The Little World

It’s rather like sex without guilt – fun, but a little bland.

Not that you want to be pursued through bedroom doors and corridors like a Feydeau farce, but a little innocent concealment of the new kit makes for a frisson of excitement – even if it turns out to be the same old moulding that has been sold for 70 years. Anything that makes you snigger is a good thing.

There are some reasonably innocent and detailed models that raise a small sense of shame. People who buy and detail dreadful dioramas know what I mean – without needing to be more specific.

Other models are in such odd scales or of such phenocky moulding as to put the modeller always upon the defensive when showing them. This generally applies to back-yard or garage products or the output of 1950’s factories. I keep some Plasticville model railway buildings that are out of the scale they purport to be, but can slot into another one fairly well. They are toy train buildings and need to be appreciated for that fact.

And the last note: guilt applied by critics when a modeller shows their completed projects is well out of order. No-one deserves to be second-guessed or lectured gratuitously by random viewers. It is a sad fact of the social media that anything will attract jeers and bad behaviour, but that should not extend to personal contact.