Models

If you had had the support that is available today, you would have got the job in the library. I always wanted to work in a library too but you got further than me, although I do sometimes volunteer now at my local library. 

PS  All the books in my case had their own classification codes, too, which I devised: fiction, dictionaries, encyclopedias, etc.  Sub-categories for ghost stories, horror stories, detective stories. 

I missed a career in librarianship, I think.  I certainly tried for one several times, but never got the job.  I could never seem to fathom out precisely what they were looking for.  I mean, if anyone had the right qualities, surely I did?

That's brilliant Tom. I'd be pleased with that if I did it now, even with a bit of artistic skill. 

Where did the years go? In a mist of trying to fit in, trying to get by, trying to hide, trying anything but really being ourselves. 

But look how fascinating and interesting we all are. It's time to let go of the past and begin to really be who we are. Maybe we could organise the UK's first autistic model village show :) that should keep us all engaged for a while! 

Well... there's me saying that I've never really made models!

This photo reminded me...

As a child, I used to love doing my own 'art' projects at home - drawing, Origami, Spirograph.  Also, at the age of 7, I wrote a strip cartoon book - crude matchstick figures, 6 frames to a cartoon - entitled 'How To Get Rid Of Your Enemies.'  Even at that age, I was finding other people hostile!  There would be things like pouring shampoo into their drinks, putting gunpowder into their cake mix, painting a big concrete globe to look like a football, etc.  I always had a vivid imagination!

I also loved drawing huge plans for ghost houses or castles, with cutaways to show inside (like the doll's house), with rooms full of trap doors, spooks hiding behind wardrobes, and so on.

And I loved making things out of cardboard, and colouring them in.  My biggest project was when my fascination with Sherlock Holmes had first taken hold.  I made a mock-up of his house in Baker Street, complete with 'rooms' behind the windows.  The silhouette figures of Holmes and Watson were sitting in the upstairs windows.  The rooms had no floors, and the idea was that you would put a lamp behind the model and it would look like Baker Street at night, with the silhouettes showing up in the windows - like in the famous story 'The Empty House', where Holmes puts a wax bust of his head in the window one night in order to catch a sniper who's after him (an emissary of Moriarty, I think - Colonel Sebastian Moran, if memory serves me right).

Here's a photo I took of it after I'd finished it.  It's crude, I know - but I was 12, after all, and had no artistic skills.  I'm sorry I put plastic bags in the windows now (for glass) because the flash has obscured the scenes behind. 

This was taken with my first Polaroid camera, in my bedroom at the tied cottage we lived in in Devon - on the fringes of Baskerville hound country!  I also made a box to hold my Holmes books - on the floor to the left.  Also there... my Holmes deerstalker, curved briar pipe and my nan's old magnifying glass.  Top left, on my book case - my first Petite typewriter!

That bedroom was the first room I ever really had to myself, and I'd spend hours alone up there, wrapped up in my imagination.  46 years ago...

Where's it gone?

This is amazing! What a beautiful and fascinating dolls house. You are right about how much it would have cost to make something like this. eBay sometimes throws up incredible bargains. 

My wife has a huge Georgian-style dolls house that's fully decorated and filled with furniture. It has wroking lights and millions of tiny accessories - even a cat & mouse. She got it from ebay at a bargain price - it must have cost a fortune for the original builder.

I loved watching the TV programme where teams of people made  model railways layouts. it was fascinating seeing the ingenious ideas they came up with and the creativity and skills needed to execute them. 

I twice took part in a Christmas tree festival but instead of decorating a tree I did something different. Year one's entry was a seasonal landscape scene of our village, the river, and the village on the other side. It had model houses and people and lights. I incorporated found objects as well as things I had made myself.   

The next year I decorated an open front dolls house. Each room had a different theme - Doctor Who for example, and as well as figures and furniture there was a miniature Christmas tree. I tried to make these scenes humorous and a bit absurd! Under the table on which the dolls house stood was a track and vehicles for small children (and me!) to play with. 

Another memorable model making occasion was when me and my husband took part in an art event called Home Sweet Home. A miniature housing estate was plotted out on the floor of a large hall. We were each allocated a building plot and given a cardboard house to decorate and accessorise. I had collected lots of quirky things to use so our house and garden were very eccentric. 

The idea was that we would interact with other people in the room and get to know them as we worked on our individual plots. Unsurprisingly I got totally absorbed in the task and hardly spoke to anyone all day apart from a few small children who came visiting. My favourite feature was that the lights in our house came on if someone knocked on the door. It was great fun making it although my husband had a tough day being bossed around by me. 

Model villages and indeed anything scaled down into miniature proportions really do appeal to me. 

Happy festive wishes to you Starbuck x

Yeah, I love model villages! 

I can completely relate to what you have said Martian Tom.  There is something fascinating about looking down upon a scene and studying it.  I used to spend hours sitting in my parents bedroom window looking at the houses on the hills in the distance.  I would study the people and cars that were coming and going and wonder where they were going and who they were.

I am also fascinated in architecture and often study the bricks, tiles, roof structures of buildings when I am out and about.  It has even caused those around me to look up as they are baffled as to what I am looking it.

Models also fall into this area as well.  When I was younger, I would spend hours building and developing my model railway and would feel utter glee when building the miniature houses and setting the scenes.  Being a girl, I suppose this was unusual, but I am the same with dolls houses as well, it's just that my parents could never afford to buy me one as a child.

Model villages are something else as well.  Some of the best times on holiday have been spent in model villages - I can literally spend hours looking at them!

Go to Bekonscot on a weekday just after the Easter holidays - that's when it is quiet but at its most beautiful. That's when all the flowers are out and the sun is shining. They have a nice little restaurant with good burgers.

Ride the trains....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_anZev8RcU

Favela in Rio - actual, not a model.  I could spend hours looking at scenes like this...