that could go nuclear in the bad way any day now.

The tuk tuk turned into a tourist province, the street narrowed to a more modern district and we were amongst our own people: travellers.

There maybe only two types of traveller who comes to Delhi. Those who entered the country somewhere else, such as Mumbai, and are used to Indian cities. They have a knowing slouching insolence on their faces and in their dress. They have the relaxed look of people who don’t know how dirty they are. The other type is those poor unfortunates for which Delhi is their first port of call in their “Indian adventure”. They have a wide-eyed look, much newer clothing and are all too aware of how dirty they are. Probably dirtier than they have ever been in their lives and their noses wrinkle with the smell of rubbish, shit and dead creatures. Their glances betray that they are not used to painted cows nosing their way through the crowds, to so many cultural groups in one place forming a rainbow blending milkshake of a million colours or to the heat causing sweat to be a constant companion. What they don’t realise is that the looks on their faces marks them out to every ticket tout, con artist, scumbag and tourist shyster in the entire city as if they were draped in brightly flashing fairy lights.

I have always thought that the heat, the smell and the bustle are all things you should work up to slowly or, like a person being taught to swim by being thrown in the deep end, you may well sink.

On the other hand (I said it was all subjective) for some people Delhi represents the chance to disentangle themselves from their “normal” lives. It wakes them up like a cold bucket of water thrown over the face. They realise that much of what was so important back home: cleanliness, Abrahamic morality and reserved sexual mores, to give three examples, are no longer controlling them. They’re free to wallow in it, drink it all in and “go forth young travellers”. These people generally get what they ask for and sometimes what they deserve.

I feel much sorrier for the Britisher who comes here and is so shocked that they turn straight around and head back to the safety blanket of Blighty, never to leave the White Cliffs of Dover again. India has so much to offer, so much to show you and you may well fall in love with her. If only you make it through your first few weeks. If only you can handle Delhi. So, I was glad to have come here at the very end of our Indian adventure. It meant we had already acclimatised and so we could choose what to see and would have some chance of actually seeing something genuine and special.

Indeed we did, very special.

Walking around Delhi can be an exhausting experience. The Victorian architecture is spread out and all the parks and gravel driveways stretch off so far into the distance that making your way across them in this sun is an exercise akin to crossing a desert. Seeming like we were burning alive, Cesca and I were rescued when we found the entrance to the National Museum of India. The largest of its already large brethren, the National Museum houses some of the greatest treasures from Indian history. I liked these places a lot and had come to feel that they provided us some modicum of understanding and context.

Starting in the early-recorded history section we walked around, looked and took it all in. Eventually, however, exhaustion set in and we started moving through the exhibits a little faster. History moved forwards to a large collection of Hindu paintings showing some of the famous stories being played out. Showing the childhood of Krishna, which is quite funny, and the adulthood of same, in which he is quite the hero.

Then we came across a section of Buddhist art, which were both enjoying by taking photos of all the statues, many of them being of Maitreya and the Bodhisattvas. Then I remember looking to my right, while leaning forwards to examine one particular statue in detail, and catching a glimpse of gold.

Straightening up to see fully I was interested by a large golden case in one corner. It was holding a glass display cabinet in the centre about head height. As I drew closer I could see that this was in the Thai style of design and amazingly intricate. Hundreds of what looked like Deva sat at the foot of the case, wrapped around the sides and carved into respectful attitudes. Atop them, flanked by four golden pillars, was a simple, and not particularly clean, display cabinet. Inside were some bone looking relics sat on a red cushion stand. Separating us from the case was a simple plastic wall, but I remember feeling that I was really close to it and leaned in to see as close as possible. Hmm, I thought, what’s this? I leaned back and looked at the plaque.

“Holy Relics of Lord Buddha”

…

…

…

I have thought long and hard about how to describe what went through my mind at that moment, but in the end I think the above ellipses are the only thing I can say.

To give some context:

In Thailand there are temples of enormous size, prodigious aspect and mightily special prominence that house a single statue of this man.

In Singapore there is a temple 6 stories high built to house 3000 golden carved likenesses of this man.

In Laos there are thousands of people who dedicate their life so much to studying this man’s way that they have no time to feed themselves and have to beg food off the towns-people, who dutifully line up every day to hand out the provisions.

In China, a particular carving of this man is forty-foot high.

In Japan, wooden temples to this man’s way are so large that you would need serious rock climbing gear to scale them.

In Sri Lanka a bone from this man’s finger is so holy that thousands congregate daily at the temple housing it in a continuous ever-moving horde.

However, in India – the home of his birth – they just plonk his remains in a glass case.

…

My brain unfroze.

“Cesca!” I shouted waving her over urgently.

She wandered over, looked and stood for a moment.

“Wow,” she said.

“I…I just can’t believe this is here,” I said.

Another plaque on the wall explained that these relics had been dug up from under an ancient stupa in Piprehwa, Distt and date from the time of the Great King Ashoka around 300BC. It explained that the Thailand government, concerned that the relics were not being properly looked after, built this case in gold to house them with a modicum of respect.

I have written before of the strange phenomena that the Indians care little of the religion founded by one their countrymen, in complete discord with how the rest of the East (if not the world) treats his memory, but nowhere could it be better expressed than this little case standing in a quiet corner of this enormous museum. Forgotten and ignored almost entirely by the Indian nationals walking past. It really brought it home.

I didn’t quite know how I felt about it.

On one hand, my rational side knew that the Buddha needs no temples, no relics and no statues. He needs none of the trappings that have come to envelope Buddhism, none of the “magical” aspects of the religion that have sprung up around him as his legacy. None of that stuff is the Buddha. He was very much a man and not a God. The way he died and his own words make that clear. You are not supposed to worship the Buddha, but people do as I had seen first-hand all over Asia. All that stuff is a turn-off to me and I had found myself like a ship fighting against a storm. With always an eye for the winds of my journey threatening to blow me into the rocks of “faith”.

Truly the Buddha said that enlightenment was everyone’s responsibility and that his teachings were a boat across a river; once on the other bank, you no longer needed the boat. Therefore, my rational mind said that these bones meant nothing. The Buddha had no magical power, no special perfections; he had just reached a stage in his existence that was the final blowing out of the candle. The massive number of lives he had lived before were his preparation for what came next: a time outside time, a sublimation of reality into nirvana.

Also worth considering in this context is the nature of relics in the first place and their prominence. Was I to take it on faith that these were the remains of the Buddha? The historical methods of the Indians are coloured by their beliefs (as indeed are every nations, even if that belief is in the scientific method) so why should I simply trust that these are the remains of a man who lived 2500 years’ ago?

Doubt flashed across our faces as Cesca and I shared a look.

But, I asked myself, was this in fact due to how the relics were being presented? Had we become so used to the Buddha being so highly venerated that to see his own body treated in this way was to call in doubt the very prominence of what we were witnessing?

In the end none of these questions mattered.

I once went on a two-week car tour of the churches of Northern France (spending much more time in the patisseries of Northern France than in the churches it must be admitted). During that tour I came across a relic of St John the Baptist. Namely his head preserved on a golden platter, which was paraded around the church on a plush red cushion. Amazing, I thought. We then visited another church and found another relic of the great man’s head. It turns out that Northern France has three heads of St John, all claiming prominence. Logically each is just as unlikely to be the real deal, that is the preserved head of a man who was beheaded 3000 miles away and 2000 years ago. That genuine relics exist is not the matter at hand, I decided. It is how they make us feel, how they focus our attention on the reality of the faith/belief they represent.

Therefore, on the other hand, my feelings told me that humans experience something at a far greater depth if they experience that thing with more senses than just the mind or through writing. The Buddha lived thousands of years ago, in a foreign country both literally and historically. Things were so different back then that it can be hard for us to come to terms with connecting with it at all. I think that the importance of temples, statues and relics is that through them we can feel any connection beyond merely a simple one. Relics don’t inspire me to devotion, but they sure as hell make me feel Buddhist through to my core.

This led me to consider the larger issue that had been haunting me since I started this journey: The myth surrounding the man himself and the way Buddhism expresses itself as a form of devotion. I decided that was a requirement for Buddhism’s long-term survival, a trait important to all the religions of the world that have survived from ancient times.

For example, it hasn’t escaped my notice that none of the great religious teachers from history wrote anything down. Socrates is known only through Plato recalling the conversations they had 20 years later, the Buddha is only known through the canon written by the monks hundreds of years after he died, Mahavira had Goutam write down his words, Muhammad had others write down his speeches in the Hadith, and (most especially since he “claimed” to be God) Jesus is only known through the Apostles all of which contradict each other and were written up hundreds of years later.

None of actual “special” people wrote anything down. None of them. They are all just “quoted” by sources who were “near” to them.

Why is this?

I think it is to do with myth.

The preservation of religious teachings requires the use of myth to survive the eons of time. There were probably thousands of great men who could have become religious figureheads from antiquity, all who had an experience of the “Universal consciousness”, but they have been swallowed completely by time and disappeared. Why? Because the pattern of their teachings has not lent itself to being made into myth and in some cases because they wrote it all down in simple words.

