Given our recent windfall Sue suggested I buy the one kit on my list that I have always wanted but held off from because of cost. I immediately knew which one I would buy because I have always had an interest in the development and history of the tank.

It has just arrived and much to my surprise it has a motor in it which I also have to build. The cats will love this! It usually retails at approximately £70.00 and I always considered that too much mainly because I thought Tamiya had discontinued the motorized kit and that’s a lot for a basic kit. But this has the motor which I will install, extra figures and I bought this kit for a considerable discount from a seller who often offers very good deals. What makes it funny is that I bought the wrong kit as the kit I intended to buy is from another manufacturer hence my delight when this arrived. A mistake meant to happen! 

One of the current builds is the Citroën Hy van in 1/24 scale and from other modellers videos I was made aware that some people have received kits with warped parts. Alas, I fall into that category hence I have been using clamps and tape to dry fit parts and bend back into true. 

The  roof is taped on for now as the side won’t currently fit because of the warpage. Once I have airbrushed the interior I will glue the roof on and that help the fit and reduce the warpage. I added a new floor inside and painted it to mimic plywood. I will clear coat that and later add a wash of clear yellow to enhance the look. I haven’t yet decided what colour to paint the van as I am considering making it an old van owned by Dutch hippies circa 1970. A bit of rust, multicolours and peace signs with sleeping bags, a bong and rucksacks in the back. A sign saying “If the van’s rocking, don’t come a knocking” plus other stickers if I can find them. I haven’t made up my mind yet but that scheme sounds appealing to me and perhaps a couple of suitable figures. For once my modelling skills address peace not war!

TTFN.

 It’s been a couple of weeks since I last posted but the truth is that I lead a very quiet and somewhat boring life these days and, do you know what…I prefer it that way! I have had enough excitement throughout my life and I am content with what I have. I was informed this week by a former colleague of the death of one of my former patients, a chap whom I grew fond of and we became good friends. Not allowed but I had reached the stage where I didn’t care. Despite his serious physical health issues he went out with a bang whilst holidaying in Mexico. Sad to hear of his loss but I think he went out the way he would have preferred.

I have finally completed two of the builds that have sat on my desk for several weeks now. The Matilda Mk.II tank needs a Matt coat and a small touch up of white paint to the drivers interior and the Bolton Paul Defiant is quite frankly a mess. The decals need further paint match touch ups, parts keep falling off and it needs a Matt coat too. I have mislaid the can of Matt clear spray but once found I can complete them both. That leaves four kits in various stages of building although one is completed except for the decals and mud / foliage for the diorama. 

Interestingly, having cashed in my third and final small pension scheme, the one I was not aware of, I thought we would be just about covered financially until the end of March next year when I start my state pension. Out of the blue I received some money from my father’s estate. He died in 2018 but my sister was informed earlier this year that he was owed money. So eight years later we all received a small but very welcome inheritance. Many years ago on the death of my grandfather my dad received land as his share of the will but he sold the lot and drank the proceeds. We didn’t find this out until much later but I had already lost any respect for him. Sadly, alcoholics only care about where their next drink will come from.It’s all water under the bridge now but the generational effects do last. I retired in 2023 knowing I was taking a gamble by relying on my savings and the small NHS pension I received but, I had worked out we could manage on a tight budget. The past couple of years of high inflation (government figures for inflation belong on the fiction book shelf) especially on utilities threw my calculations in the bin, hence my concerns about getting through the winter. Sue’s only vice is tobacco and mine is plastic models so we don’t live the high life. I sometimes think we spend more on the cats then on ourselves! Today is the government budget day but I do wonder how others can survive. I discovered diesel is £2.00 a litre and petrol is £1.69 per litre when I went shopping yesterday. I also priced up a small joint of beef…about £20.00! I didn’t buy it! So I will follow the budget today but with few expectations of anything marvellous emerging from it. Chancellor Healey (Dennis) was the Labour government minister in 1976 when the UK went cap in hand to the IMF for a loan…today’s Labour government chancellor is another Healey but with less acumen and honesty than the previous incumbent. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…

TTFN.

 Sneezing like a good ‘un this morning and I am hoping it is not another cold. It is that time of the month for the cats flea treatment and perhaps that has set me off but the accompanying blocked ear and earache says otherwise. 

Yesterday, I dug the raised bed over and removed weeds and the Borage to discover a small amount of potatoes. I cooked and ate some yesterday and they were lovely, still in their skins with butter, salt and pepper to go with a Cornish Pastie. I have replanted some of the spuds and I will add some compost to it next week. I thoroughly enjoyed the work but I paid the price yesterday evening as I seized up. Better today and I will tackle the garden every other day to minimise the chances of any further harm. I could do with either a long scythe or long handled secateurs to tackle the rest of the garden so I will look out for those. 

