What on Earth is Procopius building these days? -OR- I am Curious (Beaufighter)

[Procopius]

Well, less progress than I'd hoped, as I've replaced my former over-bench light with a new one that doesn't give me an electric shock when I'm in my stocking feet, but which may possibly be a bit dimmer. I picked up some "compressed charcoal pastels", which I suspect are the wrong sort, but I applied two dull shades of red and a shade of black to the collector rings with a spare brush, then applied dullcoat. I feel like the result is satisfactory, but again, the light is now worse in my workroom:

You're clearly explaining the progress you've made on the Beaufighter to her in this shot !

The only time Melanie has ever been impressed was when I showed her my little Nieuport 17 (not a euphemism), possibly my best work ever:

[perdu]

Answers abound now

The worklight, brighter must be the way to go

I have to have decent light these days or its like working at the back of the cave, down there where its horrid

The pastels need to be Artist's chalk based pastels, the colours can lift out of the merest dusting to give all the lifted colour change you need

Mea culpa, should have said. Although I do have a piece of charcoal in my little tin of pastel pieces, for when I feel a dark moment calling me

I did a small test shot so that Steve Fritag could see how they lift and change the look of a paint finish

It's in the Jet Provs thread someplace

And Melanie was wise to like the Nieuport, dainty perfection my friend

The plane and of course the lady

That silver is where I would have started the collector rings, coincidentally

Funny world is it not

[Navy Bird]

I like the collector rings now. You've done a good job toning down the copper/gold tones.

Goodness, did I forget to say you should use artist's chalk pastels in my earlier diatribe? Oh dear, another chemo brain moment. If it means anything, the ones I use are from Weber Costello (which conjures up visions of Lou trying to flip a burger - that could be a good skit). They're old, I think I've been using them for 30 years or so.

Looking good my friend!

Cheers,

Bill

[Cookenbacher]

That is looking good PC. If I built something that quickly it would end up looking like some sort abstract commentary on the aircraft, not a scale model of any sort.

Hat's off sir.

[Procopius]

The pastels need to be Artist's chalk based pastels, the colours can lift out of the merest dusting to give all the lifted colour change you need

Goodness, did I forget to say you should use artist's chalk pastels in my earlier diatribe?

I feel sure you did, Bill, no fear. I had only a few moments to stop in at a Hobby Lobby near the Home Depot I was at, and since I had some other errands to run, I grabbed the wrong thing without pausing to think or check my notes. I also forgot to grab more flat acrylic, too. Oh well.

The worklight, brighter must be the way to go

I have to have decent light these days or its like working at the back of the cave, down there where its horrid

Yes, I'm much the same. I may have to return the new fixture and go with the bigger one.

That silver is where I would have started the collector rings, coincidentally

Believe it or not, I did start there! I used Alclad Dull Aluminum; I don't have a full complement of Alclads, but I should have used steel instead, as I have it on-hand and it's darker. Something to add to my shopping list for the future. "Sadder but wiser..." I've never had a build that hasn't had something go horribly wrong, so I hope the rings are it.

That is looking good PC. If I built something that quickly it would end up looking like some sort abstract commentary on the aircraft, not a scale model of any sort.

Hat's off sir.

Thanks Cookie, but there's more than a little to be said for your meticulous builds versus my slapdash ones. I also had nothing else to do all week.

Sorry for minimal updates today, all, I got up at four this morning to make sure the house was clean for Melanie, then slogged through some hail to get to Midway, on the other side of Chicago from me, and then did some home repair. I've been pooped! But the end is in sight. Not sure yet if I should inflict my next build on the world in thread format as well yet. Gonna go downstairs now and get some more done. Just gotta psych myself up:

For those who remember, what was it like when people appreciated this song unironically?

[Procopius]

Current state of affairs:

I brushpainted the black on the prop blades. Tomorrow I'll mask off for the yellow tips. I realize this is specious, but I like to feel like it says something about Britain and Britons, that their props had warning indicators at the tips, whereas Nazi aircraft do not. It's the little things.