Even some ancient beliefs that were widespread and common, such as Manichaeism or the Mithraic mysteries, have disappeared to the point where I bet 99% of people know nothing of them.

Is myth not a part of being in any tribe trying to make sense of the world? Modern science scoffs at it, but are we not judging these ancient creation stories too harshly and with the rosy tinted glasses of perspective on? What I mean is: will our future-distant human societies in the year 4000 look back at our “scientific truths” with the same amount of contempt as we look upon the foundation myths of our forebears? I wouldn’t bet against it.

That is why the Buddha, the human man, and the Buddha, the perfect Godlike figure, are separate in my mind. Failure to appreciate this separation is, I believe, why Christians follow Jesus the myth, seemingly ignoring the man behind it, and fighting horrible wars in his name (something he certainly would never have condoned). The same goes for Buddhists, who have been to war, or supported war, more times than people realise and despite the Buddha himself very clearly speaking against that practice.

Human nature is to follow myths, not teachings. Myth, in all its forms and definitely in the form of relics are what move religious fervour. These bones are so important to so many people across the world, so special and for some so magical, that I am honestly surprised that hordes of devotees are not even now smashing down the doors to get to them.

This part of me was frankly aghast at the lack of respect being paid to these relics. I suddenly felt like an Australian Aborigine when he sees Westerners walking across Uluru or like a Jew looking at the temple of the Dome on the Rock. For a moment, all to brief, I looked upon these bones and believed in the myth.

Then, just as suddenly – like the sudden dark after the sun dips below the horizon – that strong feeling of belief left me and my journey towards Buddhism as a faith was finished. I will always love this man, I decided, always respect him highly, but these relics had helped me make my mind up. I believe that, “One should not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise, one should seek what they sought”.

Who said that? My namesake Basho Matsuo did.

He was a Buddhist. Like me.

To explain: There is a saying, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him”. This was said by Linji Yixuan of the Chinese Chan Buddhist tradition (known in Japan and the West as Zen). What he means by this is that to make a religion of the Buddha is to miss the meaning of Buddhism. The real Buddha is you, always inside you and waiting to get out. Dogma is blocking that path. Enlightenment is to be found by a realisation of what is real, a moment of clarity, like standing in summer rain and realising that such an experience should be cherished not cursed. Dogma dictates behaviour and how things “should” feel, when one could instead consider dancing to the music of the raindrops.

I am still amazed at the effect that seeing these relics had on me and by writing this I feel it again to some degree, but time has not changed my conclusion. I remembered back to our visit to the Tree of Enlightenment in Bodh Gaya and recalled the sensation of peace that came from sitting under that tree. Standing in the museum, literally at the Buddha’s feet, I realised the truth of what I had said to Cesca when she asked what I thought of the great tree, the Golden Throne and the temple surrounding it,

“It’s just a tree”

The same applies here. Those may or may not be the remains of perhaps the greatest human who ever lived, but they are just bones and he is gone and gone forever. He is the finger pointing at the moon, I don’t want to look at the finger, lest I miss the beauty of the celestial spheres.

I took Cesca’s arm and we walked on without looking back. That night we slept soundly as the city buzzed all around us. The next day was our last full day in India and we were going to spend it visiting another of my trio of personal heroes. We were going to get up close and personal with Gandhi.

Regards,

Basho

Waking in Shimla is to wake in misty sunshine and mountain air. I’m sure it is not always like this, but it was for me the days that I was there.

After studiously avoiding eating in the hotel, we went on a bit of a mission. Arabella, my very nice sister-in-law, had stayed in the Shimla area when she had been in India 8 years earlier and Cesca wanted to find the family she had stayed with. This, we both knew, was a forlorn adventure into unknown territory, but then that is exactly why we were willing to pursue it. We may not find this family, we reasoned (it had been an age after all), but this would be “getting out of the backpackers bubble”. That is the hated “bubble” that all modern backpackers feel.

When you travel through a country, especially if you are using a published travel guide, you are walking a well trodden path. Indeed maybe a thousand people are doing it with you simultaneously. This has a very strong effect over time, as more and more guest houses start catering only to the backpacker and spring up all along the route, which had myriad knock-on effects. Such as: taxi services who know the guide books better than you do and hordes of travellers at ever corner all “experiencing” the local atmosphere; all the time failing to realise that they are in a “bubble” like a Disney theme park ride.

Behind the western bars, “tourist specials” and “jungle walks” (three feet from the road) there exists an almost entirely different world.

A world that highlights the truth; that you are not experiencing the “real” country and its people at all. I met some people on my travels who had not been able to break out of this bubble and after six months or so it had seriously jaded them. For these unfortunates, returning home was not going to feel different from being away, the sheer contiguous nature of this effect was, and often had, ruined their trip.

It is poison of the mind.

So, the urge to break out of it was our primary motivation for most of our choices and actions during the later half of our travels. Luckily for me Cesca lives in a world that is naturally hard to enclose. Our method was to simply to do things so outlandishly off the rails that the bubble burst. By off the rails I don’t mean in the sense of getting drunk, as that is often a “bubbled” thing to do (especially in places such as Thailand or Goa), I mean meeting people that:

a) You are not paying.

b) Are not in the tourist industry.

That is enough. You get to see their houses, meet their children, talk about their lives and feel their reality. Even when that is mundane information for the traveller it is the most precious moment for which I would gladly exchange any number of tourist “thrills”.

So, as much as this is a travel journal, I am not going to recount our morning chasing the ghosts of Arabella’s past. Mainly because it would sound like a Hemingway novel in its plain nature. Suffice to say, we knocked on a lot of doors, met a lot of locals as interested in us as us in they, were welcomed into a large number of houses and drank more than enough local tea. We did not, however, find who we wanted.

That is also not to say that it didn’t work, I felt the tracks rock under my feet and sure enough the bubble, ever chasing us like something our of The Prisoner, faded into the distance as we met someone we did not expect.

Two people actually.

We returned to the Mall for refreshments and went into a likely looking cafe. It was very nicely appointed with wood shaped beams and wide bright tables looking out of an enormous sunlit window, which overlooked the side of the mountain. Splayed all over this side were the “real” buildings of Shimla. As brown with dirt that this looked, the view was rather impressive.

The cafe, however, was empty apart from the owner and a older, grandmotherly, English lady. The owner approached and I expected him to ask me if I wanted a table? or perhaps would I like a drink? but instead he said,

“Have you read the works of the master?”

Cesca, not to be out cooled by anything short of a Vegan Snow Lizard simply responded,

“Which master?”

“The master!” He exclaimed. Then he turned and pulled a new copy of a book off the shelf, which he trust into my hands. I considered him. He had the eyes of a true believer that I had seen the like of before in the looks of many Indian nationals, but never outside of a religious place. I almost took a look around to check that I had walked into a cafe and not some sort of disguised Hindu temple. He smiled at me and gestured at the book now in my hand. I looked at it.

“J. Krishnamurti?” I said reading the author’s name, “He is the master?”

“Oh yes,” said the man nodding vigorously. He must have realised my penchant for philosophy; my slightly peaked interest, because he then broke in to a fascinating biography of Krishnamurti, which I would love to record here, but was the sort of event where someone keeps talking over themselves, words falling all about, sentences running into each other, many books pulled from shelves, hand gesticulations and all delivered at such breakneck speed I didn’t mentally transcribe it all.

Suffice to say, this guy liked the philosophy of Krishnamurti. A lot.

In fact he went on for about two minutes without pausing, which is a long time to stand in silence, and only ended when he suggested that I buy the book. He stopped suddenly as he read the look that had come upon my face at this suggestion. It was a look that said, “did you tell me all that simply to sell me a book? Hardly the spirit of the work of The Master!

“Oh no sir,” he assured me, astutely reading my mind, “not like that, no, no”.

Then he realised that he hadn’t even offered us a seat yet, let alone menus and an order. He did the Indian equivalent of slapping himself on the head as though to say “silly old me, oh how I go on sir, yes!”. He then ushered us to a table and we sat, menus were passed, we ordered and the man went off to fix our coffees.

The table was a nice thick wood and the light in the high roofed room was bright and welcoming. The view out of the window was amazing.

In other words this was clearly the sort of cafe Cesca and I love to hang out in. The owner returned with our coffees and just by looking at a correctly made Cappuccino, I knew I was in the right place.

The only other person in the room was the English looking lady of just bordering grandmotherly age. She was reading through a magazine, but clearly just killing time. She looked up and saw both Cesca and I looking at her.

“The last couple who came in here left once he started his Krishnamurti talk,” she said smiling.

“Well,” I said, “the coffee is good, the decor is good, the view is amazing so we shall stay. How is the food?” There was an empty plate next to the magazine.

“Good,” she replied nodding.

And then we all got chatting.

I’ve met some interesting people through travelling:

• Franco, the crazy Italian-Australian expert on Aboriginal Art.
• Lenin and Bobbits, the deep doctor and his equally deep lover dosing up and having wild times.
• Collin and Marylou, the party time Irishman and his much more sensible Spanish lady friend (amazingly, their story is not over yet…)
• Eric, the Yoga teaching, ME suffering, world-travelling Scotsman with only his bike for transport.
• Gwenny, the svelte Dutch girl who joined us in Kerella.
• Jenny, the English Doctor travelling through the Indian desert.

