ROCKET BUILDING

I built a Rocket on Saturday, but, in many ways, not the one I had planned to…

Perhaps I ought to explain. A couple of Christmases ago I was given an Airfix Saturn V rocket which was meant as a replacement for the one which was built for me when I was a young boy and which I had ninety-five percent of the remains of still sitting in a shoebox somewhere about the place.

As is sometimes the nature of such things, the exciting new version remains in its box just waiting for me to have an opportunity to finally get around to having enough time to actually sit down and build the thing, although finding such a gap in my busy old life seems to be getting ever more difficult.

It’s just like when I started painting again. I did one, went out and bought all of the equipment, and then never quite got around to starting the next one, and, seeing as the date I marked on the painting that I did do was 2007, some considerable time could now be said to have passed.

Anyway, because model kit building has become one of the hotter topics around the office in recent months, I am often being encouraged to make a start on it, and indeed this was almost the very last suggestion that was thrown at my retreating form as I departed for home last Friday evening, with just a the odd “farewell” and “have a good weerkend” and (no doubt) “sod off” beating it to the title of “last words of the working week…”

Last Christmas, however, I also received something rather lovely; One of “Timberkits” self-assembly animated wooden models of George Stephenson’s “Rocket” railway locomotive, and, when I realised that I did actually have some free time for once, it was towards that particular “Rocket” that I was drawn.

Sorry Saturn V… You are very impressive, but… Perhaps another time, eh…?

I had been putting off the Timberkit, to be honest with you, because, whilst it did look as if it might turn out to be a thing of beauty, I knew that it hadn’t come cheap and, when I opened up the box, it did look to be kind of complicated, and just the sort of thing that I would ruin completely through my own incompetence when it comes to reading simple (and not quite so simple) instructions.

Basically, I worried that I might spoil it…

Nevertheless, whilst the beloved worked her way through a box set of “Lewis” I spent my Saturday afternoon carefully gluing various bits of wood together, having decided that I really did prefer the “natural wood” finish over painting it to replicate the original, and not just because I was too lazy or impatient to get the paints out.

I did go wrong a number of times. Once when a vital part of the mechanism snapped in two (although I was able to glue it back together), once when I realised that I’d pointed a piece in the wrong direction when I’d put a main strut through it (the glue was still just about fluid enough for a bit of brute force with some pliers to free it up and correct it), and one when I noticed that I had too many pieces left and I had to go through the diagrams with a fine-toothed comb to work out where I’d missed attaching them.

Luckily, with that last one, the structure was obviously not sitting very well at that point to make it pretty obvious where I’d gone wrong and it was easy enough to pull the already attached (although thankfully not very well) parts off again and add the relevant parts to the structure with only one alarming “crack” to make me think that I’d ruined the entire thing at the last hurdle.

Anyway, having built my “Rocket” on a Saturday afternoon, I am rather pleased with it.

I mean, I’m sure that it wouldn’t reach the high standards intended by the craftsmen who made the kit in the first place, and they would, I’m sure, have found my slapdash and liberal use of the glue provided most alarming, but nevertheless, it works, and when you crank the handle the wheels turn and the pistons move and everything.

So, “Hurrah!” one of my kits made it out of the box and out into the daylight, and I found it a most satisfying way to spend my day.

Which one should I try next, I wonder…?