Saved...

... by the hoarder's habit. Over breakfast this morning, thinking about the great Hawker Weather Build (see previous posts) I realised that if I was to make up the Hurricane as an RAF western desert version then I would need to fabricate a Volkes filter for the thing. My scratch building skills are very limited at the best of times, and the thought of trying to make the multiple smooth, curved surfaces of the Volkes filter was somewhat daunting. There was a possibility that I could sand one down from a small piece of wood, or balsa that I could then seal, or, perhaps, even try the hot water mould technique (something that I have never done). But, then, I remembered, I am a hoarder, so this evening I rummaged, and, ta da:

The two pieces on the sprue are certainly a Volkes filter; the single casting is a filter, but from what I'm not sure. Anyway, problem solved, so my western desert option is still on for the great build, which starts tomorrow - 1st May. Actually, it's already started in New Zealand!

I have to journey from Hobbiton to London tomorrow for work. William Cobbett (that hero beyond compare of all right-thinking Englishmen and a man that the House of Commons could sorely do with - try Richard Ingrams' biography of the crow scarer, soldier, newspaperman, recorder of England, grower of plants, drinker of beer, and MP) called London 'The Great Wen' (sore). I fear that, taken as a whole, the title is more apt than ever, it seems less and less to have any relation to other parts of England. Perhaps it is time for a new capital - Winchester (our Anglo-Saxon capital), or York, that jewel? Or, perhaps we should have a roving capital, not unlike The Flying Inn, a tale most strange, and, oddly prescient. Still, despite it all, there are parts of London that still resonate to this Englishman - Marylebone (as in Marie la bonne) Station is a favourite, a town terminus popped into the metropolis, or the Museum Tavern, or, even tomorrow, the guardhouse type structures outside the now hideous Euston Station.