To name just a few…

To the list I add,

“Jenny,” she said.

We ended up having the sort of discussion that could last for hours, and indeed it did. Her age was close to my mother-in-law’s, and I think that for Cesca this made a difference and helped with the connection. She was classy like Charlotte too. Travelling alone and away from her children, which wasn’t making her happy, so Cesca and she hit it off and soon we had been there all day. We talked of loss, of divorce, of personal and spiritual philosophies, of what we had seen on our travels.

It was exactly the sort of discussion you expect to have India.

Her son, it transpired, was head of “Peace One Day”, which had recently been picked up by the UN. She was very proud of this. “Peace One Day” is a charity with the aim of having one day a year where there is no conflict. Like the famous armistice day in WW1, the idea is that by maybe just stopping for one day then perhaps saner minds will prevail and conflict can be stopped all together. A great idea.

It turned out that the headquarters of the charity was in the Truman Brewery in Brick Lane, where Cesca and I had seen the Bodyworlds exhibition.

“Last year,” she said, “even the Taliban honoured the Peace Day”.

“Wow,” Cesca and I chorused, genuinely impressed.

Eventually I noticed that she had on a glass blown ring identical to the one I gave Cesca as a present, but had broken by it being knocked off the bed in Cambodia way back before Christmas.

“Where did you buy that?” I asked.

She held up the ring, considering it, “What this?”

“Yes, I bought one just like it for Cesca in New Zealand and then broke it accidentally a few months ago, I have been looking for one ever since.”

The whole story came out with Cesca telling her of how we had looked in every market since the accident trying to find another, but to no avail.

“Then you must have this one,” she said without a blink.

We raised our hands in honest protest, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Without any ado she slipped of and handed over the ring, which fit Cesca perfectly.

“I can’t thank you enough,” Cesca said with a beaming smile.

“Something to remember our meeting,” she said. And I do, whenever I see the ring on Cesca’s hand (she still wears it everyday)

We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around Shimla, visiting the church, the markets and down the mountain side.

I really liked it. It was the most pleasant place in India for me, a sort of cross between a Swiss ski resort and an English village.

There was perhaps only one downside; the monkeys.

Some of these had grown to prodigious size and become very aggressive. They swooped down and stole anything they could, not afraid of humans in the slightest and angrily confronting anyone who stood in their way. I vividly remember looking at a big male who noticed my gaze and roared a starling threat at me that actually made me look down in terror. I remember the size of his teeth. I have faced down dogs, angry giant spiders and even alpacas with cleft palettes, but this creature was fierce.

Eventually time came to leave. I would like to write that we carried our own bags to the station, having acclimatised to Shimla’s great height, but we didn’t; we got a taxi.

At the station we waited for the train to take us back to Kalka and thence onto our last stop in India; Delhi. There we would visit one of the greatest museums in the world and see the actual remains of the Buddha.

I squinted through the bright sun and took a look around the station. Loitering near the exit gate were the two Kashmiri touts from a few days ago. They were relaxed and not paying the crowd any attention – these were people leaving Shimla and not going to give them “business”. Once the incoming train arrived they would leap into action, fix a honest knowing smile to their faces and go “fishing”. Watching them waiting for their next “mark” I considered life from their point of view; their homeland caught between arguing India and Pakistan siblings who are armed to the teeth and their way of life corrupted into an empty shell. I imagined carrying bags all day and scraping a meagre living from hotel hand outs. Perhaps we should feel a little sorry for them as predatory that they are?

Their legend must surely continue to this day.

The train arrived.

Regards,

Basho

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. – Oscar Wilde

Nature is a great concept, but we are never satisfied with it. Nature is always shown in conflict against nurture and not just in the sciences (who recently came to same conclusion as I below; that this is an illusion), but also in the creative worlds where form is always shown versus function.

Why do we do this?

Man, viewed from afar, must surely be classified as the creature who splits the world into dual opposites. Everything suffers this surgery, from good being torn from evil, light being rendered from shade, man’s very nature being divided from that which nurtures it and in his art the maddening habit of splitting the form of things from their function.

Perhaps it comes from our dualist experience of reality, for the human lives in a world resplendent with physical doubles; two eyes to see with, two legs to walk upon and two hands with which to work. Through the use of these physical tools we discover his mind as, however you believe he came across these gifts, it is in his language that the true nature of his rank obsession with division appears most prominently (language, writing and speech remain always the illuminating torch in the dark cave of the human mind). Human language refers endlessly to the division and duality of man’s physical experience. Take the conceptual word, “hands”. Here we have phrases such as, “on the other hand”, “The left-hand path”, “right is right” and so on. Even the root of the dark word “sinister” is derived from “sinistra”, the Italian word for the left-hand path.

This doesn’t end here as not just left and right divide the human perception of the world. His speech also demarcates inner and outer worlds; his very experience of the world entirely split into inside his head and outside in what is called “reality”. This notion of “reality” is itself only a label given solely to the outside, the part of the experience outside the self, as though he were not an enclosed and conjoined part of this reality.

The external human concept of “reality” then is the final weight to tip the scales of evidence (scales which go up and down, another duality) that this is a very deep rooted and indicative behaviour. If the concept of “reality” is that which is not the personal ”subjective” experience then there is a serious mental problem in explaining how the “I” of that experience fits into “reality”, is the mind itself only a figment? Of what? Of itself? A figment of a figment?

How typical of Mankind to be the creature who splits the world in two and then places himself on the side of illusion!

Not much escapes, what I have named, the Duality Effect. Take science, the engine that built and powers the human world around us, even it does little to assist in highlighting the absurdity of this dichotomy. The scientific method breaks things down into measurable and predictable chunks, adds them back up and forms “systems” of behaviour (that is “predictable” behaviour). These systems, these models, for the functioning of the universe are called “understandings based on observation“. Mainly because predictable knowledge is easily communicated, and indeed that is its point, but in breaking down the universe two types of things (two again!) happen:

1. We confuse the map with the territory. So you have those who proclaim that if anything is experienced that cannot be explained by our “measuring” then it literally doesn’t happen. There are all sorts of worrying evidences that this is not the case of which the Placebo effect is but the tip of the iceberg. Science is a model for the external reality, not that reality itself. Its current methodology presumes the inside/outside division and rejects all “inside” concepts as subjectively unmeasurable. Hence therefore, there are things that work in a practical way, but are rejected because there isn’t an explanation for them that fits into the preconceived notions. Consequently, for example, there is no science that can explain the mind itself. Indeed there exists some interesting excuses for this lack of definition:

“Oh, we will one day,” says Professor Cox confidently on The Infinite Monkey Cage (no doubt looking wistfully off into the sky at the time). Well, science as we know it now, focussed on “external” observation, will not ever be able to do this and when it has reached a level to truly be able to understand the mind, you would not recognise it as science.

2. We demean the “inside world”

Wait a moment…

So, here is the problem, the trap we regularly fall into. Duality is so insidious, alluring and addictive, and humans so love the current order of scientific notation, that simply by putting the above into numbered bullet points, into a list, we suddenly feel far more comfortable.

Did you buy it?

Do you really believe that there exists an inside and outside world? Distinct in this way?

That is the mistake. The split between you and the Universe is false as there isn’t such a dichotomy in nature. The Universe is of one order (it has to be by definition) and your “mind”, your inner thoughts as well as your outer movements, your notion of time, your notion of life and of love are no different from the rock you stub your toe on (“I refute you thus!”), the light highlighting the buildings as you pass, the music in your ears and the world around you.

That the Universe is one is not “the Universe is one, apart from the bit that is me“. In a very real sense any man is physically connected to everything else and everything happens in the same Universe. The problem of “Other Minds” is an illusion arising from our incorrect insistence that we, me and I are separate.

This is doubly true for your connection to everything else in spacetime and through gravity. You literally have a gravity (a small one) and should remember that when you jump, and the Earth pulls you back down, that your gravity pulls the Earth up as well (albeit only a tiny bit). So, in every respect, in every way and in every proper sense “Reality” is consistent and so are you with it, like a fish is consistent with the river it swims through.

One should never “rest on one’s laurels” in science, the arrogance of the “popular” science speakers, the kind that get on TV, is galling. Scientific progress should follow the evidence wherever it leads and some scientists already know that things need to change. Science should therefore be humble.

A hint of this coming change was discovered with the effects of Quantum Theory, which showed that by “merely” observing something we change that thing.

How strange that day of realisation must have felt for those mired in the dual nature, raised in it, and focussed utterly on the current ”outside” scientific notion.

“But, but,” he must have gibbered staring at his electron detecting instruments, “How can I be changing the results? I’m all the way over here!”

Scientists’ struggles aside, many many people have known this truth for a seriously long stretch of spacetime. The Buddha certainly knew it, the Daoists know it, the Hindus know it.

We all know it, we just cant escape our natures enough to realise it all the time.

We can only know it by feeling it in “bursts”.