Speaking of Britain, sadly Melanie isn't pregnant this time 'round. However, that does mean that I will definitely be spending the 75th Anniversary of the Battle of Britain on the soil it was fought above, or in Morden, anyway.

For the strike camera, I read somewhere it had a square aperture. Now, I don't have a square drill. But what I did instead was caaaarefully trim the strike camera port off the "normal" Beaufighter nose in the kit, and then glue it on to the front of the camera pod, like so:

This is not Fritag/Navy Bird/Woody37/really any of you-level stuff, I know, but it looks somewhat less like crap in person.

I'm reasonably confident we can wrap this all up tomorrow. Not too shabby, if so!

[Procopius]

Also, in VERY unrelated news, it turns out the last book by Rear-Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock, KCVO (does the Victorian Order even still exist?), CB, etc etc is available online, a guide for new officers to the Royal Navy in the last years of the Edwardian era. I have always felt a fondness for him, ever since I saw this picture of him:

The hair is just a little out of place, and there's the hint of a smile on a face that seems unaccustomed to not smiling.

Cradock and every man under his immediate command aboard HM cruisers Good Hope and Monmouth died in a hopeless battle against the first Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, German armoured cruisers, on 1 November 1914, off Coronel. Cradock's ships could have escaped, though the thought doubtless never crossed his mind. Keith Douglas, who was killed in the second war in Normandy, wrote "there is an excitement in seeing our ghosts wandering," and I felt it a little as I read through the book. Cradock is exactly as I imagined him, a genial, gentle Edwardian gentleman, fond -- astoundingly fond -- of hunting, full of useful peacetime advice on humoring hungover superiors and marching large bodies of men in parades. When he wrote the book he had six years to live. His flagship was engulfed in flames and had come to a dead stop after, her guns all destroyed, she had attempted to ram; the Germans offered him a chance to strike his colours, but of course he did no such thing, and they poured fire into HMS Good Hope until her magazines blew up and she sank with all hands.

[MikeW]

For those who remember, what was it like when people appreciated this song unironically?

Musically speaking, in a word, "Marvelous". Could be my age, but the 80s ( roughly 1978 - 1986 ) were such an innovatively awesome time. The 70s were such a brown, drab time, generally speaking, and suddenly along came the B-52s and The Vapors, and we never looked back. I was in Atlanta at the time, and the small college town of Athens GA just started producing incredible talent - the B-52s and REM chiefly, but as soon as these bands could afford a tank of gas they would come into Atlanta to play.

There was this dark, grimy, don't get caught dead there club called 688 which featured some of the best talent, that had a lot of my attention. One night I was onstage with the British group 999 - not playing an instrument of course, but more in an alcohol fueled exhibition, beer in one hand, the other punching the air, leading the crowd in the chorus of "Homicide". Quite the highlight of my rock 'n roll career.

Moving to L.A. there was KROQ, one of the leading new wave / rock stations in the country - broadcasting for a time from the top floor of the Pasadena Hilton ( this is indeed a strange town, but we love it ). They launched so many new bands too. Attending their 'happy hours' across town, one of the DJs always seemed to have an arm or a leg in a cast - some ill advised stunt having not quite worked out as expected. One of their more memorable drive time games for morning rush hour was "Honk for meat" Each day some store would sponsor them for some kind of meat product, and to play, you would call from your car phone, ( this before the cell phone ) and at a red light, or freeway entrance etc, when it was you time to go, you wouldn't, would have to hold the phone outside the window, and as many times as you were honked at in 60 seconds, you won that many pounds of the daily meat. It was all so silly, but so much fun, and what the heck, we were young, and the music was great!

Well that was a whole lot more than I meant to say, but 'unironically', it was good to be there.

Cheers,

Mike

[Procopius]

Musically speaking, in a word, "Marvelous". Could be my age, but the 80s ( roughly 1978 - 1986 ) were such an innovatively awesome time. The 70s were such a brown, drab time, generally speaking...

