The Little World

If you are lichen…not a lot. Then again, you’ll never get to see much of the world on your holidays. You’ll end up being jealous of the toadstools and mushrooms…because they are such fungis…*

The question is how much action do you need to have in your Little World to make it come alive – and how realistic does it need to be. The answer to this will depend on a number of factors:

a. Age.

If you are 5, the dolls, puppets, and plastic figures in your Little World are alive – no question about that. And they are able to do far more than anyone seeing them can imagine. They are faithful companions to your day and know most of your secrets.

If you are 17 nothing is real – not even you. You are far too cool, blasé, and bad to be bothered with imagining a Little World. You are far too inexperienced and scared to cope with the Big World. You’re in a shitty place, but you don’t know it.

When you’re middle-aged, like 40 or more – you can make a Little World with better equipment and finer details than when you were 5, but you’ll have to work a lot harder to get the creatures who live in that world to move and live. You’ll need wiring diagrams, track plans, virtual reality headsets, R/C equipment, several airbrushes, and a pretty stiff credit card. Don’t worry unduly about that card being too stiff – by the time you get your Little World even halfway decent it will be pretty damn limp…

After 60 you can play again. No-one expects you to be sophisticated, intellectual, or even sane. You can wear old clothes and scratch yourself and build models and write the script for your life in your own Little World without fear of correction. When your eyesight and hearing go you’ll be satisfied with bigger shapes and brighter colours.

b. Finances.

Yes, you can have an entire Little World controlled by computers, levers, solenoids, and paid servants crouching underneath the baseboard. All you need to do is pay for it. The hobby shops all have cash registers and the sales assistants are trained to operate them.

Alternately, you can have no money and still succeed – but you must decide to succeed at a different thing. You must find a Little World that can be made cheaply and set to it. What Little World could possibly be cheap?

Well, a model village is a possibility. Not a model town made of ceramic ready-to-set-out houses with lights inside – these are as expensive as Fabergé eggs in the hobby shops. A village made of card houses and stick and foam trees. A village that just grows as you find old things about. A small village, but one that you build by yourself. And remember, if you have a spot of spare garden you can have a beautiful outdoor model village for the price of clay, sand, and gardening.

Most of us are somewhere in the middle – we can buy some things and make others, and really we are only limited by the next paragraph…

c. Space.

If you are a Little World creator and you live in a bed-sitter in Tokyo or Battersea you will be scrapping for space. Just daily living with a wardrobe, cooking, and somewhere to sit will be tough to find. Your Little World may be little indeed. You may have to limit it to a card table, a tea-table or a mantlepiece. But remember that some of the best layouts, doll’s houses, and dioramas have been made in just such a small compass. The Japanese can do wonders with scissors, paper, and a shoebox.

On the other end of the spectrum is the Little World creator with an entire English garden or American basement to play with. They may be able to thrust aside any other usage of their space and install a universe – and the universe may steam, hum, move,  and live far more than the creator!

Airplane flyers can have a whole sky to use – or at least as much sky as is encompassed by the local sports field. They unfortunately have to share radio space and audio space as well, and the people who have no love for Little World activities will always want to see them away and gone. There are more muggles than you would think in more places than you expect.

d. Time.

If you have only an hour a week to play, your play will be short. You may be able to make it rich but you’ll need the imagination of that 5-year-old to do it. If you can find an hour a day you can really start to create and to benefit. More than that is just Heaven.

But remember that you need to see some benefit from the time. Don’t rush, but don’t stall. Plan something, make something, do something in those hours.

e. Other People’s Permission

Well, there had to be a fly in the custard somewhere, didn’t there? Many Little Worlds need planning permission from the police, the civil aviation authority, the  council, the wife, the landlord, the neighbours, and the children. The fewer of these departments that you need to consult, the better. I am not saying that you should cock a snook at them or fly in their faces, but in the Little World…God bless the child who’s got his own…

This means that if you can arrange to construct and operate your Little World on your own piece of the Big World, do so. If you do not need permission from someone to do something, do not seek it – indeed do not seek it even if you do…many ventures have been operating nicely for years without any official interference because no-one has yet suggested to officials that they should interfere.

There is a moral message for the Little World creator in this – and it also applies to the Artistic World creator. You are far better off to regard neither the approval nor the disapproval of others toward your efforts. Please yourself, insofar as you can be pleased.

f. Beauty

You might not think that you can make beauty in a Little World, but you can. You do every time you build something that looks right in your eyes. It may not be perfect, but then…pardon my honesty…neither are you. Or me. Just do your best and you will add a little more to your life.

* Dad joke #45.