Ah, so, the plot appears…

Art is made to disturb. Science reassures. There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain. – Georges Braque

We know it because there exists a method of feeling it, of tasting it and experiencing it, that wholeness called the “oneness of the Universe” if only for a moment.

Well, actually there are many ways, some of which are definitely illegal, but I am interested here in one particular way that is accessible to anyone and involves an actual human endeavour to create.

So, not the purely “other” experience found in churches (the transcendental), not the cold hard precision of definite mathematics (and not just staring out of the window at the night sky – what I call “having a Cox moment”). It is between those two things, it is the meeting of the two sides. This thing is at once a human endeavour, created by us, and yet necessarily beyond the hand that wrought it. It is reaching out to some new natural place bringing the light and dark together as one.

It is art.

I found I could say things with colour and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had no words for. Georgia O’Keeffe

No wonder then that the nature of art is a struggle to understand. We try so desperately to place it within our dualistic (mis)understanding that we only discuss it within the boundaries and perceptions that we place on “reality”. We do this while all the time aware that this is to only explain half of the experience, to ignore an entire half, whichever half that be.

We talk of form, or we talk of function.

So, having highlighted and outlined the human tendency to distinct what is really whole, let us discuss this version of that trait in breaking up the form and the function of artistic works. In this argument I will be sticking very closely to art as defined as “the human endeavour”. Nature can exhibit artistic feelings in humans and indeed this is the seed from which many religious experiences (not to mention joyful walks/BBC Science series’) are born. However, in order to be able to define “art”, we must include that it is necessarily a creation of the human or we suffer the argument that our definition includes everything.

Of course it does, but that’s not the point.

This intrinsic link to nature is a clue to the true definition of art, the argument for which I am going to forward:

“Art is that human endeavour which illuminates the contiguous nature of reality.”

In our habitual dichotomous discussion of art, “form” is what something looks like or sounds like and “function” is what something does.

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. Thomas Merton

So, when we are talking about chair design, we often say that the function of a chair is well known and defined and that the form is how this function has been chosen to be expressed. In other words, if we focus our energies on function we will build sturdy, strong chairs that don’t break; that are all steel and thick wood, but are perhaps not so aesthetically pleasing. On the other (more sinister?) hand, if we focus on form we will make glowing-neon-light covered chairs that are beautiful to behold, but perhaps easy to break and not at all comfortable to sit upon.

We see these things as different, as ends of a magnet pushing in different directions, but also like magnets, the poles touch in the middle. Various movements have been created that land at various points on these poles and I am using the design world in my example to highlight my favourite.

There exists a group that have a very interesting approach to this problem. They totally focus on function to the exclusion of form. By doing this a new form naturally arrises, a stark form of startling simplicity, an anti-form, that quite catches the mood, making spaces and objects designed in this way alike blank pieces of paper. This way of designing creates contrasts that make living in such space like red paint flung at a blank canvas, bringing the immediacy of life into sharp focus against the blank background.

It is Zen: the religion that is about pointing out the “unseen” obvious.

Anyway, aside from this group it is commonly taken to be true that where form and function meet is the perfect balance point of design (or at least that is what Jonathan Ives says). The point where something is of great use, but also the point where such a thing becomes the most pleasant to use. However, as you come closer to the point of combination then the more refined and difficult it becomes to divide the two from each other. Eventually our language, our toolset of communication, breaks down; unable to divide form from function in any meaningful way and we find ourselves beyond our language, beyond our ability to split the universe.

This “region”, this “uncanny valley” does have a name, it is a name we give to the feeling rather than any inside or outside definition, that name is “art”. This is the word for the unknown maelstrom where our ability to divide the universe fails and for a brief moment, all too brief, everything joins back up and we feel whole. This can be through any form of art: music, painting, sport, anything.

This feeling for art is useful in one sense as we can communicate the “feeling” succinctly, but we cannot communicate the thing in itself. That is why any normal definition of art is dry enough to be soulless and by definition cannot be this thing. It must, by virtue of our language, fall on one side of the “magnetic poles”. That is why “art” frustrates scientists and philosophers. They complain that art becomes subjective and, by trying to define it in split terms, it does. However, the feeling that the word “art” carries is not, it is a word for the point where you can no longer split the faces of the coin, where you can no longer separate the light from the dark, the left from the right and, most importantly, the judgement on a human endeavour that has achieved this blending sublimation.

*I love art.*

There we go. All done.

Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.  John Ruskin

Questions?

Yes, you at the back:

Q.TL:DR Can you summarise?

A. Art is that human endeavour which illuminates the contiguous nature of reality. Momentarily breaking us free from our illusion that the Universe has a dual nature.

Q. Is that it?

A. No, there is something else. It is a necessary component, but not to the argument. It is failure. To engender this sublimation requires the creation of something capable of “going beyond”. In order to do that you have to transcend the ability of people to be able to explain what exactly it is. To do that is not easy. It requires a total effort to put your mental concept down onto paper. The idea that exists in your head has to be copied into a new  form, and often this idea is destroyed in the process as the new art takes away from the mind the original idea and replaces it with itself. This is why creating art can be mentally “painful” and “exhausting”. But more than this the creation of art requires that you may screw it up. You have to have the possibility of failure or it can’t be art.

So, a computer could create art if, and only if, the program can go wrong. If the computer can paint perfectly, absolutely perfectly every time and again and again; churning out amazingly lifelike paintings – then this is not art (for a start that is exactly what computers do do when we print something) – it is rather simple “craft”.

The artists “intention” is often discussed here, but really that is irrelevant, other than it is very hard to accidentally create something that sublimes reality’s duality. That is, it is very hard for humans as nature does it all the time.

Without the chance of failure in its production, I don’t believe you can create art. This has implications for the next question.

Q. What about “modern art”?

A. “Modern art” shits on any idea of art. That’s its job. It uses the same tactic that Haiku’s use of startling the viewer in some way. Like a metal bar thrown over train tracks or a cold hard slap in the face. It is about pushing the boundaries of the truth about art by holding up a disjointed mirror. Mixing in humour, puns, distaste, blankness etc – becoming little more than a collection of metaphors.

Glad I got that off my chest!

Anyway, modern art can be art in every way, or it cannot. The decision that something is art for you is subjective, it is the nature of art that isn’t. If you look at Duchchamp’s Urinal and have the same feeling I have described above (a moment of realising the contiguous nature of reality) more power to you. I would love to read why, because it doesn’t have that feeling for me.

I once wrote that art included a timeless nature, but really this is just the feeling I described above. However, as a rule of thumb I personally use: art that we will call art in a thousand years is more likely to engender those feelings in me. Urinals will – probably – not.

Q. Your definition includes subjectiveness! We want cold hard factual definitions, objective definitions!

A. Is that a question? Yes, art is by its nature mysterious. It is a crack in our minds, like humour. Why is something funny? Why is something art? It is a human thing, caused by the feeling described above. If we were able to remove the splitting dualist nature of our existence, then I think we wouldn’t have art at all. When, if, we have evolved (or been raised) to new beings of pure energy at one with the universe, then art will lose its meaning. But, then so will personal identity and, as I explained, identity is tied up with the human experience in just the same way.

So, “art” the thing has to be subjective, where as “art” the feeling is not. This is because by its very nature the concept of “objective” not only removes the viewer, but is in itself an illusion. There is no  split of “subjective” and “objective” in this universe. At all. Ever. Some have written that math is objective (granting it a priori no less), but it isn’t. Math is a collective creation of man used to map scientific (read: external) “reality”. By that very power, it is eventually doomed.

Another way of putting this is that Science, focussing as it does on one side of the coin, is the “how” and the mental states of the viewer are the “why”. The illusion is in thinking that these things are different, they are not, they are the coin*. One day we will be able to see that truly, but until then we have human endeavours that sublime our ability to describe the split and these we call art.

Q. I have some other, well thought out and lucid, objection to what you have said and I am going to outline it respectfully!

A. Great! Step up and let’s get down to it in the comments. If you want to post a larger rebuttal, by all means email it to me and I will print it on the site with full credit.

*This is, of course, incredibly hard to describe by its very nature. I caught myself writing, “they are both the coin” until I realised that this would be to accept the dual nature and be commenting on it rather than renouncing it. They are not both, they are the coin.

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Professionally produced airsoft documentary showing the positive side of airsoft.

Why?

Quote from our manifesto:

“There is an unseen sport revolution happening all across Britain. In quiet fields, unused warehouses, deserted military villages, snowy Welsh mountains and even empty shopping centres large groups of people seek each other out. Tired of the usual, more prosaic, sports they come looking for something different. Something that gets their heart beating, their lungs pumping like bellows and their natural competitive instincts taken for a thorough workout.

Dressed in military fatigues and with home-honed collections of sometimes startlingly expensive equipment, these people gather in their special places to shoot at each other with little white plastic balls.

They are playing airsoft, one of the quickest growing sports in the UK if not the world.”

