Robot Claw – Page 362 – “Life In The So-Called Space Age”

Farm Holidays

September 20, 2016

When we were kids, we spent a few vacations on farms. We called them ‘farm holidays’ and they are a fond – if fading – memory of my childhood.

I seem to recall we did this at least three times, maybe more. I was probably under 10 at the time, and I’m sure the holidays occurred in the summer (around January) when school was out. We’d all pile into the car with supplies and drive what seemed like forever until we arrived, then spend a while (a week?) living on the farm, seeing how it worked and using it as a base for day trips.

I think the destinations were country New South Wales, Locations like Kempsey and Tamworth spring to mind, but maybe they were just towns we drove through on the way. The drives themselves were exciting, as Bernard and I would play games in the back seat and we’d often stop for lollies in small towns or at petrol stations. I recall getting a few smurfs at BP on one of these drives, which would date it to about 1980.

I think it was the earliest farm we stayed at that had pigs and a large homestead shaded by gum trees. I recall sleeping in a bunk bed in a room without any glass in the windows (just screens for insects). There was a massive storm one night and I was scared of the lightning! I rode on a tractor with a farmer as he did some chores, playing with pigs and horses, and ate sausages almost every meal.

We also visited a wheat farm. The fields seemed to go forever, and during that stay I went with some older boys while they hunted rabbits with a bow in a nearby grove (they never hit any). I desperately wanted to shoot the bow myself but didn’t have the strength to pull it back. My memories of this place are very dim. I don’t recall exactly where we stayed or for how long. Maybe it wasn’t an actual holiday but we were just visiting someone? Mostly I can just remember the wheat fields.

There was also one time we took out cat Louis with us! He was free in the car as we drove, but mostly sat in the back window behind Bernard and I. We stayed in an old homestead on a hill that time, and a river wound around. Louis had the range of the house and I think we even let him outside! I don’t really remember much farming at that stay; maybe mum and dad just rented the house like a sort of early outback Airbnb. This place came with a little boat we used to take out onto the river, and I can remember long hours playing on the water even amidst the threat of horse flies. I think we did fireworks there as well, which confuses me since it wouldn’t have been cracker night.

I think it was on that trip that I saw a kangaroo out the window of the house and ran outside to find it but it had already gone. I think it was also that trip I collected grasshoppers in my Bug Catcher and released them in the house 🙂

I can recall getting sick enough on one of these trips that I was taken to hospital, although that may have been when we visited Canberra in the late 70s. I can vividly recall one time staying in a motel (again, on the way or way back) that had an arcade and Bernard and I spent time playing Tempest and Galaxian while mum and dad went to the bar! That would have dated it to about 1981. I think we ate chinese at a restaurant at that motel, which seems unremarkable now but was quite an event for us in those years.

All these are fleeting memories, or possibly bits and pieces of different memories arranged incorrectly. Given how little I recall I have a profound fondness for these holidays. No-one else I knew used to do this (they’d go placed like Queensland or New Zealand) and I felt special as a result. I’m sure cost was one reason our family did such holidays, but maybe mum and dad just had the foresight to know that staying on a farm would be more of an adventure for boys of our age.

I did some research and this type of vacation is still very much in existence. They are called ‘Farm Stays’ now, and there are many websites catering to people interested in booking farmhouses or even staying on working farms. It’s nice to know families today can still have the same type of holiday we had over 35 years ago.

Bernard and I have booked out next Australian trip, and it will include a lazy drive from Queensland to Newcastle down the NSW coast. I suspect some of the places we drive through – Grafton, Taree, Kempsey – may hold long-forgotten memories of my youth. Maybe during that drive some of it will come back to me…

Kit Bashing?

September 13, 2016

This is a Chaos Terminator Lord model kit by Games Workshop:

I bought this a few months ago. I’d always wanted to assemble and paint a Warhammer model, and this guy was inexpensive and looked good. Here’s what I found inside the box:

And here’s a close-up of the parts still on the runners:

As someone with a decent amount of experience assembling model kits from Bandai or Kotobukiya I was a bit taken aback by what I saw. For starters this is not a glueless kit. For seconders few – if any – of the connections have tabs or slots to strengthen them. For thirds the pieces are strongly attached to the runners and would need quite a bit of cleaning up after removal.

In short, it looked like a pain.

