The Little World

Vs the chronic modeller. The difference is slight – more a case of emotion than skill.

The former is a staid and sober citizen, carefully measuring between rivets on their one and only model – which they have been building since 1987. The fuselage of the kit is nearly complete and the serious modeller will be buying books to read before commencing the wings. The tail surfaces will extend to some time after 2050…

The chronic modeller starts a kit a week. At present there are 45 of them in various stages around the house and they’ll all get finished one day. That, too, may be in 2050.

And the rest of us live in the shadow of these two types. We start a number of kits, extend one well past the use-by date, but finish several more in the meantime. We lose parts, find parts, and scratch-build parts all the time. Our decals rarely match the kit in hand, but then we end up with unique models. Many of them require long explanations when finally exhibited. In some cases the story is better than the model…

Note: And occasionally we change our mind in mid-build. I cut the tail off a plane to attach a different one to it. Then looked at the thing and decided I liked the original one so I’m going to re-attach it and putty up the difference. It’s a gate-guard so the slight disparity that may result will be of no consequence.