…continue at airsoftfilm.com/about

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Our most recent films:

Tier 1 – Year 1	Operation Snakebite
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Quick FACTS

1. Launch date is November 2012
2. Length is going to be anything from 40 mins to an hour
3. The film will be posted on Vimeo, YouTube and available on DVD
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5. All the financial accounting will be made publicly available to sponsors

About the team:

Basho has made airsoft films for 5 years. His films are well-known in the sport and have evolved over the years into professional productions for event organisers. He uses Sony Vegas Professional to edit his works. His real life occupation is as a specialist project manager in the financial industry and so he has lots of experience in producing projects of this size. He is also a published travel writer who has visited Hong Kong and Japan: the birthplace of airsoft. He spends his time either on the field with his cameras attached or working as a senior marshal for clients such as Tier 1 Military Simulations and Fire Fight Combat Simulations.

Big D.  Big D’s passion for Airsoft began in 2006 and since then he has been involved in almost all aspects of it from playing, marshalling, training and organising. With a huge involvement and knowledge this allows him to compliment Airsoft with his speciality, cinematography. A credited, award-winning cinematographer with experience in both film and TV allows his skills in both camera and lighting help compliment the documentary visually.

]]> http://www.outsidecontext.com/2012/03/23/airsoftfilm-com-new-basho-website/feed/ 0 http://www.outsidecontext.com/2012/03/09/christopher-ward-c60-bond-review/ http://www.outsidecontext.com/2012/03/09/christopher-ward-c60-bond-review/#comments Fri, 09 Mar 2012 20:57:50 +0000 Basho http://www.outsidecontext.com/?p=8633

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.  Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.                - Oscar Wilde

Introduction.

Watches. Obsession to some and a simple way of telling the time to others.

One interesting thing about this particular obsession is that it exists equally at all the potential price brackets with people prizing cheaper, novel or outlandish watch brands just as much as the international household names. There are celebrity endorsements of almost all of these higher brands and a lot of time and money is made to convince us that these products offer us something over and above telling the time.

All that branding skews perspective.

Obsessions that you share with others can never be judged rationally. You lack the context needed to see it from the outside as you buy into the obsession. In order to see it for what it really is you need an example of the same thing in a new context that you don’t obsess over.

So, I am going to briefly mention watch obsession in the context of a different product operating on the same lines. I suppose the most direct market comparison I can make, to put watch obsession into another context, is with that of wine.

Good wine, great wine. What is the difference?

Take wine costing, say, £3 per bottle. This price is made up of £1 on the glass, 50p on the branding, 50p on the distribution and 50p for the company’s profit, which leaves 50p for the actual growing of the grapes! Now take a bottle costing £6. All the prices for glass, distribution, etc remain the same. However here there is up to £3 to spend on the grape growing.

By doubling the price of the wine we have (potentially) increased the quality by 6! However, does this increasing of price continue to improve the quality?

No, take wine costing £500 per bottle. Is that extra going into the taste? Or into the branding of the Chateaux? Is it going in someone’s pockets while pretending to be going into total intangibles, hidden behind buzz words such as “Terroir”?

The point of this digression is to highlight two things:

1. Expensive does not mean best; it only means that you buy the product for some other reason than any rational judgement of quality.
2. The world of watches is just as crazy as that of wine. So, beyond a certain price to performance ratio you are gaining nothing tangible.

How crazy you ask? Well there is a watch on the market for serious money that… doesn’t have a visible face. The watch is just blank and I don’t mean that the face is blank until you do something or press something. The watch has no way of reading time on it! You just listen to it ticking and imagine time passing!

The perfect price / performance ratio, where quality and cost dissect I shall call the Golden Mean. It is the perfect meeting point of cost and performance.

The intangible and unquantifiable element is that of style.

I was reading the other day of a man wearing a £40,000 watch (a Patek Philippe Nautilus). My wife and I wondered what would be the motivation of such a man to spend so much money on a watch. I realised that for this man, this watch did not signify telling the time at all. He had bought this watch after successfully selling his first company; he was an entrepreneur and his watch was the way he let other people know this.

Style is essentially personal. Each person’s style is unique to them. Some use it to signify membership of a certain crowd or clique. Others to signify that one is trying very hard not to be a member of any crowd, that one is an individual standing alone.

For men, the ability to differentiate one’s self from others is not easy outside of purely financial and class based indicators. Suits, shoes – clothes – can do this, but suits can easily all look alike and few men wear suits all the time.

This is why celeb’ endorsements work. We look to the rich and famous to “tell” us which brand is the best. This is all fine, except that most of the watches produced by this branding process seem to me to have little in the way of style.

Take the Omega Seamaster produced for the latest “official” James Bond endorsement; never has a classic and elegant watch been so messed up by endorsement branding.

For most men the only jewellery they wear is their watch. So it falls to this purchase, this one item, to mark them out and this urge is where watch obsession starts.

I was on this journey many years ago. I stood in Goldsmiths with 3 grand in my pocket and considered the “top brands”. Rolex Milgauss, Omega Moonwatch, Blancpain 50 Fathoms and the Bell & Ross Top Gun. I was very close to springing for an Omega Seamaster when I decided to “sleep” on it.

I was very glad that I did. That night I turned to the internet and found that there was another watch world outside the high street stores. A world where the Golden Mean still operated normally, a world that only exists on the computer until you hold it in your hands, a world of massive choice and quality.

I had found the world of Christopher Ward.

The Review.

This review is of the Christopher Ward C60, but it is also an overview of the other watches in this bracket, a look at actually wearing the final watch choice, of strapping it to show it at its best and to show that you can buy a very good watch for not very much.

Buying online seems like a risk, in both terms of quality and of style, and I hope that this review will help you take the plunge into the world of Christopher Ward with a little more confidence. I am going to show you the “Terroir” of Christopher Ward and then amaze you with the price.

£500 worth of wine for £6.

Firstly, my reasons for buying a new watch.

1. Downsizing. I was made redundant last year and needed to pay the rent to keep the roof over the head of my young family. So, I sold off my small collection of watches. Then I landed a new job and the pressure came off. So, I split the funds, giving half to my wife, and bought myself something new to wear to work.
2. Style change. All my personal electronics, bag, shoes, etc are now black. I wanted a watch that complemented that.
3. Watch quality improving. Over the last 3 years the quality of a sub £500 watch has improved considerably.

About Christopher Ward.

Christopher Ward is a watchmaker with a vision for Swiss watches: make them quintessentially British, but with the highest quality components. His works are only available online and to those in the know, spread by word-of-mouth and most definitely not by celeb’ endorsements. The company has been around now since 2004 and have turned the traditional model of hype on its head by making a luxury product for a cheap price. Following the Golden Mean to the letter.

The cheapest most expensive watches in the world.

I have owned 5 Christopher Ward watches in my time and they have all been excellent. My past favourite was the Kingfisher diving watch that I took as my watch of choice on my year travelling around the world. Its build quality meant that it survived bungee jumps, skydives, 20 sea dives, Indian heat and dust, China’s highest heights and being slathered in DEET hiking the jungles of Thailand.

Through all that it kept great time and never let me down. I regularly received compliments on the watch and its classic design, swiftly followed by open mouths when I pointed out how little it cost.

The C60 is the “big brother” of the Kingfisher and I was expecting the same build quality from this design. I wasn’t to be disappointed!

Flavours.

This watch comes in a number of flavours, including GMT versions.

I have purchased the C60-TRI-SKBRG22 commonly known as the “C60 TRIDENT AUTOMATIC – NATO VERSION”. This is a special release:

This NATO strap edition harks back to the golden era of James Bond and is introduced to mark the 50th Anniversary of 007 on our screens.

The main difference being the NATO strap as standard. Other versions have rubber straps, metal bracelets or leather and different colours bezels. The orange bezel GMT model is nice:

But I went for the lovely black bezel automatic model.

Stats

Swiss made

“Swiss made” means that the watch movement is Swiss, that the movement was put in the case in Switzerland and that the final inspection was done in Switzerland. The Swiss watch industry is by far the world most famous and this is a mark of high quality.

25/26 Jewel automatic movement

Christopher only encases automatic movements in this watch, which you get is somewhat the luck of the draw. It will be either an ETA 2824-2 or Sellita SW200-1 movement. The difference is negligible, other than the ETA is more famous. Automatic movements wind themselves when the watch is moved about and by the natural motions of the wrist. This is a fine balancing act to produce technically and such movements will need servicing every 2/3 years or they will not keep the same time as battery powered “quartz” movements. I personally like automatic movements slightly more than quartz ones because:

1. The second hand movement is smoother, not a clunky “tick”, which looks lovely.
2. The watch makes a slight creak/winding sound when moved, which can be heard when holding the watch to your ear.

While ETA movements are valued by watch “Otaku” higher than Stellia, actually given the Swiss’ attempts to tighten the market, it is going to be much easier to service the later movement in the future. Both are equal quality.

5 year Guarantee

One doesn’t like to focus on the guarantee for an item; the hope is that you won’t need it. But with most items sold in the UK having planned obsolescence built in (ever had something break just outside its 1 year warranty?) it is very special to have such a long guarantee on a watch movement. To buy from Christopher Ward is to invest in quality and for him to stand very firmly behind that. No other brand of the same class can offer this.

