The Little World

I spoke to a person who reads this column regularly. It was in his modelling room and he was in the midst of his favourite activity; making models for wargaming. In this he has a mind of his own and is not afraid to use it. He also uses everything else that can possibly come to hand.

I counted wooden skewers, tongue depressors, toothpicks, screws, nuts, drawer knobs, and countless other craft-shop and crap-shop purchases being glued, clamped, and painted to make fleets of spacecraft for an interplanetary war.

Apparently Mars is winning, but the French are going to dispute the field shortly…

No-one else I have ever met has the scratchbuilding skill seen here and the imagination to make use of it. He is modelling for a wider scene – both the visual aspect as well as the operational and gaming. Truly an independent mind.

Would that we could all develop this. I have my 1:72 model air field, museum, and airport and use them as props and locations for miniature photography. Others may have the skill to take standard models and make such realistic dioramas of them as to transcend the kits that they started from.

But some seem just content to build plastic models from cardboard boxes and then stack the results on shelves. Not to decry their skills – which seem in some cases to be far greater than mine – but I keep looking for a wider application or more organised plan. Perhaps they have one but it has not taken concrete form yet.