I have set the Tiger build aside as it has now reached the painting stage and using the airbrush in hot weather can be a recipe for disaster as the paint can dry very quickly in the needle tip. There are paint retarders I can use but it’s still hit and miss. We have had cooler days in between but the Tiger set aside safely in its box for now and I started on a new build, the Albatros D.III biplane from WW1. I have a couple of these and I like the colourful schemes. It’s also limbering me up to build one of the bigger biplanes from the stash. 

The second photo shows me mixing CA (super) glue with talcum powder to fill the seam on the underneath of the fuselage. I discovered this technique from one of the modellers on you tube, incidentally a woman engineer who recently retired from the RAF and she is an excellent modeller. I had heard of this technique but she showed how she did it and communicated it very well so even a ham fisted modeller like me can follow it. Once set, I sanded down and it looks reasonable and then I brush painted the aircraft. This was done over a couple of days in between fussing the cats, spending time in the garden and going out and about.

This morning I attached one side of the rigging, elasticated knitting thread, using CA glue to the struts and I’ll leave well alone for the next 24 hours to ensure all is secure as the struts only went in an hour earlier. All quite fragile and best left alone! Fussing the cats involves having an increasingly older Sherlock requiring lots of reassurance and this morning he was glued to me as he complained loudly about the state of the world. He is over eleven years old now and remains quite active but he struggles to jump up. He missed the table last week and used my left leg to break his fall. After I mopped up the blood and cleaned the wounds my leg had several plasters down the length of it! Poor auld fella, it’s sad to see him grow old but he leads a pampered life with us.

In other news, No.1 son starts a new job next week, full time hours and it involves him training for his HGV licence. When he applied and they saw his driving experience, he has done HGV training previously as well driving new vehicles off the RoRo ships at the docks, he virtually had the job offered to him before the face to face interview! It’s full time and he can escape his current part-time job where the staff are treated with indifference and at times contempt. It always amazes me that some managers believe having a white collar and tie job equates to them being better than the staff doing the shop floor work. I saw so much of this attitude in the NHS from barely competent and at times, quite dangerous individuals. As much as I am glad to have the NHS it really does require a major overhaul. It is currently run for the benefit of staff and patients are an afterthought. I recall one Trust I worked for where senior managers and their favourites went on a ‘fact finding’ tour to California to look at some health initiatives. A week spent touring the sites including Disneyland and the outcome on their return…Nada. A couple of hours via an on-line meeting could have addressed that ‘need’! A criminal waste of money and no surprise a couple of years later when the managers involved were demoted for bullying and questionable work practices. 

Interestingly, since retirement I haven’t given my nursing life much thought as I guess I wanted to forget much of it. I believe I required a washout period of time emotionally and mentally to rebalance myself and it is only these last several weeks that memories have returned and that I think about it. A ex-colleague of mine suggested it was chronic PTSD and I now agree with her. She too left and works privately now as she believes the damage done by systems and managers in the NHS is responsible for some of the issues she had. There was something obviously wrong when a dozen psychologists and support staff all resign in quick succession. When you have senior managers who question the validity of psychological approaches in a mental health trust, you have to question what planet they are on until you recognise it boils down to money. Psychologists and psychological practice is expensive when medication and just out of Uni CBT trainees are cheaper. Short quick fix saves money in the short term, patients have a mental plaster applied and are then blamed when the short term fix does not work. But they are then at the back of the queue and have to await referrals, assessments, etc…Never mind, there is no shortage of patients as the pandemic bollox means child and adolescent waiting lists are at an all time high with a two, sometimes three year waiting lists for a service and adult services are a complete mess. One example, Norfolk and Suffolk Trust had 8,000 unexpected deaths between 2019 and 2022. I guess many deaths can be put down to natural causes as that will include elderly people, people with concomitant health issues and it is well known in MH that psychotropic medications shorten the lives of people prescribed them. But I guess many were also the result of poor and inadequate MH services. Sadly, I doubt there will be a change until the focus is on improving the lives of people, health promotion, removing the unnecessary stressors in life, accountable politicians, managers and corporations, etc…Too many to list here and I want to avoid ranting and raising my blood pressure! Phew, I think that might have been waiting to be let out.