Looking back at them from the perspective of someone who nominally grew up in the middle-to-late 1980s (though my access to popular culture was very tightly controlled), this is also my impression; the 1970s seem in retrospect like a very depressing and confusing era. The 1980s seem a much more purposeful decade to me. (And in truth, I quite like New Wave nowadays.)

I remember when my mom got a car phone in the early 1990s. It was perfect for her, as it allowed her to live out her lifelong dream of never answering the phone in many, many more places than ever before.

[modelglue]

For those who remember, what was it like when people appreciated this song unironically?

Well, there goes any hope of sleeping. I estimated I was age 7 at the time I listened to this over the "awesome stereo" my Babysitter's younger brother had installed in his hot-rod styled chevy van. He was all leather jackets and switch blades. After googling the song title I was reassured my time tested method for remembering when things happened in my life still works wonderfully.

It was like watching Top Gun, and having a feeling so ridiculously awesome that nothing to this day has come close. I would love to articulate in the style David Attenborough might while describing a bird of paradise, but written words alone fail to really convey the sheer magnitude of how cool this song was. You just had to make a face and bob your head to the rhythm. When the song was done, you knew that you and the others around you were the only people in the world that had experienced it. If you value this song, never, ever watch the documentary; Metal Evolution.

Nice work on that camera, I can empathise with your accomplishment. Do you have anymore info on that BF you've posted to explain the camera fairing? It looks like an interesting scheme that I have not seen.

[MikeW]

I remember when my mom got a car phone in the early 1990s. It was perfect for her, as it allowed her to live out her lifelong dream of never answering the phone in many, many more places than ever before.

OK, that had me laughing out loud

[Procopius]

Nice work on that camera, I can empathise with your accomplishment. Do you have anymore info on that BF you've posted to explain the camera fairing? It looks like an interesting scheme that I have not seen.

Well, this Beaufighter was one of the ones hastily dispatched to British Malaya after the end of World War II to fight the Communist Terrorists, AKA CTs, during the Malayan Emergency. I will summarize the Emergency as I understand it, and those of you who know more than me -- everyone -- I heartily enjoin to jump in and correct me. The CTs seem to have mainly been ethnic Chinese, who had either lived in Malaysia before the war, been forced in by the Chinese civil war or World War II, or who had infiltrated on behalf of the Communist Chinese. The Kuomanting also had a presence in Malaya at the time, but they seem to have been fighting the Communist Chinese and using Malaya as a base to fight in the Chinese civil war. Maybe. I don't know a lot about the KMT, and the only book on them in Malaya under the British is forty dollars and not high on my list -- though it is on it.

Anyway, the CTs were attacking rubber plantations, which meant they were attacking Westerners, since these were almost all run or owned by Britons or other Commonwealth expatriates. This was a two-pronged threat to British security: Malaya was strategically important because of its geographical location and because Singapore (still a part of British Malaya at the time) was a major naval base and port, and because the rubber from Malaya, as long as it remained a British colony, could be sold abroad to help with crippling postwar balance-of-payment problems. There was also the fact that British subjects, including women and children, were being murdered, often quite horribly.

Though the Emergency was largely a land war (and a huge one; 40,000 men from the UK and Commonwealth were in-country at the peak, more than the Commonwealth contribution in the contemporaneous Korean War, and also why the UK/Commonwealth force in Korea was so small), RAF air support was critical. Beaufighters, and later Brigands (which did not fare well), Hornets, and Vampires, as well as Lincoln and Canberra bombers were all used, the latter two in a sort of British version of Vietnam's ARC LIGHT raids, flattening pre-selected grid squares to deny them to the guerillas and harass them.

"What's the damn camera for, Edward?" I'M GETTING TO IT. So when the Beaufighters or other fighter-bombers attacked a target (often a small hut or something similar), the strike camera would enable accurate assessment of the effects of the attack, and what was actually being attacked. Wow, lot of lead-up for no payoff. And I bet you knew most of that already.

