A few months break...

We have been a bit tied up lately...

I even caught the odd fish!

As you may have worked out by now, we have had one of those natural breaks from Meccano over the past three months. Just one of those periods where there seems to be more going on in our life than we have time for. Although Sue and I are both Meccano nuts, we do have other interests and sometimes they take us away from the Spanner. For me that has been acquainting myself with a new interest that was intended to give me and my brother some time away from the rest of the family. He (Tim) did a spot of fishing when he was younger and I was expecting him to show me what was what. As it has turned out, not only had Tim forgotten most of what he did know, 40 years on but angling has completely changed.

I found myself getting more and more involved in a steep learning curve that has resulted in me spending a lot of time reading and watching YouTube videos! All good fun but very much a casual pastime, something to fit in around Meccano activities.

For Sue (and to a lesser extent me) most of the past few months has been taken up planning and executing a large flower arrangement that was shown at the Chelsea Flower Show at the end of May. Sue, and her partner in crime, design and build the displays on behalf of their flower club. You may remember that last time Sue was involved, part of the display was a crown, the frame of which was built from Meccano. The finished crown was featured by the BBC as the centrepiece on the table in the open-air studio at the show. That was 2012, Diamond Jubilee, The  Show had taken on a Royal theme and Sue's display depicted the coronation and three jubilees of the Queen's reign; Silver, Gold and the Diamond Jubilee if 2012 . The display was awarded a Silver Medal by the judges.

The frame of the crown was built from Meccano strips

This year the section they entered was 'Heritage' and the title of the display was 'The Dissolution of the Monasteries' No Meccano this year but a huge ruined window fabricated from laminates of MDF and painted to look like aged stone. The flowers were arranged around the 'ruin' and and discarded spoils of the looting. The end result was a Chelsea Flower Show Gold Medal, Sue's first!

This year's display won Gold!

Now with SkegEx 15 just over a month away our thoughts are back on the Meccano front. We have all sorts of stories to tell you, new sets to show you and some of our new models to tell you about. But Sue is not the only one to have won something, no, not at all... I won the steam drag racing at Meccanuity. I will tell you more in a later post and show you what we have been building from the 1929/30 number six set we acquired at the end of last year. 

Today we have been dismantling some old models and cleaning all the parts ready to be returned to our storage system. That is always assuming we can find space. Discussion is ongoing regarding our next model but suffice to say, at the moment it is looking like we will be building our variant of a popular theme, more than that I can't tell... Stay tuned!

Ralph.