The Little World

I am starting to think that I am underprivileged – with more possessions than I can use, more food than I can eat, and more booze than I can survive…but still missing a vital tool for model kit building.

I do not own a green mat.

Everyone else on the Little World seems to have one that is made of a flexible plastic and is marked out in yellow squares. Some sort of scale ruler is marked onto the side and the effect is very professional. I am doing it cheap and hard with a wooden plank inside an empty cat litter tray. A clean litter tray, I hasten to point out. I may be odd, but I am not that odd.

Like most of the best Little Workshop facilities, the building box is extremely cheap – the tray was free and the plank was a cut-off from building the house. The fact that it is 25 years old is also appealing – it means that I kept it for some purpose, even though i had no idea what that purpose was to be.

This thought encourages me to survey the rest of the shed and see what I can find that is sitting there bursting with potential goodness under a patina of neglect. I already depend upon three boxes of leftover nuts, bolts, and screws that I inherited to do most of the Steingeneering projects around the place and count it as a glorious day when I can find enough matching fasteners to screw together whatever it is I’ve designed without having to go to the hardware store. I recognise the local Bunnings as a dangerous place to be – both in the forecourt where they sell sausages in a bun and down the aisles where they sell mitre saws. The less I visit the better for my wallet.

Will I succumb to a green mat at the upcoming annual plastic model exhibition? Not if the Decal Man or the Tool Man are there – my spending money is already dedicated. And there will be fly-in backyard sellers with rare kits that don’t make it to the shelves of the local shops. I’ll bet the local retailers hate that, but it’s a free country and I can at least look…