A MODELMAKER’S LIFE: LURGY, LEGO AND A TAMIYA TOMCAT…

It’s been a very long time since I’ve built anything of note from LEGO, so I was keen to dive in once more.

5th January 2026

Despite still feeling distinctly unwell (this cough is proving to be really unpleasant, resulting in very little sleep during the night) I managed to start work this morning, if a little later than I’d planned.

In a desperate attempt to shake off the night’s travails, we went for an early walk in the snow, making the most of what was a stunning start to the day. Cold, crisp and illuminated with the kind of stunning blue skies that only a snow day can provide, we spent around an hour out in the fresh air, which not only helped my cough and general lethargy, it set me up for what I hoped would be a full day at the bench. Time would prove that to be a forlorn hope.

I started off okay truth be told, gluing together some of the smaller bits and pieces before I simply lost what little energy I had left. Coughing and sputtering seemed hardly conducive to a focused period of work, so I gave up, decided to have a short nap, only to lose well over two hours, waking up as the sun began to set. I guess my body was telling me to rest, even if my mind was determined to at least complete something of note, during my first supposed day back at work.

As it turned out, a few hours this evening has allowed me to catch up, plenty of the Big Cat’s sub-assemblies now being done. I still haven’t settled on a colour scheme, that being done over the next few days. Normally I would have had that set in stone by now, but a mixture of flu-induced lethargy and post-Christmas procrastination is proving hard to shift. I will I assure you, Make my mind up in due course.

And so on to this evening and a period of relaxing time with Liz. She is currently working on what looks to be a rather complex jigsaw puzzle. Much is now done, but she is seemingly becoming more and more bogged down with a mass of pieces that all look the same colour, so what appears to have been good progress over the last few days has slowed to a snail’s pace.

Whilst she is doing that, I’ve started to build the LEGO Mandalorian helmet that my son bought me for Christmas.

It’s been a very long time since I’ve built anything of note from LEGO, so I was keen to dive in once more. I’d forgotten just how relaxing it is, the sheer pleasure of clicking those little plastic parts together being a perfect antidote to the pressures of the world around us. So far I’ve completed the first bag, which means it will take me a week to complete, a perfect little project that I can do whilst Liz becomes more and more engrossed with completing her amazing puzzle.

See you tomorrow.