Interlude

Yesterday Beautiful Wife and myself celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary. Eleven years after we met in the UK, and many people reacted to our engagement with disbelief that two young people from the UK and Japan could ever see each other again, let alone organise a life together, we’ve three fantastic boys and a lot [...]

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What now? Episode 4: Back to the future.

Before I went on to do other things in my late teens I made three models: ecah one was smaller than the last. The first was a tailchaser called ‘Howden’ based on a plan out of a Hornby catalogue which was 6′x4′ and sat in a corner of my bedroom like a small elephant: the [...]

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Quality Time

It’s been much longer than I’d like since I posted here. Of course a job interview and cycling back from Amsterdam on a cargo bike didn’t help this. It’s hard to build models when you’re nowhere near your modelmaking bench. (The story of getting the bike home is gradually unfolding here).  I also want [...]

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Bakfiets Countdown

Last night I looked at a calender and realised that in a week -almost to the hour- I’d be leaving Amsterdam along the Rhine-Amsterdam canal with a very new Bakfiets. My first thought “This is really going to happen” was rapidly followed by “Can I do this?”.
Never mind the 750km to cover on the Bakfiets, [...]

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Hamamatsu-Fuji

Whatever reason people use the Hamamatsu Grand Hotel, they don’t come for the view: a dreary mess of houses, punctuated by high-rise buildings stretches into the distance. The occasional taxi prowls between buildings. Utility poles and plastic convenience store signs spike into the sky. Some of the biggest buildings are car parks.
Interesting ritual by the [...]

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More misadventures

I knew there may be a bit of a delay between posts, but I wasn’t anticipating it to be this bad. Getting ready to go to Japan, sorting out bits of moving, and of course that pesky thing called ‘work’ all conspired to keep me away from the modelmaking desk. Suddenly it’s nearly August and [...]

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New Workbench

Our new flat has a loft. And not just a gap under the roof with oddly spaced planks with cheap plasterboard inbetween and a ladder leaning against the hatch either: a proper loft with wooden floor, a folding ladder on a spring loaded trapdoor, electricity and a roof like a marquee.
I’ve got space. I mean, [...]

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Crash…

If you’re reading this, it’s because our computer crashed rather terminally last week and we’ve not got it repaired yet. (I’m setting this to publish on time delay, if you’re wondering) We’re working on it, but it’ll probably take a while and I’ne no other internet access…
(Update: The computer just started working after we vacumed [...]

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Sardine Can

We’re working on reducing the crud our lifestyle pumps out into the environment: we use a car about twice a year, and in between we travel long distance by rail, and locally by bus or bike. We’re sourcing more food locally and trying to avoid things that require lots of transport, and we’re looking at [...]

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Getting out more.

Eldest son and I had a quick trial run a couple of days ago. We wanted to see if the Xtracycle worked for us with him being the passenger and with a few other bits and pieces, but my main concern was that Eldest Son wouldn’t become severely frozen: it wouldn’t be good to have [...]

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