One of my long-term goals is to model most of the British types in the Malayan Emergency, it spans a huge gamut, from the Lincoln to the Whirlwind helicopter, Venoms, Hornets...it's quite fascinating to me.

Side note: interestingly enough, South Rhodesia contributed SAS personnel to the Emergency, and they drew the lesson from the Emergency that it would be possible to defeat opposition to Minority Rule in a permanent sense, rather than merely in tactical confrontations, but my opinion, based on what I know of the two conflicts, is that this overlooked a number of differences: the Chinese in Malaysia were a distinct and to some extent despised minority, the British had the carrot of independence to offer Malays, and Malaya was surrounded by states that were either friendly to the British or that were otherwise heavily occupied, and the CTs never attracted any serious support from the Soviet Union.

[Rob G]

Europe's The Final Countdown... hair metal at its most... silly isn't the word I want, but it's all that comes to mind (seeing as I didn't have a tertiary education.) In my mind, it is indelibly tied into the final episode (1987) of the Australian Broadcasting Commission's TV music programme 'Countdown'. The song played in the background behind all the spoken bits, and it was indeed a sad time when the final credits rolled, as I'd grown up with Countdown.

None of this has any bearing on anything, mind you, it's just the ramblings of an oldish bloke. I'm going to go and listen to some Led Zep now.

[Col.]

Strike camera looks perfectly serviceable in my opinion given that your photo must present it at several times life size. The collector rings have reached perfection in my opinion as well - excellent work sir. A nice concise explanation of the 'Malayan Incident' as I once read it referred to as well.

Now as for the 80s hair metal music; you really had to be there for it all to make sense Get on YouTube and fire up some Def Leopard, Whitesnake, Motley Crue, then look for Pat Bennetar and Joan Jett for the girls who fuelled a million teenage fantasies - still detest Britney Spears for that horrific version of I Love Rock & Roll Joan came across as the type of lass who would turn up to a gig on a GSX1000 making black leather look like it should with a guitar strapped to her back. Britney has always seemed to me the type who will get driven to gigs in a limo making white leather look cheap and wouldn't know which side of a guitar to hold - while you're on YouTube go find Bowling For Soup's 1985 for a good fun parody of the way it was way back then

[Andrew]

Hi Ed,

As others have already commented, this is impressively rapid progress - it's great to watch it unfold.

To answer your question about the awards in the Royal Victorian Order, yes the Order does still exist. A former boss (a Commander, RAN) of 25 years ago was a Member (MVO), but I don't recall how he came to be awarded it. We poor Midshipmen may have been required to know the biographies of our senior officers, but if the blurb didn't include such details then we weren't in a position to ask, especially if to merely satisfy personal curiosity.

cheers,

Andrew.

[Pete in Lincs]

Collector rings - like.

History lesson - like

I bet that Admiral didn't ask his chaps if they

fancied going out in a blaze of glory. Or would

they rather take to the boats. My choice! - Like

No one mention Suzi Quatro or Heart - Like

They did (apparently) try Mosquito's is Malaya.

Humidity - not like, The insects response? - Like.

Don't forget the Belvedere. The Airfix kit is of a

pre-production version though. Any others?

Glad you like having the boss back!

Generally, there's a lot to like here.

(Oh, And we do like euphemisms. Oooer!)

(Google Viz comic)

[Tomoshenko]

That's coming along very nicely. Perseverance on the collectors paid off as they look the business. That said I did have a fondness for them in bright orange...

Probably in a minority here, but I actually loved the 70s, mostly due I suspect to being a young and impressionable lad - too young to be directly touched by its negatives, old enough to enjoy some of its delights - whizzing around on a Raleigh Chopper bike whilst high on sugar due to drinking copious amounts of Shandy Bass in the mistaken belief that it would get me drunk if I consumed enough of it. By the time the 80s arrived I was beginning to experience The Catcher in the Rye coming-of age-onset of adolescence.

