I have few honest passions in my life, the kind where I am happy to just while away a complete day doing nothing at all except it and blissfully happy that I am not actually wasting any time but doing something really challenging, constructive and creative at the same time.
Writing is an absolute joy and a much needed release when I am in the muse, but although I rarely have bouts of writers block per-say I would never say that I could easily spend a full dawn to dusk writing without getting pangs for something else to think about.
Warhammer model painting I find arduous and finicky at worst, thankfully over at best, but a prerequisite for a good bundle never-the-less.
However ... give me plenty of strips of balsa wood, a tub of glue and throw into the mix some cocktail sticks, a scalpel-sharp craft knife and a few suggestions for battlefield terrain, barricades or fortified strongholds, and you have enough ingredients to keep me amused and in truest element until such time as my fingers are caked with glue and I can't physically do anything until the last lot has dried.
In fact, despite having a supposedly 'respectable' London nine-to-five job, I have made myself late on many occasions by staying up well past the midnight hour crafting my latest piece, and then getting up extra early next morning to put in a few last minute finishing touches, losing all track of the time and missing my train to work in the process.
So when I decided not to cancel my weeks holiday after my ex failed to get her visa, it should be no surprise to anyone what I got up to with the house all to myself, as soon as the light through my open blinds woke me up.
That's right, I got right to work on the Dwarven Mile Gate Mountain Fortress construction that I have been modelling for some time, and carefully using the scalpel, some left-over artex plaster and scavenged polyfoam blocks, began to turn a few broken bits of the packaging into the two sides of a mountain.
With patience and deliberation I used the artex to cover every inch of the white blocks, and slicing off sections of the foam, I used its bubbled surface to best effect amid the plaster for a natural rough-and-ready textured look.
Pausing only for a few hours to play snooker while the base layer was drying, I put in a good eight hours of time and effort into getting the desired effect, and with a daring base coat of blueish grey and black smudges, I was content that my best piece of work thus far was well on its way.
Knowing that my friends are coming round for a battle tomorrow, I very sensibly decided to put it all away back down the cellar to harden and dry, well away from prying eyes of touching fingers.
Slowly and carefully I picked up the model from close to both ends, avoiding the still wet and unset artex and paint, and carried it to the top of cellar stairs. Having already wedged the door open, and switched on the light, it was still a tight fit getting the meter long wall round and into the doorway. Once through the doorway I then had to navigate down the stairway, both steep and low of ceiling.
Realising that the only way I could get down the stairs was to tilt the model I was able to get at least half way down before the inevitable happened.
With timing that even a pro on the comedy circuit could not better, I saw in perfectly slow motion the wet artex start to stretch, pull away from the cocktail sticks of the foam blocks that I was holding and arc gracefully down towards the bottom step. Thankfully I have always been an avid followed of Red Dwarf, and similar sci-fi shows and novels, so I instinctively knew exactly what to do.
In the split second { that seemed as long as an eternity } before the fallaway part hit the floor, I let go of the other piece and pressed the secret button on my time-stopping wrist watch. It is amazing that this little gadget is not more widely used, as it gave me a clear ten seconds to collect and carry the mischievous piece of work to safety, before returning to where I was and once again take hold of the main bulk of castle wall before the rest of time restarted.
And then, with the sudden pang of reality, I remembered Kryten reminding us that 'there are no such things as jet-powered rocket pants outside the fictional series Robbie Rocket Pants' , and also for that matter, neither are there any such things as time stopping watches or hologram six foot blonds that will fulfil your every wildest fantasy.
Nope, what else can I say but the truth, which is that I had to watch in slow-motion as almost a full days effort and labour of love hit first my raised foot { the most I could do to prevent a complete disaster } and then the stairs with a splattering thud, with the impact succeeding in launching a multitude of faster moving dark grey globules of wet artex in all directions.
There are no words in any language for what really ran through my mind at that precise moment, but if there were, they would all be more obscene and hard hitting than any you have heard from even the worst Tarantino villain or backstreet gutter urchin. At that moment I hated gravity, the architect who designed my house, the guy who invented plaster artex, every scientist that ever lived, every comedian that ever lived, Games Workshop for not providing battle scenery for free, my friends for their planned visit tomorrow and most of all myself.
Half an hour later I had cleared up enough of the larger pieces, in the hope that when they finally dry they can be used somehow, and then settled down to compose my emotion and write this entry in the hope of trying to help exorcise the recently created potty-mouth demons inside my head.
