Friday 29 March 2013

Model Rail Enthusiasm

First of all, i must apologize for being so neglectful of my little blog.

The reasons for this are manifold. (Amazing word.)

  1. The main reason is that I very stupidly left my BEAUTIFUL iPad (Did I ever mention I have an iPad? I do ALL my blogging, shopping, corresponding, and generally rudely ignoring The Other Half on it.)
  2. Yes, there may be 2 PCs in The Bee Hive - but they lurk in uninhabitable areas of Catland, and Shred Corner. Neither area has an ambient temperature above minus 15 degrees Celsius (Americans - this means cold).
Since I've been gone from Blogland, my living room has been transformed thus....

It all began with a bit of toy envy (mine, to be honest) while The Bairn and I were visiting my nephews Thing One (age 3) and Thing Two (nearly 2). A box of wooden pieces, looking like a drunk Glaswegian tramp's precarious Jenga arrangement, was ceremoniously removed from the sideboard and carefully placed on the floor.

"Shall we get the trains out?" says my wee sister, who then proceeds to painstakingly construct a track with bridges, stations, tunnels and even a water tower! Meanwhile, Things One and Two are offered such gentle encouragement as:

"DON'T TOUCH THAT BIT!"

"That doesn't go there!"

"NO, look it just won't work like that. LISTEN! Just because, OK?"

And eventually it was complete. A circuit of undulating loops and curves, covering about 8 square feet of floor space - and brought to life with a variety of colourful trains. Some traditional wooden ones, some metallic modern ones, some battery operated ones - and about 7 different Thomas The Tank Engines. Yes, there's the occasional collision and certainly a few derailments (every time a train attempts a corner), but my God it's satisfying.

All of a sudden I've become crusty septuagenarian pop-mogul Pete Waterman (Did you know he's a model rail enthusiast? Got books out and all sorts. Why do I know this?)

 

So now I spend my evenings on the ole iPad scanning eBay and Gumtree for quality second hand track, especially long bends, tunnels and quality batty operated engines. I spend my days saying

"STOP! Where are you going with my bridge?", and

"Will Mummy fix it? Yes, let Mummy fix it. No! It goes here! Cars can't go on the track for goodness sake!"

CHOO CHOO!