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« Last post by Hannibal on November 08, 2025, 10:18:52 AM »
Dear Brian,
This is a very sad news !!!
Youhave managed a sister of 'the Little Tin Toy Soldier" in the UK and contributed to spread the passion of the flat tin figures on the British Island these last decades, withe the support also of the BFFS (I presume initially only British), and Western Miniatures, and Mike Taylor and his friends ...
And this with passion, tenacity, friendness, kindness and this even well beyond the United Kingdom through your numerous messages, meetings to shows on the European continent.
I could also notice how repeatively you have re-stimulated our apathy on the forum, many times, foring us the go back to our brushes with shame and re-activate the painting of these characters we let sleeping in our boxes and drawers, requesting to justify our silence ....
Thank you for this, and personnally I have to recognize your are my best friend on the BFFS, the name amail and link I could contact and call at any time during the past 12 years (yes I started from scratch 12 years ago), and always get a reply, an proposal, a solution, and a package sent rapidly ....
Thank you for this friendship which, I hope, will continue mutually!!!
But I understand that as time goes on, age also, we come each of us to a point when we have to slow down, and plan to solve the question "what shall I do with all my grey armies, accumulated' ... if one day I disappear.
I have also many flats unpainted, including from Benedikt, and I you need some to satisfy your demandds, I shall ship them to you as gift....
I looked at your side, once more, to contribute also to your clean-up and there is one set attracting my attention. It is one I bought 12 years ago when I started with flats (2013), three small flats referring to this famous English litterature: Sherlock Holmes and the Hond of the Baskervilles. I had them in my hands, I cleaned them up, planned their colouration, and .... they disappeared in my many boxes, withut hope to recover them. I would well buy you one set, if you still have one, and paint in, in an autumn falling darkness, between cats and dogs, and a fanal in the hands of Sherlock, lightening the eyes of the forest hound which discovered the assassinated man on the floor !! Let me know ...
Hoping to see you once more on this planet !!! I have a plan to go to the UK early next year, but it is to visit a nephew of my wife in Edinburgh by air, I we are able to get a visa, since travel reqyieremnts require nowadays more paperwork than when the UK were part of the continent. I can' any longer jump on a train to cross the Channel overnight as I did when working with our subsidiaries in a American, then Japanese company till my 65.
God bless you Brian, hoping to be in touch with you for this wonderful passion for many years still in front of us.
Michel