Airfix kid

In those pre-internet pre-girlfriend days during the 1960s the answer to a wet weekend, when you couldn't lake out with your mates, was to build an Airfix model. I don't think I have any left (although, according to this, they're being sought after as museum pieces) but I did find these paints this evening when mooching about half-heartedly in search of a blip. I can't believe there's any paint remaining in these tiny 40-year-old tins, so you may wonder why I've kept them? Me too. But the kits were surprisingly popular and sought after in the old days.

My bedroom was painted pale blue to add a bit of realism to the aircraft dangling from the ceiling. One of my friends had the foresight to construct his ships and planes around fireworks - Little Demon bangers - to add a bit of realism to his war games. When he'd had enough of a model, he simply lit the blue touch paper and sailed it in to battle.

I was good at painting soldiers. I had one brush with a single hair for fine details - moustaches, eyeballs and such like, this on little plastic figures no bigger than a thumbnail. My own boys did much the same with World of Warcraft figures. They loved those fantasy games, so much so that they make their own computer games now. This is the kind of advice I gave them, maybe not quite so eloquently.