Boatbuilding!

As you all know, I lead a miserable life in my little terraced cottage in darkest Lancashire, where, during the dark winter months, the only pleasure I usually get is to enjoy a kipper or a black pudding for breakfast.

I then sit huddled over a glowing ember in the fire grate trying to keep warm, with a dewdrop on the end of my nose, listening to the wireless, wearing many layers of clothing, including thermal underwear, fingerless gloves, woolly hat and a jumper that is six sizes too big, knitted for me by a Hebridean lady called Morag, who proudly said at the outset that she always knitted them slightly large for the local fishermen!

Large!.... it's absolutely immense, and could accommodate another person easily. They must be huge those Hebridean fishermen!

It's easy for me in winter to feel morose, when weather conditions mean that on most days the Morgan stays in the garage and yours truly is confined to the house, reading, surfing the web or being instructed in the art of washing-up and general housekeeping, by a wife who has certain of the traits of Attilla the Hun!

When all those various tasks are completed I normally find myself twiddling my thumbs, so this winter I decided that things would be different and as a result went out and purchased a radio controlled model boat kit to keep me occupied. I've always had a yen for one, especially having completed, a few years ago, a plank on frame model of one of Nelson's ships.

The job has given me hours of pleasure and a few moments of concern, when my heart skipped a beat, thinking that I'd ruined the whole project.

 As I write, the winter has hardly started and we've a lot of very grim weather to come, but I'm sure that this rekindled interest in modelmaking, for I did a lot in my youth, will keep boredom at bay.

However, one of the main problems I have is that it is not an easy task to build models of this type wearing fingerless gloves!!!