Hobbies
Model making and being Grandads taxi!
I started model making when I was about 10 or 11, mainly Airfix aircraft kits (lots of glue everywhere!) The interest took a bit of a nose dive when I started work in a garage as a young man fresh out of school and I didn’t make any models due to discovering girls and beer ,but I always had a keen interest in cars and trucks. I suppose this was just like any interest (I could have gone down the path of train or aircraft spotting).
Later joined the airport fire service, here I was in my element ! Aircraft and big fire trucks. At the time in 1971 Manchester Airport had about 3 million passengers a year, now it’s around 25 million, so you can imagine that the night shift could be pretty quiet. I decided I had to do something to pass the time on night shifts especially and decided to take up modelling again.
I would buy a kit (I was into military vehicles) and make them on nights, I would set out my stuff in one of the mess room tables and begin. You could guarantee that I would have an audience sat around the table who couldn’t resist playing with the craft knife, files and tweezers!!
Once I had retired and with time on my hands I really got into my models (it was only a winter activity) trying to improve my skills. The best tool I had was the internet, I could research the models , the history and the colours to use.
The main thing with any hobby is that it keeps you sane!! One of the causes of depression is to have a lack of interest in anything but to have any kind of hobby no matter what is a real benefit. The train spotters, Aircraft spotter, bird watchers all benefit.
The pleasure I get from modelling and the pleasure my lovely wife Yvonne gets from Knitting and sewing is not just the making of the item but the point where you say “it’s finished” , Some modellers work are like works of art ! In fact sometimes they look more real than the real thing! But to do a model to your own satisfaction is a really good feeling. I
A hobby is just part of retirement life that is vitally important, I would say that the other main thing is feeling useful. I have a theory that feeling “useful” plays a big part of life. My Dad died when I was 3 years old so my Mum was on her own with my sister and I.
After a few years Mum had a partner (Sid) who was like a Dad to us but they both worked full time. This was in the 1950s, Mum worked in Manchester and Sid worked shifts so sometime we used to come home to an empty house. We would put the tea on and in winter light the coal fire (social services today would have a fit!) but we were being useful and this has stuck with me all my life.
When I went to work in a garage as a panel beater repairing damaged cars it appealed to the need I had to feel “useful” . To see customers who were upset about their damaged car looking happy when they picked it up. The Fire service was the same ,helping people in what could be traumatic times for them but again feeling “useful”
When I retired and at a loose end I volunteered at the local bureau and was taking elderly people to Hospital and staying with them for their appointment and bringing them home, I ended up in the office running the car scheme. Although I now no longer do this I feel that my usefulness is still a huge part of my everyday life and a way I like to be.
I was having a conversation with my Grandson John and he was saying that he had a spread sheet to keep track of money that he thought he owed us and I said not to worry. He said he would pay it back and I replied that it didn’t matter about the money and that it made me feel “useful”I explained to John that feeling useful is a very strong emotion and my theory is that not feeling useful is a huge cause of depression in elderly people , where they maybe once had held important jobs or positions and now they have gone.
They might even consider themselves a burden. So even if it is just a case of being ‘ Grandads taxi’ or ‘Grandads removals’it gives immense satisfaction and a sense of usefulness. So ask your grandparents or elderly relations for help and advice. Ask their opinions and consult them and their years of wisdom. You might just gain far more than you ever considered possible.
I had always imagined I would write, so many of us feel we ‘have a book in us’ that we have something to impart. Maybe knowledge , a story, a tale, a need to impart some sort of fantasy perhaps but actually setting things down is huge and is so daunting to make that first initial sentence that so often nothing is ever quite good enough.
I have always been drawn to a notebook, is there anything so beautifully pure perfect and pristine as a brand new notebook, they fall into categories of sacredness, the reporters notebook, now they are easy to fill in because they have pages you can tear out… the cheap notebooks that you can tear a page out of with a spiral binding.
Even the beautiful covers don’t stop me from using them because I can get rid of anything that no longer pleases me easily. But…those notebooks that are bound…that you have to keep intact, they are special. How do you write that first word? I have a pile of such notebooks in my room, they have been gifts from friends and relatives who know my love of a place to write but would they be sad to see they are still pristine?
You see the more beautiful and special a book is to me the more important it is that the first page is filled with something worthy…and so for years they can sit on my bookcase taunting me with their beautiful creamy or stark white pages, thick and textured or thin and crisp, plain or lined ,leather bound or with a picture or binding that calls to my heart.
I have not forgotten these notebooks, I am simply waiting for the day something is special enough to write on that first virgin page. I might use a sharp hard pencil or a smooth ballpoint, it might require real ink or even a felt tip or purple ink! But I will know when I am ready. Until recently I had loved to keep things for ‘special’ but I have been sharply reminded that tomorrow is a gift for many and we need to burn our scented candles, use our best china and spray our expensive perfume all over ourselves. So I will begin to write in my notebooks…and try not to think about what is good enough to enter the pages.
We write for so many reasons to explain and refine our ideas to others and ourselves. I do not believe myself to be a ‘writer’ I doubt my ideas and subjects , I worry that the style is pedantic, strange and immature. A nagging voice in my head whispers I am wasting my time. But I have found at this time of grief I am passing through writing has become as essential to my well being as good for me as eating well or getting enough sleep.
It builds my sense of worth. Allows me to lose myself into another world and relieves stress. And reminds me of the parts of life that are beautiful and interesting.
Writing has made me stop hiding from the memories that hurt so much with the loss of not being able to make more and to mine my past, pulling jewels from darkness, discovering the strength and beauty that I had and still carry in my heart.
2That is why I write – to try to turn sadness into longing, solitude into remembrance.” – Paulo Coelho
I hope that some of my words might possibly help others also. Those who might stumble across something I have written and find it resonates with them so they no longer feel alone and see that their thoughts and fears are others also, they are not alone.
I want to help people who have found the cruel unexpectedness of life and death to find their way through the long lonely months of life’s twists and turns. Others might not know how to speak and explain their depth of caring but might find penning a poem or letter easier or just a little gift of thought and empathy, This poem was written and sent to a friend of mine and it is beautiful in its simplicity band depth of love expressed,
Trying not to feel the pain
Of never seeing you again
Trying not to feel too bad
Trying to remember when
Thinking of you now and then
So many thoughts and words unheard
When you left without a word
By Carole Ford
Sorrow and pain need an outlet and the act of writing be it for an audience or just a diary gives us a chance to work through things, to give voice to sorrow, which also gives us a chance to heal. It lets us frame the terribleness of dark feelings into something definable, even if we struggle to make it manageable.
“Writing eases my suffering . . . writing is my way of reaffirming my own existence.” – Gao Xingjian
Mostly I write for fun and love. To give voice to my thoughts and feelings to share with others regardless of if they will ever actually read and to fill my time in a way that is pleasurable but makes me feel it has value.
“Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.” – Gloria Steinem
I would encourage you all to write, jot down those little anecdotes of family history, your voice can be carried through time the way a picture can but tell so much more of you. Don’t let yourself be lost…tell the world your stories or thoughts or feelings. Write poems , a diary, or simply your favourite family recipes. Your children and grandchildren will one day read and get a glimpse into your heart and soul in a way a photograph could never have done.
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