Like many modellers before me who had started building as a child, I lost interest. I was still at it as a teenager, the arrival of a Saturday job whilst at school, and then full time employment meant that there was the chance to buy those bigger kits that pocket money couldn’t reach. Of course inevitably that cash started to go towards girls and beer. No models, no modelling, no time.

Fast forward 27 years, I have long sinced moved off Guernsey. Several onwards and upwards jobs and parts of West London later, I was established in the riverside commuter town of Gravesend. My work days were effectively 12 hours long, and the financial crisis turned a once enjoyable job into a battle to keep the business afloat. I felt I needed something other than rugby and yet more beer to escape from it all. I had been to a model show in Folkstone and had come away with some second hand magazines. My word how the hobby had changed, there was a lot to catch up on. I bought a couple of easy Airfix, the Angel Interceptor and an Armstrong Whitworth Seahawk in 1/72 and a Revell MiG-15 in 1/48.

Let the fun begin, at least that’s what I thought. Rather naively I assumed that a weekend would be enough to bang out a kit. Surely this must be true, I used to start and complete in the same day when I was a teenager. Except of course back then I didn’t have to walk Badger 3 times a day, nor was I the one responsible for cooking the meals, and now I don’t have a dedicated build space. I also wanted to do every new technique that I had read about, but had absolutely no idea on how to achieve. It was a recipe designed for failure. The Angel and the MiG got finished eventually to a terrible standard, the Seahawk was going well until Badger decided it was a toy. Instead of an escape from the pressures of work, what I had created was just another time pressured task. I was struggling, each imperfect model made me spiral with self loathing for being incapable of turning out the type of model I saw in the magazines. So I stopped again. I kept up the magazine subscriptions, and started building up a reasonable stash with every intention of getting round to it.

Very close to a complete mental and financial breakdown (I was made redundant by the very company I had worked so hard to keep afloat) I grabbed at the chance of a lifetime. A move 500 miles up north to rural Aberdeenshire. No more finance work, a chance to breath and fully understand how fragile my state of mind was in. It took a couple of years for restoration, the country walks did wonders for both me and Badger.

The stash had come up with me, an impending storm meant that I had to relocate a lot of my gear from an outhouse into the cottage. Looking at those kits got the juices flowing again. Having both the time and headspace to understand that this was supposed to be enjoyable and not a chore, I learnt to have small sessions of about an hour. I also realised that I couldn’t learn everything all at once together, nor was I likely to achieve the perfection I saw in magazines or online.

A month later I had Airfix’s very old Fairey Firefly in 1/72 on the shelf. It’s terrible, but I enjoyed the process. The only concession made to new methods was that I primed before painting. Patience is probably the greatest skill I have acquired since this new return, sessions rarely last longer than a couple of hours because why rush?

A list of things I had to learn, priming, preshading, post shading, masking, photo-etch, resin, 3D decals, washes, panel lining, pigments, and more. No wonder I couldn’t cope back in the dark days. I learnt to only attempt a new thing after being reasonably competent at the previous one. Still learning and practising, and am never going to be a master modeller, but at least the journey is much more comfortable.