The Little World

Dumas became an economical man. And it was just gilding the lily to add an extra hero. Porthos was a nightmare to feed.

I often wonder what we would have seen if accountants had as much control over literature as they seem to have over the cinema. Two coins in a fountain? And get a receipt.

I dread the accountancy of small minds more than the minds themselves. It puts a lid on the pot and smothers even the most elegant odour from an author’s cuisine. If the bottom line is not a large figure in black, the kitchen is closed.

It is the same with the scale kits…the wonderful excess of the models produced in a firm’s heyday slowly winding down to three sprue trees and half a decal sheet at the end. The instructions are the first to go. They become sparser and their paper coarser. Eventually there is just a fuzzy diagram and you are left to your own devices.

As an industry rises, so does the complexity and magnificence of its produce. There is an apogee and then the long slide down to memory. Revell illustrated this perfectly with decline and sale of itself to a German firm. They rise briefly, but then fall again when they try to sell old stock in new boxes.

Would that they retire the oldest of their moulds and concentrate on the new market of young people.