Oh the light. Full agreement with Perdu, brighter is better, I model under nothing less than a Type O super-giant blue star in the mancave.

[Rob G]

Now as for the 80s hair metal music; you really had to be there for it all to make sense

Get on YouTube and fire up some Def Leopard, Whitesnake, Motley Crue, then look for Pat Bennetar and Joan Jett for the girls who fuelled a million teenage fantasies - still detest Britney Spears for that horrific version of I Love Rock & Roll Joan came across as the type of lass who would turn up to a gig on a GSX1000 making black leather look like it should with a guitar strapped to her back. Britney has always seemed to me the type who will get driven to gigs in a limo making white leather look cheap and wouldn't know which side of a guitar to hold - while you're on YouTube go find Bowling For Soup's 1985 for a good fun parody of the way it was way back then

I was there. Didn't much like hair metal then, either. Although I must admit to seeing Def Leppard the last 2 times they have come Down Under - my little brother was/is a huge fan and they still put on a great show. Whitesnake can be excused their hair metal tag because of Dave Coverdale's cred as a 'real' rock singer - he was in Deep Purple, don'tcha know (and Tawny Kitaen, as well, but anyway...) I was a Pat Benetar sort-of fan, and I still love Joan and Suzi (although she's more of a 70s rock chick.)

Now if you young folks want to see a real rock'n'roll band, go to YouTube and look up Rose Tattoo. I'll be here, leaning on my walking frame.

[Navy Bird]

I wouldn't trade my 60s for your 70s and 80s, or for that matter anything that followed. You youngsters just don't understand I fear...

Cheers,

Bill

PS. Does anyone else think it's quite a coincidence that all of these musical styles neatly correlate with the decades in the Gregorian calendar? Yes, I know, correlation does not equal causation.

[Procopius]

To answer your question about the awards in the Royal Victorian Order, yes the Order does still exist. A former boss (a Commander, RAN) of 25 years ago was a Member (MVO), but I don't recall how he came to be awarded it. We poor Midshipmen may have been required to know the biographies of our senior officers, but if the blurb didn't include such details then we weren't in a position to ask, especially if to merely satisfy personal curiosity.

Further confirmation, sadly, as if any more were needed, that I would never have prospered in the armed forces, since I'm all about personal curiosity. "Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea", as Dr. Johnson remarked. Though I'm partial, as a former philosophy student, to his subsequent comment, "were Socrates and Charles the Twelfth of Sweden both present in any company, and Socrates to say, 'Follow me, and hear a lecture on philosophy;' and Charles, laying his hand on his sword, to say, 'Follow me, and dethrone the Czar;' a man would be ashamed to follow Socrates." And so I would be. Besides which, I always preferred Heraclitus, and sympathized with poor Euthyphro's side as well.

I bet that Admiral didn't ask his chaps if they

fancied going out in a blaze of glory. Or would

they rather take to the boats. My choice!

No, I imagine not. Though certainly even during that war, the ordinary sailors made it pretty clear when they were or weren't willing to sail off into annihilation, as at the Kiel mutiny. Cradock apparently made a habit of knowing and calling his men by their first names -- though I can't say that I'd necessarily follow a man to certain death just because he called me Edward.

I read a book called On the Psychology of Military Incompetence, by Norman Dixon, a former Major in the Royal Engineers who later became a psychologist, and I still think it is one of the finest books I've ever read, in the sense that it made me really think, not only about how I lived my own life (for I share many of the traits of the militarily incompetent), but also about how organizations are run, and the nature of leadership, good and bad. It's a remarkable and very readable book, and I highly recommend it. I mention it now, because Dixon discusses in it the marked preference for glorious (and invariably fatal) failure on the part of some military men, and your comment reminded me of that. It's very easy to be a fatalist, as poor old Cradock was, and to go to your death, than it was to be the singularly unlucky Admiral Troubridge (in love and war), who chose not to engage the battlecruiser Goeben with his armoured cruisers in 1914 and was court-martialed for it. (Like Death in Samara, however, it didn't save the cruisers' crews: three were sunk at Jutland, HMS Defence with all hands.)