And that was before I saw the instructions:

These are the instructions to make a ‘Chaos Terminator Sorceror‘. If you want to assemble it as a (melee style) ‘Lord’, you’d use the other sheet of instructions. Both ways have multiple possibilities, and you can see that during assembly you can mix-and-match parts as you see fit. Unlike a Gundam (where the weapons and sometimes even armor is removable and replaceable) this kit is final once made due to the gluing.

Assembly took a while and was a fiddly as I had feared/expected. To be honest it wasn’t really much fun at all! But I think my final version looks fairly nice:

If you’re going to make a kit like this I strongly recommend using a low viscosity glue that can be applied with a brush since you’ll want to put tiny amounts in very specific locations.

Building the kit is only half the fun though, since it must be painted! Master painters can make these tiny kits absolutely come alive with their skilled paint jobs. For instance here’s an example of what someone did with this very model (remember it’s about 2 inches tall):

Looks great doesn’t it?

Here’s where I ran into a bit of trouble. In short: Warhammer paints are bloody expensive! The basic Warhammer 40k space marine paint set of only five colours is about $20, which was more than this kit. If I wanted to buy all the recommended colours for this particular guy, it would have cost about $65! That’s probably ok if you’re building an army to play with (since Warhammer is a miniatures wargame), but crazy just for one tiny kit. I needed another solution.

One option was to take it to a Warhammer store and paint it for free since they encourage that. This would be great were there any Warhammer stores around here. I went into one in England and was tempted to spent an hour painting one of their free miniatures just for fun but didn’t have the time.

But it was during our very same trip to England that the solution appeared in the form of a freebie attached to a very inexpensive Doctor Who kids magazine:

Most people will look at that and think “Oh free magnets!”. I looked at it and thought “Oh free paints!” And in vaguely Space Mariney colours as well! This was my salvation, and months after assembly I finally had the means to complete my Chaos Terminator Sorceror.

Here he is:

I think I’ve done him justice wouldn’t you agree?

Boldly Gone

September 3, 2016

Whilst in Bath, we swaggered into a weird hobby/toy/educational store (like National Geographic shops, for the Ozians reading) in which I found, for the princely sum of £3, this:

It’s appropriate the Olympics were on at the time, because I think I set a world record with the speed at which I purchased it!

It’s a guidebook to the (original series) Enterprise that also includes a cardboard punch-out model! The difficulty rating was the highest they used, but this didn’t sway me. I skimmed past the technical pages (with sections on space navigation or how the transporters work) and moved straight to the seemingly-endless instructions (over 150 steps!) and starting punching out the pieces:

Notice nothing is labeled by number, only coloured dots. This could have been designed a bit better…

Folding began! It wasn’t particularly difficult at first; certainly easier than the few ‘build a castle’ books I’d purchased in the past (for which you’d need to be a Cardboardmancer to successfully complete). Very quickly I had a piece of the saucer section complete:

Looks a bit iffy doesn’t it? I won’t take the time here to criticise the ensign who had come up with the idea of requiring the card to gently bend inwards with no actual support method and instead fast forward to the completed saucer:

It’s not bad! Everything more or less lines up, and incredibly stayed together without any tape or glue. What this picture doesn’t show though was the tension! Even at this point – only half built – it felt like a big compressed cardboard spring wanting to go off. I handled it with care, at least partially, because I didn’t hate it yet. I continued.

The engineering of this kit was, shall we say, ambitious. Take this photo showing the not-quite-semispherical Bussard Collector (and yes, they are referred as such in the instructions) on the front of a warp nacelle:

I swear I did the best I could there, but it still looks like it was assembled by a Gorn. You can ignore – or at least politely not refer to – the fact that the nacelle behind it is visibly not cylindrical as well.

I forged on, and after maybe 3 hours in total was complete. Here it is in drydock:

Beautiful! It resembles the actual ship quite a bit, and more or less holds together seamlessly. It was still a ball of tension though, and I had many pairs of kid gloves on as I delicately transported it. I confess two pieces of tape were required (one on each nacelle) and the dish on the lower front was a bit of a hack job since I had torn one of the tabs during assembly.

On it’s maiden voyage, as it often did, the Enterprise encountered a strange new life form:

Those of you that know the titanic size of Yossie can appreciate just how big this model is.

Then tragedy struck! Almost immediately after the above photo was taken, as the Enterprise took off for a further voyage, this happened:

Some say it was space debris! Some say the warp field collapsed! Yossie was heard whispering to Emi that she saw me violently tear it to pieces!

All I can say is the model that cost only 3 pounds and gave me 3 hours of entertainment was ruined utterly in only 3 seconds 🙂