The Little World

It is said to be a long way to Tipperary but it cannot be much further than the distance between the modern Airfix kit and the 50¢ baggie of my childhood.

Today’s work on the Grumman Martlet emphasised this to me as I undertook the delicate job of closing the fuselage. It required the subtle fettling of the undercarriage as well as the cockpit deck. And even with the minute adjustments needed for the gear and the wing spar stubs, the two halves have closed without visible seams. Even better – the inner wings have slipped on over those spars and mated with the fuselage so well that no filler at all will be needed.

I wish I had a 50¢ baggie – a series 1 kit from the 1960’s  – to hand unassembled to compare it to this plane. My memory of the kits was tht they did have reasonably positive closure but a seam nevertheless. My recent work on an older Consolidated Liberator B.IV showed this to some extent. Not so bad as to be off-putting, but a cruder construction to be sure.

I should also like to know the prices of other commodities in rural Canada in 1960 to be able to compare the current costs – I’ll try to locate some historical reference to see if I am getting less, more, or the same for my money. I can possibly measure it against my income then and now, which I suspect is pretty much the same. Come to think of it, aside from moose meat, my diet is pretty much the same and I definitely am wearing many of the same clothes  – in one case literally – as were worn then.

I hope I am not going to have to start doing homework again…or have pimples. I don’t mind second childhood but second puberty sounds awful.