The Little World

You have just got your new model kit home.

You’ve paid for it – no more eating or drinking for a month. All your money is gone. But now is the time to decide whether you are going to be happy or not. It all depends on whether you are going to follow one of the four paths.:

a. You can build the kit as the best possible model of the original. All details will be there, in perfect proportion. The colours will be right, the weathering flawless. No part will be wrong – no-one seeing the model will doubt that it is exactly right.

In fact, once it is done would be a good time to die. You will undoubtedly be borne to heaven by flights of angels and seated upon the right hand of God. Or at least next to Mr. Tamiya.

b. You can build the kit as well as it might be built. It may have bad joints somewhere or poor decisions in the moulding, or just wrong riveting – the fault of the maker. But you will do as best as can be done, and provided that the maker has not led you too far into the woods, all should be well.

c. You can build it as well as your level of skill allows. If you cannot bend PE, there will be no PE bent. If you cannot cement without splashing, there will be splashes. The seams may be evident – but attractive, nevertheless. You will have done your best and can sleep peacefully.

d. None of the above. Cut some slack here. No-one’s perfect, and at least you have not been guilty of train robbing. Or not been caught. Or at least not been convicted. Help us out here – do something right…

The common theme is the desire to be happy – and to remember that the hobby of scale model building is just that – a hobby to recruit us from the fatigues of the daily grind. If we are retired, it is to get something grinding again.