The Little World

” Well?

Where is it? Where’s the last part of the title? We paid for the whole damn title…”

I’ll get round to it eventually…but first a word about sloth for modellers. The word is  – slow down.

No sense rushing a modelling job. Slow and steady wins the race. A good job well begun is halfway done. Don’t step in the umgawa. All good advice, and all likely to see your Little World grind to a halt like a cross-threaded bolt. You’ll be lucky to finish the benchwork, let alone the railway. The hull will never be done. Half a fuselage…

Procrastination, sloth, laziness, government employment…call it what you will, slow motion is the death of the Little World. Or more precisely, it is worse than death – because it does not let you free to start again. If you never get past the first stages, you lose interest, money, and half the detail parts into the carpet. The kit stagnates and you become contemptuous of it. The whole subject occupies so much of your time that you tire – and another Little World dies unborn.

Sit up! Get up! Start up! Get the damn thing to the point where it looks like the picture on the box! Even if it is a distorted picture, or badly coloured, or lumpy with glue fingerprints. You’ll be infinitely happier that something exists and that you’ve had a hand…or gluey fingers…in the process. No-one will make a perfect first model. No-one will make a perfect tenth model. With a bit of luck they won’t ever make a perfect model – but every one that they see through to completion will be a valuable lesson and a boost to their pride.

And that’s the next sin…