The Little World

The world is supposed to beat a path to their door.

Which may not be a good thing…if they have just put in expensive turf and roped it off while the sprinklers are on. Plus the place may be knee-deep in dead mice and stink to high heaven. We had one that died in an outside fridge and the odour was incredible. Imagine acres of them…

The problem is equally difficult when we see someone who has built a better model. This may be in a magazine or on the internet – that can be annoying, but you need to keep the thing in perspective. The magazines and internet sites come from a long way away and you can ignore them most of the time.

It’s a bit harder if the model builder is right there in front of you. The best of them will display their models and keep quiet and the worst of them will show and tell. As a kid I liked the biscuits called Fig Newtons but I find I’ve rather gone off FIGJAM as an adult.

The best thing to do when someone shows you just how much better they are than you is to try to profit from it all. If they are desperate for praise sell it to them in 15-minute portions. Ask their advice and listen attentively with a rapt expression on your face. Applaud at intervals. Then discover that you have forgotten your wallet at lunchtime and get them to buy you a pie and a coffee. They can hardly refuse.

It is not too hard to bear when you see someone build a different sort of model from your genre, or when they build in a different scale. If their choice of paint scheme and markings are quite different you can peacefully co-exist. It gets tough when they build the exact same model kit as you but do it better…particularly if you both display the finished models at the same time. The best you can do is rush away and try to google up a forum somewhere that insists they have painted the wrong shade of some colour. Copy this down and belabour them with it.

Or pay the cat to push their model off the shelf.