38 hr power reserve

This is how long the watch will wind before stopping if it is not moved. If you have a collection of watches then you can use a watch winder to keep it going. 38 hours is a good time. It also means that you shouldn’t need to wind the watch again before diving.

Marine grade stainless steel case

The case on a watch needs to be strong and tough. Christopher Ward cases are just that. This watch features a polished effect on the face of the watch and lugs and a brushed effect on the rest. After 3 years of wear my previous Christopher Ward had very few scuffs and marks, showing that this watch was made to withstand tough use.

Uni-directional bezel

The bezel on a dive watch is designed to back up your dive computer, not to replace it. However unlikely it may be that your computer will fail, it does happen and being 30ft under water is not the time to be wondering how long you have been out. The C60 is a quality instrument for this use. By turning only one way the bezel cannot accidentally move into a position that makes your dive anything but shorter. Some other makes have a bezel that turns both ways and this makes possible for the dive to go over. This may just cost you personally, medically and financially.

Screw-in crown and back plate

For a dive watch to properly function at depth, that is remain water proof, this feature is vital

30 atm (1000 feet) water resistant case

30 atm might seem a lot, but in dive watch terms this makes the C60 a watch for the diver at normal dive depths and this has been certified in the lab. There are a lot of special ISO ratings for dive watches and the C60 reaches or exceeds all the recreational ones.

Incabloc Anti-Shock

Protects the watch from damaged from being dropped. Incabloc is the trade name for a spring-loaded mounting system for the jewel bearings only used on mechanical watches

4.0mm Anti-reflective sapphire crystal

The thickness of a dive watch’s glass is vital to its ability to survive under water pressures without the glass exploding off. Anti reflective coating means that the watch can be clearly read at all angles. Sapphire has a hardness of 9 on the Mohs scale of measurement, but in real terms very few materials can scratch it, and even less that you are likely to come in contact with (diamond is one). The material can be smash however with enough force, but that force is going to have to be very high and focussed on a very small area (such as using a hammer and tungsten nail).

Adjustable bracelet with easy opening butterfly clasp

The model I bought comes with a James Bond NATO strap. Such straps are pure marmite and I will go into much more depth about strapping the C60 later in the review. Suffice to say that I have owned all the Christopher Ward dive straps (rubber, nylon, leather and steel) and they are all of excellent quality.

Super-Luminova indices, bezel marker and hands

Some people go potty over lume, and want their watches to glow with lightsabres for hands. This watch has an elegant lume that is quite easily visible in the dark (after it has charged) and stays lit for a long time. Lume of this sort is brighter initially than GLTS, but over a couple of hour’s time it will fade where as GLTS is constant and readable all the time. Which you prefer is up to you, but having owned both I definitely prefer the Superluminova style.

Unique engraved individual serial number

Christopher Ward watches are very collectible and a large online second hand market exists. I must confess to having made a profit on selling old CW’s. That is how much they hold their value. An investment in a CW is a good investment in something that has achieved long lasting charm and value.

Beautiful presentation case and owner’s handbook

There are two qualities of case available with purchases. The higher quality wooden case is simply divine and if you are giving this watch as a present I cannot recommend one enough. However, that is not to detract from the normal case. It too is highly elegant as these unboxing shots show:

Diameter: 42mm

This is a manly watch for a man’s wrists. Christopher Ward does do thinner models, but the C60 is made for “real men”. One of the things that always amazes me is when I see peoples first reaction to Rolex as they are often much smaller than people thought that they would be. Not so here, this is large but not stupidly large (like some of the omegas I have seen). You could wear this watch with anything as I will show.

Height: 13mm

As with diameter, this value is important for you to judge how the watch will look on you. 13mm is not very thick, but it isn’t thin either. It will go under a shirt with no problems.

Weight: 189g

Another well balanced statistic. I have another dive watch that adds serious weight to my arm and I have actually bruised my arm by it swinging around. By contrast the C60 is weighted towards elegance.

The C60 face

The Christopher Ward website states:

The Trident series unashamedly takes its design cues from the iconic 1954 Rolex GMT Master which was the world’s first ever dual-time watch – and the C60 Trident – Pro Automatic is no exception.

There are two schools of thought regarding homage to “classic” watches. The first says, “Bang on!” and won’t wear anything but a “pure” homage that is almost identical. These are owners who don’t mind explaining to people that, “No, actually this isn’t a 10 grand Rolex, it’s a £350 homage…” I don’t like this for 3 reasons:

1. My friends think I’m pretentious enough already thanks.
2. I wouldn’t buy a Porsche Boxter for the same reason as, if I wanted (or could afford) a Porsche, I would have a 911.
3. You may end up trying to convince someone that your watch isn’t a “real” Rolex while they try and rob you with knives. And they won’t be impressed when you turn out to be right… (Of course you could do what Bond did in the “Live and Let Die” novel and use it as a knuckle duster!)

Such brands as the otherwise excellent Steinhart suffer from these effects and that made me take a pass on their wares.

The C60 has just enough kept in the design to “suggest” a Rolex without actually looking all that like one. It could quite as easily be compared to the Brightling colt:

Thanks to the date position.

Frankly that this watch can be mentioned in the same breath as two of the best designed watches of all time, while retaining its own sense of style, is bloody brilliant.

It is truly a winner and its own brand, not just a cheap homage to “better” makers charging well over the Golden Mean. I have held and tried on all of the watches I have mentioned in this review (so far) and I can say that the C60 is not outshined by any of them.

The face of a watch is the part you will be looking at the most. So it is really important to like it. I have sent back watches before (the Traser H3 was one) because the face just didn’t inspire me when on the wrist. Being a dive watch, this face is open and focussed on being readable. I found it to be very elegant as did my expert-branding-consultant wife who, being fed up with my research into watches, wanted to hate it on sight. However, when she actually saw it for the first time, she stopped, took a moment, looked up a me and said, “Very nice”.

A solid endorsement!

The case back.

Being a dive watch the back is a screw in case with no window. Don’t open it if you plan to dive, which I do. So I have no pictures of the insides

Wearing and strapping the C60

My C60 came with the NATO strap.

My large arms mean that I have on occasion had the metal CW strap pop open by my wrist pushing against the button when touching my fingers to my wrist. Since then CW has released a new strap type and I may very well get one in.

This was a special edition release in honour of James Bond, who wore the Rolex GMT in many a bond film. Bond is a marmite character like his choice of straps. After all he shoots people all the time, treats women abominably and, unlike myself (I’ve tried) can play cards after 6 Vespers. However, not only Bond wore the Rolex GMT.

So did Magnum PI!

Ok, perhaps not so impressive, but he’s a cool manly guy.

Also did Picasso.

Too crazy? Try Marlon Brando.

Too right wing, try Che Guevara.

Too communist, how about Lance Armstrong?

In other words, this style of watch is for everyone – not just divers!

My wife loved the C60 on the NATO and I did too, I will definitely have it in “strap rotation”. The quality of the nylon means that it is never going to fall off and that the fit is going to be like a glove (even when over gloves).

NATOs do sometimes need trimming to fit, which is something done carefully with a sharp knife, a metal ruler and (in my case) a crème brule blowtorch! Also note that a NATO can be scratchy for a month or so, until your sweat has weakened it, then it will become very comfortable to wear. They also eventually wear out and need replacing. Depends on your use, but always give them a wash in fresh water to clean off dirt and sea salt.

I also have another NATO, called a “Fake Bond”, on which the watch looks great too.

Then, last in my NATO collection is a nice leather edition that is very soft and with a little polish (to be darker) looked rather nice.

Then I got serious.

Hirsch make some of the finest straps in the world. You can spend more on a Hirsch strap than I did on the watch! Their straps include the excellent Hirsch Knight and I went down to Debenhams to try one on.

KNIGHT
EXOTIC, EMBOSSED LEATHER

Powerful men’s bracelet made from precious calf skin with perfect alligator grain effect – and with that variation of dark and light shades that is normally only found in genuine alligator hide. Knight combines modern design and the time-honoured “belt look” that is underlined by the elaborate finish of the edges which is applied by hand three times. Pleasantly soft and supple on the skin thanks to waterproof HIRSCH Oysterglove Supersoft lining leather.A very special embossing process creates the natural Louisiana alligator grain on particularly fine calf skin. The characteristic alligator grain effect is achieved with the variation of dark and light shades between the scales. HIRSCH

Love at first sight.

A good strap can “make” a watch and the Black Knight makes this watch into something very special indeed. I went for the black with white stitching version which sets off both the bezel and white detailing.

The underside leather is waterproof mean that day to day use as well as sporting use is covered and will only need swapping out when diving. I was planning to swap on and off the CW NATO while attending Military Simulation events, but I took some shots of the look alongside some my “equipment” and I have to say I think it looks extremely good.

Other watches I considered.

Any fair review shows the competition to the final choice. My budget for this purchase was a total cost of around £400, but I would push the boat out for something extra special. Here are the other watches I looked at that I consider the competition to the C60.