That's coming along very nicely. Perseverance on the collectors paid off as they look the business. That said I did have a fondness for them in bright orange...

Probably in a minority here, but I actually loved the 70s, mostly due I suspect to being a young and impressionable lad - too young to be directly touched by its negatives, old enough to enjoy some of its delights - whizzing around on a Raleigh Chopper bike whilst high on sugar due to drinking copious amounts of Shandy Bass in the mistaken belief that it would get me drunk if I consumed enough of it. By the time the 80s arrived I was beginning to experience The Catcher in the Rye coming-of age-onset of adolescence.

Oh the light. Full agreement with Perdu, brighter is better, I model under nothing less than a Type O super-giant blue star in the mancave.

I think the US and UK had very different 1980s, to an extent; though the leadership of both countries were pretty sympatico, I feel like they had very different personal styles, and while both countries changed radically, the changes in the USA were more subtle; there was also the impression, rightly or wrongly, that the long national decline from 1966-1979 or so, when the US had lost in Vietnam, been humiliated by Iran, experienced racial and social unrest, and nearly utterly discredited its political class, had been reversed. Or to put it another way: in the USA, the 1980s brought us the greatest Schwarzenegger film of all time, Commando, which is inherently upbeat, ridiculously so. The UK had My Beautiful Laundrette, in which absolutely nobody is shot with an M202 "four-pack" rocket launcher. (I know about The Long Good Friday, but that's from 1979, and it's infinitely more downbeat than Commando.)

I was there. Didn't much like hair metal then, either. Although I must admit to seeing Def Leppard the last 2 times they have come Down Under - my little brother was/is a huge fan and they still put on a great show. Whitesnake can be excused their hair metal tag because of Dave Coverdale's cred as a 'real' rock singer - he was in Deep Purple, don'tcha know (and Tawny Kitaen, as well, but anyway...) I was a Pat Benetar sort-of fan, and I still love Joan and Suzi (although she's more of a 70s rock chick.)

I have never hear a song by Def Leppard. Though I also hadn't heard anything by Lead Zeppelin until last year, either. Rock and/or roll was banned in my parents house when I was growing up, so I have huge gaps in my cultural knowledge.

I wouldn't trade my 60s for your 70s and 80s, or for that matter anything that followed. You youngsters just don't understand I fear...

The 1960s did give us the great Tom Lehrer:

I've masked the collector rings and applied another coat of Future to the rest of the Beaufighter; I should be adding the wheels and gear supports soon, and then it's prop tip time. I'm unsure if I should try for weathering. I assume the exhaust streaking would all be underwing? I'm not good at weathering, not at all. I have this weathering wash from MiG for black underbellies, but it's an enamel and I don't have any enamel thinner.

[MikeW]

I'm glad you like Tom Lehrer - a very clever, and perhaps more importantly, amusing fellow. To this day I can pretty much sing all of his songs ( badly out of pitch perhaps ) from his "That was the year that was" album. Yes had to buy an LP to hear him. Thought the UK equivalent was Flanders and Swan - also jolly clever. Political / social satire has long been a favourite of mine - and apparently, when accompanied by a piano, then it is even better.

Cheers,

Mike

[Procopius]

I'm glad you like Tom Lehrer - a very clever, and perhaps more importantly, amusing fellow. To this day I can pretty much sing all of his songs ( badly out of pitch perhaps ) from his "That was the year that was" album. Yes had to buy an LP to hear him. Thought the UK equivalent was Flanders and Swan - also jolly clever. Political / social satire has long been a favourite of mine - and apparently, when accompanied by a piano, then it is even better.

