It’s Bank Holiday Monday, and it’s been pouring with rain all day. The cloud is so low that I can’t even see the ridge of the Malvern Hills, less than half a mile away. There was no point in spending my holiday getting soaked outdoors, so I have instead spent the day constructing a wooden model biplane that I was given last Christmas, and which I’ve deliberately saved for a wet weekend.
A wooden model biplane
According to the instructions, it should only have taken me an hour to build. It’s quite simple – of the form “insert tab A into Slot B”. The parts came in the form of two sheets of very thin plywood, with the shapes stamped out of it. But the kit was actually quite poor quality – the plywood kept splitting, and the parts all needed significant sanding to get the tabs to fit into the appropriate slots. It also required glueing each joint to give it structural integrity, which meant that I had to let each joint dry before doing the next. So although it might only have been one hour of sitting at the dining room table working on it, it’s actually taken me most of the day. Which is fine – a constructive way to spend a sodden Bank Holiday!