This is the current progress on the Matilda II tank set in the western desert 1940. I started the weathering and realised I haven’t added the decals so that will be next followed by more weathering. I am also slowly working on the B-24 Liberator aircraft from Academy. A basic kit but an enjoyable build so far and my approach is to build this slowly as with other recent builds, to not plough on and finish in a few days but to almost allow the build to take a natural course.

The fuselage is dry fitted and taped and the interior is now painted. I will airbrush the exterior once the wings have been assembled and dry fitted to the fuselage which I can then cement the two halves together. I plan to paint the wings and fuselage separately before cementing them together as the overall paint scheme is olive drab. 

The panel lines where the cockpit fits need filling and I might chamfer the edges of the fuselage halves and cement using CA glue which I will then sand, filling as well as cementing. I need to do some further research to check whether there were obvious panel lines there before I do any of this. 

Today will be a break from modelling and it is a cold but bright sunny day outside and I can feel it calling me. Once the sun moves round I intend to sit out in the garden with a good book and enjoy a couple of hours of fresh air and what little sun there is. Time for some Supertramp and dip into my book.

TTFN.

 Where does the time go? A week since my last blog entry yet it doesn’t feel like it. Time is a funny thing and I remember years ago writing up a computer project about the concept of time, comparing the actual reality of observing the changing seasons with the measurement of the same. Thirty five years later and I still haven’t got my head around it.

I am gazing out of the window at blue skies and some weak sunshine as the mild autumn continues. Our newish garden gate saw a small piece fall off it but rather than be annoyed, it allows the cats another and easier way into and out of the garden. It has saved me a job although I will replace part of the board which keeps out the rubbish from the alleyway.

I have started a new build, the B-24 Liberator with an interesting zodiac decal set and I am opting for the “Libra” set. This one has sat in the stash for a couple of years and I am keen to get it built, an aircraft I really like and one that tends to get forgotten about as many people focus on the B-17 Flying Fortress. Also, one of my birthday kits arrived in the post as it has just been released, another WW2 bomber.

The 1/72 scale Halifax Bomber from Revell and it will complete my collection of British Heavy bombers of WW2. The kit was out of production for many years and could only be bought for silly money or from other manufacturers which weren’t very good as they were old kits. Again, this aircraft and the Stirling tend to be overshadowed by the Lancaster. I still have three other builds in various stages with the Matilda II tank with its first coat of paint on and clear coated as well. That will have the decals applied next, clear coated again and then heavily weathered. The Bücker Bü 131 broke again so it has again been glued, taped and placed well away from my clumsy hands. I have to remember to hold it by the fuselage, not the wings! I have put up a short video on yt of these last two builds, a somewhat stilted dialogue but it’s a test shot (delcatto60). The Suzuki Wagon R is slow progress as airbrushing cars to achieve a good finish involves very different techniques and modelling approaches. Primer followed by fine sanding followed by paints, sanding, repeat the same and polishing is all new to me. I still haven’t decided whether I build it as the car I owned or as depicted on the box art. Mine was silver grey and that is a difficult colour to apply and achieve a good finish on. I might just go for the blue colour as blue is my favourite colour. 

The pension forms were sent off although I had to email the completed paperwork a second time as the first lot were blank. Guess who sent the wrong attachment?!! It’s not a huge amount of money but having just received my estimate for the winter gas bill it will tide us over until my state pension starts. It is worrying seeing news about diesel, gas and potentially other shortages this coming winter. I now only listen to sensible news casters (Andrew Neil) on you tube and avoid the lunatic sensationalists who forecast various apocalypses. One thing that oddly enough helps is the genre of apocalyptic stories on you tube, with volcanoes erupting, werewolves, vampires and alien invasions plus WW3. Mainly from the US and some excellent humour involved particularly spoof health insurance adverts between news reports about the plague outbreaks. The Yellowstone Park apocalypse features spoof Trump announcements which are hilarious as they nail him to a tee. It is well worth a listen but given the current lunacy going on it might be better avoiding altogether as there is only so much anxiety to be tolerated. 

TTFN.

 The past few days have been horrible with a shift in my back pain and I am struggling to move around. It might be that I have pulled muscles on my right side but I couldn’t even climb into my car. Sue had to do the weekly shop instead. I suspect it happened when in the early hours a few nights back Wilf leapt from a cupboard and landed on my groin. I leapt out of a deep sleep and ended up falling out of bed! Needless to say he no longer sleeps in our bedroom. Whereas before this happened I could manage the pain and do things, I am now shuffling around like an eighty year old bent over my walking stick. It had even curtailed any modelling work beyond some rudimentary tidying up. Bugger and thrice bugger is all I can say.

