The Little World

We are told that we have all sorts of memory:

a. The regular sort that lets you down when you are looking for the car keys.

b. Muscle memory that is supposed to guide you to the perfect golf shot or dance step. And it does…it does. As you develop it you find that you dance like Jack Nicklaus and putt like Nijinsky…

c. Holistic memory where water remembers that it once contained an aspirin and 5,000,000 dilutions later is supposed to be able to cure a headache.

d. Racial memory which is very useful to tell people about if you want to riot and steal televisions whilst receiving a government pension.

e. Induced memory – when a lawyer would like you to remember some injury that he can be paid for.

All useful things. All as current as the football results. But none of them as much help to the Little World model builder as the Modellers Memory – the ability to remember what would have been perfect if you only still get it. Or if you had only kept it. Or how good your model of the Lancaster was before the string broke and it fell off the light fitting…

I remembered recently, which accounts for the smell. I remembered felt-tip pens that contained enamel paint – not ink – and were available in red, green, blue, silver, and black. I remembered them from when my daughter was 3 years old – 37 years ago. She grabbed my stash and a packet of extremely expensive art paper and proceeded to draw three-year-old’s pictures of spacemen and cows and the lady at the library. I have never been so lucky – the paint in the markers was good quality and so was the paper…and I have these treasures as fresh today as they were then. I was wise enough to write on them what they were meant to be and I can see that they are.

Okay. I remembered the paint markers when I needed to do some model building that involved making window frames on clear polycarbonate sheet. The regular ink markers, both water and alcohol based, did the job but faded away in a day. Plastic sheet has none of the retention of paper. I needed paint. And no-one in the town knew what I was talking about – until I hit my local art store.

Jacksons Drawing Supplies is an art and graphics store – that probably is aimed more at the wannabee artists than the real ones. The staff members are either super helpful or super painful, depending upon how their own art careers are going. I’m lucky – the branches near me are staffed by people who are at peace with themselves. I can go in and ask questions and come out with my head still on my shoulders. I asked about the ink pens and Lo! …exactly what I remembered in exactly the colour I needed on a half-price sale. I may have bought 4 x the number I need…

It worked perfectly. I used one. Now I have three more…I shall hide them from the 40-year-old daughter in case she has more spacemen drawings to do…