Cheers,

Mike

I love Flanders and Swan! Growing up, my parents (really my mom) had the complete collection of their songs with all the opening patter on a three- or four-CD set, and I played them constantly. "We didn't think of a good one for Khrushchev until he'd gone: did he fall or was he pushedchoff?" "The Reluctant Cannibal" pops into my head at the oddest times to this day.

We also had all the old Nichols and May routines on LP -- I was very sad to see that Mike Nichols recently passed away.

My upbringing was rather eccentric, I hardly need add.

In other news, we're getting dangerously close, gentlepersons:

What remains: strike camera, gear supports, two small horns to be added on the rear undersides of the nacelles, rocket rails (and rockets, if I feel like it), flat coat, any weathering I choose to risk.

[MikeW]

Eccentric upbringings are the best. My claim to fame is that South Africa never introduced TV ( atomic bomb yes, but not TV ) so grew up where conversation was of paramount importance. Reading, card games, dinner parties were all just required after 5pm - imagine a whole modern country without TV - sounds odd now, but in retrospect, would not have changed that.

Feel like I, in effect, grew up in 1940. Big shock hopping on a plane in Johannesburg in 1976, and arriving in the U.S. ( Well, it was Atlanta, and that was unbelievably similar to South Africa ) so modified shock.

Best equivalent SA comedian is Pieter Dirk Uys. An Afrikaner, and with a drag queen persona of "Evita Bezuidenhout". An outspoken critic of Apartheid, he was socially powerful enough to have the old Afrikaner government, and the incoming ANC all tread carefully around him. Sadly, all his best work is done bilingually, so it loses a lot for the international audience, but even when Winnie Mandela was running around like she owned the country, she asked him, "when you impersonate me, please be kind "

Mike

[Procopius]

Eccentric upbringings are the best. My claim to fame is that South Africa never introduced TV ( atomic bomb yes, but not TV ) so grew up where conversation was of paramount importance. Reading, card games, dinner parties were all just required after 5pm - imagine a whole modern country without TV - sounds odd now, but in retrospect, would not have changed that.

I vaguely recall reading about that -- something like no TV until 1976! Many years ago (relatively speaking) I had a blog where I reviewed totally made-up b-movies, with all research and writing done in between taking calls at work; the high-water mark came when a fake South African movie I "reviewed" elicited a terribly, terribly excited email from a South African film scholar researching the poorly-cataloged films of the Apartheid era wondering if he could borrow the print and if I knew of any more such films. I explained the situation to him and felt like that was a good time to wrap up the project; how could I top that?

I grew up not without TV, but without access to anything beyond PBS; everything else was off-limits. Since that encompassed a fairly broad range of subjects, thanks to UK imports being shown on it (Fawlty Towers, Are You Being Served? -- which, having British accents, was assumed somehow to be a highbrow programme -- , Prime Suspect, Inspector Morse, Oliver's Travels [which really stuck with me for some reason], etc etc), I'm not really sure what my parents were trying to protect me from, beyond commercialism, since PBS doesn't have interstitial commercials. They certainly didn't really restrict what I read. I can only cringingly imagine how unendurable I must have seemed to my peers.

[MikeW]

Hindsight! Forget which comedian it was who commented "We all know that a British accent reading the phone book sounds better than an American accent reading the Gettysburg Address."

Only time I ever donated money to a TV pledge drive, was PBS. Must admit I felt raped. Was watching Rick Steves "Europe through the back door" and got carried away and felt the need to donate. Don't know why I was expecting him to answer the phone, but when some perfunctory just wanted my credit card number and expiration date, I was full of "I want to discuss Bavaria, and comment of the show". Have never sent money to TV since. Actually, catching some of Rick Steves' shows since, I am embarrassed I was impressed. Must have been too much wine with dinner.

Oh, and re the Beaufighter, I missed the part you are doing with the canopy, and painting it from inside. I am coming around to the dark side and building some military planes, but those canopies with innumerable little panes seem impossible to do correctly.

Mike