Steinhart DLC

I mentioned Steinhart before and this was the model I looked at. DLC coating is all the rage these days and this watch has a solid and aggressive look which I like a lot. It comes in around £350 – £400 from a fine firm in Germany. I passed on it in the end because it was too much like a Rolex; a pure homage.

CWC SBS

Now this is nice, and British! However, I had questions regarding the reliability over time. Also the second hand market is probably the place to get one. So, I am going to ask my SF Friend when he comes back from Afghanistan to try and get me one. You hear that Richard?

Traser H3

This review was almost about this watch, but it is much smaller than it looks on the screen meaning it didn’t suit me. Looks good on a NATO though. It may suit some smaller wrists though and has brilliant features. £300 from here.

Upgrades.

Well from this starting point, you are not going to get any more style points below £1000. However, great watches in the £700+ bracket include the Hamilton Jazzmaster Maestro, the MKII range (if you can ever get one) and you can pick up an Omega Seamaster on EBay for around 700 notes.

Final analysis.

I really like CW and his company ethics:

We believe that ethics and morality in business are critically important and do our very best to ensure, wherever we can, that Christopher Ward operates to the highest standards in these areas. For instance, we only use conflict-free diamonds in our diamond watches that are traceable via the Kimberley Process and our alligator straps are from managed farms that are signed up to the United Nations CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered species of wild flora and fauna) certification scheme. It helps that we are a small company and that we know all our suppliers personally and visit them regularly, however, as a young company we also recognise there is still much to be done and that a process of continual improvement is vital if we are to succeed ethically, morally and ecologically. We are committed to developing an ethics programme using the guidance of The Institute Of Business Ethics (see below) that will help us live and work by standards that we and our customers expect.

That alone would always make him a contender, but add that he makes some of the most stylish British watches and I will always put his brand at the top if the list. Not all his watches are home runs, some of the women’s ones are a definite miss, but he stays away from being too closely a homage and that is an important thing. The brand is solid.

The watch itself is solid too. Prices have been creeping up over the years, but so has the quality. The watch is unique and I get lots of questions and complements about my CW Watches.

The good.

• A manly watch that Bond himself would feel happy to wear.
• British maker!
• Great internals, great time keeping.
• Cheap as chips considering the competition.
• Stylish and unique.
• A proper diving watch for people who dive.
• This: “As the owner of a Christopher Ward watch, if ever you need to get hold of us we are at your service.”

The bad.

• The bezel is ever so slightly misaligned, which is common to watches at this price but always winds me right up.
• NATOs are marmite
• The date position is not perfectly in the place of the four mark, so it takes a little getting used to.
• May not suit very thin wristed men.

The ugly.

What watch you wear is a First World Problem. People all over the world are starving, dying in agony and suffering in silence. Spare yourself a moment each day to remember them. Practice compassion and mindfulness in everything you do. Try and do something to help make the world a better place.

Regards,

Basho
To buy this watch, or visit the makers site, click on this link: Christopher Ward

You can also get a Hirsch Knight here:

 

 
Please note our recommendations and affiliates policy.

All pictures used with permission.

I sat on the balcony and considered the view. The remote 7800ft high mountain town of Shimla flowed over the hills in front of our hotel. The roofs were the playgrounds of large collections of violent monkeys that tumbled and swung over the closely knitted but strangely British architecture.

That wasn’t the breathtaking thing.

Past that collection, that pottage of houses, the ground dropped away, sloping down, creating a valley and a roll of hills sweeping off into the undulating distance.

That, admittedly lovely, view was also not the breathtaking thing.

After the houses, monkeys and hills sat a horizon spanning collection of giant mountains forming a snow covered range of sky-high rock that glittered in the far distance. It was daring to be explored.

That was the mountains of the Himalayas, containing Nepal, Tibet and beyond… China.

Now that was breathtaking.

Watching all that gigantic history, a carve of glaciers through the Earth, the results – no doubt – of the shifting tectonic plates of some long ago Jurassic collision, was stunning. Ancient temples were hidden in those forbidding peaks. Hidden valleys of almost untouched beauty were masked by the high snows. Visiting that wilderness, one of our last places, is still for only the very adventurous traveller. Get it wrong out there, not make local friends willing to help, not find your way and you could be lost for good or trapped by six months of snow in some remote Buddhist Shangri-La. Actually, that wouldn’t be so bad.

I couldn’t have felt further from the “civilised” world as my eyes played over the distant peaks and I imagined the disconnected loneliness of wandering amongst them…

The hotel room’s doorbell rang and Cesca answered it, “Your Domino’s pizza is here,” she shouted to me.

Well, you can’t stay off the grid forever, right?

We had come to this high place for the cool air, after what happened in Jaipur.

In Jaipur we had gone a little mad.

Jaipur is the great pink city of India, a private coloured aesthetic chosen for a visiting British prince and never washed off the walls. It is a more centralised and established city than either Jodhpur or Jaisilmere.

We stayed at a “city” hostel and went out to see the centre. It was very touristy and I remember feeling gouged by our car trip around. Then we got the idea of visiting the observatory.

Ancient observatories were the plaything of the Rana’s and, back in the day, the absolute height of technological achievement. Using the power of the sun and movements of the stars, the giant instruments can tell the time down to an astonishing 15 seconds accuracy. There were all sorts of instruments on display in the wide open park and we had a great deal of fun trying them all out. One announced that the next day was my birthday.

Unfortunately, coming to this park in such heat and sun was not so much fun. We drank litre after litre but nothing worked. The temperature was reaching towards mid 40′s and my poor British brain could not take anymore. Nor could Cesca’s laptop, which gave up the ghost and died; its components unable to cool themselves down.

During one tuk tuk journey in the city I recall us descending into shouting at each other,

“Why are you shouting!?” Cesca screamed back matching me for decibels

“Because my brain is on fire!” I screamed in response. Then we both laughed.

We needed air-conditioning.

So, we checked into a very high-end hotel with a wonderful pool and excellent rooms to enjoy my birthday in comfort together. This was a few days of bliss and we went from hating it to loving every moment. I spent an afternoon explaining quantum theory to a couple of younger teenage youths who had got chatting to us.

A few days of air-conditioned luxury and we were ready to go on.

We visited the Amber fort and realised the sort of power and money it would take to build such a place.

The gardens especially were beautiful.

As was the locals’ clothing.

The Cesca got the idea of heading up the mountains.

“It will be much cooler!” she declared and then went into the importance, history and personal connections she had with the place and how much research she had done and how we would get there and so forth. I would like to say I heard all this, and I nodded along like all good husbands, but frankly she had me at “cooler”.

Hell may well be cooler than Jaipur. I kept expecting my trousers, containing as they did the sort of hairy English legs designed for insulation against the arctic winds of the North Sea, to spontaneously combust.

To get to Shimla is a trek in itself. Firstly we booked onto a train heading to Kalka from which we could catch the UNESCO World Heritage List Kalka–Shimla Railway up the mountain. Travelling C-Class to Kalka was a welcome luxury (it is an excellent service) and we were feeling a little pampered by the time we arrived at the station for the mountain train.

Then we came down with a bump.

The queue for tickets was so long it went out the door and down the street. It seems that pre-booking was vital. The train was due to leave any moment and I was feeling that we were totally buggered when I spied a closer kiosk with hardly any queue at all. I waited there and bought two cheap tickets.

This was going to be fun I thought to myself.

Walking down the train we got a good look at it. The front was the sort of lovely 12 person carriages that we had experienced in Ooty. Picturesque and quaint with plenty of room to stretch out and enjoy the journey. These were all laced with tourists.

Then you had serviceable mid range carriages, obviously for the professionals just going home.

Then you had unreserved third.

I am sure that you have a picture in your mind of what this looked like, and I am equally sure that this picture is accurate apart from the scale of the train. It is much smaller than you imagine, so pack all those bodies into half the space.

The people inside eyed me approaching and the size of my backpacks with as much trepidation as I did of the space left. They were clearly all expecting me to push, shove and force my way on. Just another rude Brit throwing his ill mannered weight around.

There was only one thing to do:

I would love to write that I did the Indian head wiggle and it worked its magic, but what I did was let Cesca go first, armed with her million volt smile, genial nature and local dress.

Suddenly everything changed. Their wide starring eyes softened, mother’s nudged people to move and everyone shuffled along until some small semblance of space was found and Cesca and I were accepted onto the train. I exchanged smiles and nods with the locals (we were the only tourists travelling this class). Their welcome meant that I felt another little spark of love for India light up my heart.

It is a good place and I miss it.

Cesca sat on our bags and I stood as the train pulled out. On leaving Kalka, the train entered the foothills and immediately commenced its climb up 4500ft of seriously big country.

The line has 864 bridges, but I didn’t count them. Some of them don’t look too safe and flying across them, along the side of deep ravines, raised the hairs on my neck. The locals in the carriage didn’t bat an eye lid.

One particular bridge was a collection of arches one atop the other, 5 high! I like train journeys, even when standing the whole way, and this one was one of the most visually impressive I ever took. It was a long journey to stand through in unreserved 3rd class though… 96km at that speed is very leg tiring.

You can check out this journey and some of the stories about the amazing people who work the railway on the BBC documentary series on the Great Railways of India.