The PR Spitfire is now finished as I have reached the ‘That’ll do ‘ stage and want to move on. It’s raining steadily as I write this and I am poring through my stash looking for an easy small kit to build. Prior to the Wilf incident I had tidied up my reference book shelf and moved some of the stash around. More space for the cats to hide in and I have put aside several books to move on. I usually deposit them at the nearest supermarket where people can pay a small amount to charity for a book. I read somewhere that younger people are reading less but I have also seen on-line discussions on modelling and music videos about young people having little interest in the hobby in the former and, their increasing general dissatisfaction with modern music in the latter. I’m not sure about the latter as I hear it on music reaction videos and I am biased anyway as I believe there has been little decent music over the past two or three decades. I either listen to rock / pop / soul / r n b music from the sixties and seventies, folk, jazz and classical. I would rather listen to Humble Pie or Led Zeppelin than some of the noise I heard from a young neighbour a few doors down this summer but, as I said, I am an irascible old bugger. Back to searching the stash and looking for inspiration. I will add a blog in the next few days with another story from my nursing career. I have two in mind, the ‘serial killer’ one or the ‘vampire’ one. 

TTFN.

 After an hour spent dozing in the autumnal sunshine surrounded by cats I came indoors to tidy up the model space, move some of the reference books upstairs and the above recently completed builds are awaiting a move to their respective display spaces. A modeller I follow on-line was discussing stashes and how healthy is a large stash. Happily, even with purchases this past few months my stash has been reduced  to about ninety kits although that includes a few kits I will donate to Models for Heroes. I tend to buy more books these days with recent purchases being ‘Vanity Fair’ by Thackeray and ‘The Memoirs of Sergeant Bourgogne 1812 - 1813’. Books are certainly cheaper and apart from the ones I intend to keep I tend to donate them on so that others can have a pleasurable read. 

The short run kit from Ventura Models of a Spitfire PR Mk.19 is nearly done, just awaiting a wash and a hand painted ‘The Last!’ Added to the fuselage. Ventura was a New Zealand company which eventually became the current day JAYS Models. I like their kits but postal charges now outweigh the cost of the kits so sadly I have stopped buying from New Zealand. The blue colour is too dark as I used some cheap acrylic paints but I can tone it down with a light wash.

It is a bright, sunny and warm day, very unlike autumn although the countless spiders and their webs tell a different story in the garden.  I guess I will enjoy it while I can before the weather shifts to the default which usually involves a lot of rain.

TTFN.

 It’s been a stressful few days courtesy of cats and their leaping menagerie. No.1 son didn’t apply flea treatments to the two Freds over the past two months until we noticed Winnie was scratching a lot and I found a flea on Wilf. No.1 bought the treatments and I applied them, treatments that are new to me and he had explained he could no longer order the usual Advantage treatment on-line from our usual supplier. I checked and he is correct, they can still be bought over the counter from supermarkets and ordered on Amazon but not ordered from the usual supplier unless a new vet prescription is provided. I had read several weeks ago about pressure on the government to stop the sale of flea treatments apparently based on ‘environmental concerns’ and I wonder if this is part of this. I will look into it further but we have liberally sprayed various areas of the house and I have reminded No.1 son about his responsibilities for his cats. I wonder why environmental concerns never apply to wars…

Wilf has responded well to the treatment but Winnie needed a second dose and several times a day we have combed her fur. All in all a very unhappy cat as we have also kept her in the house because of the escalation in the stalking and harassment of her by Mindy. The latter has now emulated her mother Maisie and refuses to come indoors unless it is for food. Rather than chase her about to come back in we now leave her to it because when the weather changes, she will soon come indoors, again emulating Maisie who does this every year. Wilf, bless him, has discovered he likes to sleep in our bedroom at night and every morning at 4 o’clock I awake to find him purring happily away on top of me! 

The on-going build of the Boulton Paul Defiant Night Fighter is almost complete. I have glued and taped a clear plastic to the port wing landing light and once that has taken, I will finish any touch ups and weathering plus an aerial. I have some photo etch parts to apply for radar antennae but, given that the resin guns on the turret have broken off several times I am loathe to add any further fragile parts. We shall see what happens next…

I have had a few new kits for my birthday and I am now only six months away from the state pension and a free bus pass. I like driving for its convenience and freedom of use but I now struggle with long journeys. This could be ideal for trips out but I guess I will do a combination of both. Given the current international lunacy I wonder if there will be any diesel for public transport next spring. Horse drawn omnibuses might make a return or bicycle rickshaws.

Otherwise my birthday was a quiet one, no alcohol but I did have some cake and a Cherry Bakewell Scone which was delicious. I was also up until 02.30 dealing with cat shenanigans so I needed an afternoon grandpa nap! Currently, it is a bright, sunny day with blue skies and fluffy white clouds and it is peaceful. Strange to experience this whilst the world is going mad. Take care folks.

TTFN.