Right then, my stash!

I mentioned my workbench and collection of plastic kits, known to modelmakers as 'the stash', well here are some pics!

The pile above have now migrated from the top of the workbench to the stash cupboard...

But this lot live under the bench as they are what I laughingly call my 'in-progress' projects! Some of them haven't been touched in years!

On to the 'stash' proper...



Now before you start raising eyebrows and making pointed remarks about how I need to get laid more often, understand something, I only have maybe 70-odd kits here, collected in the last 15 years since I resumed this childhood hobby.

That made me pause for a moment... I never, ever, ever, had a 'stash' of unbuilt kits when I was a kid, I started making model airplanes when I was 6 and my Dad gave me an Airfix Supermarine S6.B to make, and in the intervening years of childhood until I discovered women and alcohol and good books I must have made every damned kit Airfix ever produced!

Every birthday and Christmas was the same, more kits, glue, paint, more kits, more glue, more paint, I was voracious! My Dad had to put up 6 12ft by 2 ft shelves in my bedroom to accommodate them all! Mum was happy to have cars and figures and airliners on display around the house, she drew the line at anything military, I remember building the Airfix Saturn V and for a while it got pride of place in the lounge 'cos we'd all sat around at 3 in the morning in July 1969 watching Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon!

But what has just occurred to me now that I think back is that I never had a cupboard full of kits when I was a kid, only now is my collection of styrene larger than I can cope with in my lifespan!

The reason for this is simple, back then I made everything I was given or bought, straightaway, I didn't wait, I didn't stop until it was glued and painted and decalled and sat on the shelf with is 1/72nd scale brethren...

Nowadays the hoarding instinct is more prevalent, if I gotta have the kit I gotta have the kit, it doesn't matter that my plans for its eventual finish and display may take several years to come to fruition... I gotta have the kit!

And of course nowadays the market is inundated with new kit releases! Sometimes its hard to resist!

I know of guys on some of the modelling forums with 'stashes' running into thousands... Sometimes I envy them, sometimes I pity them!..