Hopefully you are all well and enjoying the summer. The youngsters have both come in, two sleek and hungry mini panthers. They are enjoying the freedom afforded by the good weather but we have to set a limit on how long they spend outdoors but they sleep well at night. UN duties continue between Mindy and Winnie as Mindy takes any opportunity to stalk and attack Winnie who, despite growing bigger is still a small cat but she now fights back. The shenanigans disturb the oldies who only want a quiet life, as do we all.

TTFN.

 It’s Fathers Day here in the You Okay Hun and I received a lovely card from my son and a set of modelling paints. He’s working today so they were left for me when I eventually dragged myself from bed. Knowing this and having watched a you tube video about memories it brought back some memories for me but, oddly enough about my mum and how we went shopping en famille every Saturday morning. With a large shopping trolley we would traipse after mum to the green grocers, butchers, corner shops for the main weekly shop, no supermarkets back then. Our reward was the comic of our choice and mine was The Dandy whilst my brother received The Beano. We could then swap them over later and if we had any money I’d buy The Sparky as well. Simple pleasures, got us reading and kept us quiet for a while which was mums intention I guess. Sadly, the memories of my father aren’t good ones and I generally kept out of his way. Sober or drunk, he was not pleasant and in many respects, it made me determined that my children would not experience what I and my siblings did as children.

The tomatoes are doing well in the pots, grown from seeds and so far they have avoided the depredations of the slugs and snails. I will have to give them a feed this week and consider a move to larger pots in a couple of weeks time.

The potatoes are growing extremely well and from supermarket spuds that had started to sprout in the veg rack. I planted these and one onion as an experiment and they have thrived. Small flowers emerging and I hadn’t realised, these as well as the tomatoes are both part of the nightshade family. The wild flower patch is so-so as the cats had been scratching around there. It’s a cooler day but all the nicer for that after two very hot days and yesterday afternoon I flaked out with the heat. As well as the paints from my son I ordered some enamels for the Caproni Ca 133 aircraft I have in the stash.

I have never airbrushed enamel paints so I will have to do some research on this regarding thinners, etc…The Ca 133 is also a resin kit, not 3D printed I hasten to add, which will necessitate a primer as well. It’s a rare kit and also one of my favourite aircraft for some reason. Perhaps I was an Italian airman in a past life!

But that build will be later this year as I have the Tiger 1 to finish and I will use the acrylics bought by my son for some British naval aircraft.

TTFN.

 

Progress so far on the two recent aircraft builds, a Messerschmitt Bf 109 G6 and an Avia S-199 which was the same aircraft but with a different engine built post war by the Czechs. 

The Fokker D XXIII is nearly complete, it just requires a wash and some detailing but modelling has been on hold for the last few days as the weather was lovely, 27°C yesterday but with rain overnight and a slightly cooler 24°C predicted for today but, it’s just rained. Good for the garden and the potatoes I planted in the raised bed are flowering and they are huge plants. The Tiger 1 is built and now awaiting paints, etc…but with this warm weather I want to make the most of my time in the garden whilst the weather is good.

In other sad news, I was informed of the death of another colleague and that’s two who were younger than me and died suddenly. A bit of a wake up call and I have arranged my will this week to ensure things are ok when I do eventually die, hopefully years from now and quietly in my own bed! Talking of health and risks of harm to health, the 3D resin kit I bought was leaking resin from the wheels and the fumes are hazardous. I informed the company I bought it from as they had not cured it properly. I cleaned it up and exposed the kit to sunlight as UV light cures it and keep it sat in water for now away from the cats. A fellow modeller has suffered eye and breathing problems as he hadn’t noticed the same issue with one of his kit for three months. I shan’t buy from that manufacturer again and only reputable companies for resin aftermarket small parts, not 3D. 

Otherwise a quiet life and hopefully more sunshine today.

TTFN.