Cesca fell asleep and I looked at her: she had the peaceful face of an angel. I took out my phone and snapped a picture of her peace. Not that I needed to, I can recall that softly smiling face whenever I want, it is burned into my memory.

Shimla was won from the Nepalese in 1816 and since then the British have fallen deeply in love with the place. Summer home to the Raj rulers of India and the Colonial offices, Shimla became a famous place for the rich, the connected and the romantic. The train, itself a major feat of engineering, was finalised around 1910 and ever since then people have been able to “nip up Shimla” and go skiing. Skiing… in India…

Finally, near the end, enough people had got off for us to sit.

The air cooled sure enough and eventually the mountains gave way and we arrived in Shimla.

Leaving the train I immediately felt weaker putting on my pack. Our booked hotel was a mile or so away, no problem normally, but at this height (what with the weaker air) I was finding my backpack hard going. We waved away the two men who offered to assist and started up the hill towards the hotel.

They followed at a respectful pace.

We made it to the hotel, but the men following us knew something we didn’t – it was terrible. One look and we left.

They approached.

Their look was different, a type of Indian cultural type I had not met before. Handsome men of quite thin build, containing a wiry strength and sporting beards of a certain cut. Like mountain Fremen. The beards gave it away:

“You are Kashmiri?” I asked.

“Yes, sir!” the first answered, his English excellent.

“Cesca, look,” I said to her with excitement in my voice, “it’s one of the famous Kashmiri touts of Shimla!”

She regarded him coolly.

The Kashmiri’s are a lovely people, but the chancers touting for tourists in Shimla are legendary. Guide books and websites have whole sections dedicated to how much these guys rip you off, stitch you up, muck you around and screw you over all while faking such high quality friendliness that meeting one in the flesh was almost worth the trip on its own.

Cesca flipped open the Lonely Planet (the kryptonite to the tout) and pointed in no uncertain terms at the page.

“Take us here”, she said.

They plucked our bags from our backs and zoomed off like two mountain goats as if the 80litre packs were made of feathers. We actually struggled in keeping up with them without our packs and that is no exaggeration. They were able to keep up full conversation with us the entire journey through town.

The route ran along a ridge with buildings each side. This was a British promenaded style road leading through the “Mall” historic centre with amazing views of distant mountains one side and good looking restaurants on the other.

The promenade would not have looked out of place in Brighton or Atlantic City.

The innumerable hills on all sides were covered in houses all atop each other and as you got lower down the slopes they became in some places squalid. The core British architecture was prominent and Victorian looking, befitting a town with such important history. It was nice and I must admit, combined with the drop in temperature, I felt very much at home.

We passed through this part, passed a beautiful English style church, and up the hills onto the “Ridge” proper.

Of course they took us to a different hotel than we asked for and pressured us into taking a room there. No chance. Cesca stood firm and after a little confrontation (obviously their fee was being paid by the hotel – they refused any money from us, the classic tale) we were taken to the one she had specified. Their shock at our instance on that hotel, ruminations about the quality of our choices and begrudging to take us where we wanted was all as fake as their bonhomie. All a part of a game, all an elaborate dance and one that Cesca and I knew very well. They meant no harm and we took none. Frankly I was so tired from our trip that I was happy to let it all wash over me. We trudged up the hills.

After another confrontation, this time with the hotel (who tried to gouge us) we took a room. It wasn’t much, one of the grottier rooms I had been in for a while, but the bed was clean and free of pests, so Cesca sent me out for food. I went down to the restaurant and it was closed so I knocked on the kitchen door. It creaked open and 30 pairs of eyes looked at me from the darkness. The kitchen was packed full of half naked men eating bowls of rice in the dark. My mind tore itself from this and considered the cleanliness.  The only thing one could reliably order from this kitchen was a hospital trip.

“Sorry, wrong door lads,” I said and left.

Returning to Cesca she expressed dismay that there was nothing to eat without getting up and walking into town.

“How about something from home?” I asked.

She shrugged.

I went online and found that much to my surprise there was a Domino’s pizza in Shimla and ordered up a large pepperoni.

Sitting on the balcony eating my first pizza in 9 months and looking out at the view was something I won’t forget. I love pizza, but to suddenly have Domino’s after only eating local food for months was adventurous in itself. I have never felt so stuffed up and decadent.

“How would you like to walk over that mountain?” I asked Cesca.

“Not on this trip!”

“No,” I replied a little wistfully, “but Bodhidharma walked into China that way… and one day I will too”

And I will, oh yes. Mark my words.

The next day we took off into Shimla and met one of the most interesting people on our entire trip…

This is a “Special Edition” of my Hong Kong at night film.

The beautiful skyline of Hong Kong at night! Come with us through the brightly lit, and empty of people, Business District and then over the river to Kowloon Bay to look back. The buildings all come to life with colours and lights embedded in their structure that forms a fantastic light show. Finally we visit the vibrant and busy center of town and see some of the amazing flashing neon screens and lights around the streets thronged with people.

Hong Kong is one of the cities that inspired the look of the film Blade Runner and so I have set the film to the score- hope you like it!

The Basho Special Editions are high definition re-renders of my prior work using some of the techniques and knowledge I have learned since first making them. This film is the last of that collection and the next will be a new slice of China.

Changes to the original:
Stablised some shots
Rotated some of the shots to true
Recoloured correctly using professional filters
Sound cleanup
1080p Render in YT friendly wmv (mp4 juddered)

Things I couldn’t fix:
I couldn’t get the slow mo to become any smoother without losing tons of detail.
There is a lot of noise due to the fog that night. My camera is a basic job and does its best to compensate, but lots remains.

Kind regards,

Basho

This film is a compilation of clips and unseen footage from the games I attended run by Tier 1 Military Simulation.

Before 2011 I had not played much milsim, now… well I recently laid in a puddle from 1am, freezing cold and surrounded by poisonous mushrooms, for 8 hours to spring an ambush!

I fell asleep and started snoring.

Moments later I was awoken by a wet weight crashing down on my back. Team commander Trip had thrown a log at me, missed, hit a tree and it had collapsed a rotten limb across my sprawled form. Had the opposition walked past at that particular moment then they would have heard the rest of the concealed team completely failing to stop laughing.

At 6 am a stag deer came into the forest, only yards from me. It nibbled the leaves and then it sensed something was wrong. It couldn’t see us, but it could now smell us. Then someone moved and I saw its face as it realised that it was standing amongst 15 humans disguised as forest floor, buried under leaves and mud. With two hurried bounds it was gone.

Milsim is great fun, I recommend it. If you are worried if you can “hack” it, don’t be. You can, physically – it’s mentally you have to be ready for. After 24 hours in game (with 12 to go) you will be tired, frayed, frazzled and still in combat.

And it will be raining.

It’s at this point you will be ready to curse everyone around you. Your teammate with the better kit, your team leader sending YOU out on stag, the world for putting you in this place and especially the opposition who WILL attack you during the night… sometime during the night. So no sleeping without your eye protection on and a firearm to hand.

Photo’s taken during milsim show tough men turning to jelly. That is your challenge, can you stay mentally strong? Enough to work as a team? After all team play means sacrifice…

So why do it? Because, the harder the game and the more realistic the mission then all the more rewards are there to enjoy. Sure, the lows in milsim can be tough, but the highs… the highs are simply the best airsoft in the world.

It was our side who attacked the enemy camp in the dark. Unleashing a battle of epic proportions as we had surprise but, like cornered rats, the enemy had nowhere to go and so turned and fought. This was followed the next day with a counter ambush on our troops that led to a 2.5 hour long contact.

2.5 hours of unrelenting, balls-deep airsoft action.

So much can be done with 2 hours, tactics… hell, strategy as the teams probe each other. flank, flank back, rush, fall back and lay up. It’s incredible. Players acting together as a team in ways never seen in airsoft, all commanded smoothly and everyone gets their oats. Eventually one side withdraws after running out of troops, this was my side and the opposition followed us only to walk straight into our IED’s laid behind us by our pyro expert (an army EOD).

Milsim is worth the cold, the wet and the mentally brutal. It’s one of the best ways to release stress and tension I know. It is also the best way to meet new and interesting people (and shoot them) that I can imagine.

You will look back at your weekend, you will see your moment of glory in a film (of mine perhaps?) and you will smile as you remember the feeling of achievement that only comes from playing at this level.

We call it Tier 1. It’s the way I play airsoft.

Happy Christmas,

Basho

Tier 1 – Year 1 from Basho Matsuo on Vimeo.

Here is a quick cut, colour and render of the Helicopter Assault during Tier One’s Rolling Thunder Milsim event.

I have put this together at the request of a friend, this isn’t the official film — I am doing an “end of year special” — this is just to wet your appetites!

Rolling Thunder was a 36 hour combat mission created and run by Tier One Military Simulations. They are the cutting edge of airsoft in the UK and for two select teams on the US side this included a dawn assault from the air!

Their objective? To capture the Taliban leader known as “Panther” hiding in an Afghan village.

Did they succeed?

You will have to wait to find out!

Comments welcome!

Regards,

Basho