The Little World

Move over. I want to put something down.

No, not there, it’s bigger than the space. Move over more.

Look, just pop outside and sit on the grass. There’s not enough room in the house for you and my hobby at the same time…

The elephant in the corner of the room that we never talk about is the elephant in the corner of the room – and the fact that it occupies most of the space between to sofa and the TV. Or put another way, our hobbies take up more space than we do.

Yes, I’m looking at you. You with the 56 shelves of books, kit, tools, armour, weapons, photographs, camping gear, and souvenirs of the Battle Of Manangatang. The person with the 56 flagons of home-brewed mead fermenting under the

BOOOOM!

The 55 flagons of home-brewed mead under the stairs. Clean it up when you’re finished reading.

We all give over far more space in or dwellings, offices, and sheds to our hobbies than ever we give to most of the other aspects of our lives. We all have a need for finances, but how many hobbyists have a desk dedicated to personal finances and earning money. We all need to engage in bettering our heath, but how many treadmills lie rusting and how many nutrition books sit unread as we slump over the hobby bench. It is only the fear of being judged a public nuisance that drives some of us to shower daily…

We spend money to store or hobbies – and to store what might be peripherally useful to our hobbies. I have a pile of off-cuts from projects that use in several cubic metres of shed space – if I was wise I would get in a skip and heave them. But I save them in case I need to do something with warped MDF board. The sod of that situation is, I really DID do something with warped MDF board a couple of years ago and it worked out wonderfully well. If I had failed miserably then,I would be far better off now…

There it is. That’s the barb in the hook. If we succeed in making or doing something we then spend hundreds in preserving the results – or just the memory of them. It’s only the hobby cooks that get to make their triumphs disappear.

( Their failures also disappear – down the same S-bend that takes the successes. There’s a philosophy for you…)