Another Land

Turn right from the kitchen ,past the rickety old shoe cupboard and the downstairs loo.

Up the small stone step and through his solid green wooden door and into ...

My dad's old workshop

It was dominated by an old rusty chest freezer, we had had forever and looked like it contained a 

body that would sit up and leer at you if opened .

It generated more ice than the North pole and it was harder to shift the white crusts of ice that line 

the lid and the walls .

Dad would stand between this and his bench .

Equipped with his small metal vice , with his little pots of Umbro paint and his Airfix models.

He would be painting a plane,a boat or a tank in the most tiny detail , a jeweller with an exquisite 

gem in his white gloved hand .

Wearing his old green overalls and with a fixed concentrated look in his eye

Using Observer books and old war pictures for reference.

He would build German planes with their bright Swastikas , that slash of red and English bombers 

with their lovely round rainbow markings

Like a Peacock butterfly has its eye of blue and brown on each tiny wing so the planes got their 

markings.

He built the Victory and the Endeavour for me with its rigging and its tiny gun portals with a gunner 

for each ready for action .

He built a Sunderland flying boat with its huge belly that we had seen on a trip to Edinburgh sitting in 

the Forth.

A dock with little cranes,tugs and boats around it to feed the orange warehouses and to be loaded 

onto flat bed trucks queuing nearby. 

And Canberass that he watched at Cottesmore near his beloved Rutland water with its nature 

reserve and walks .

He would not believe it now has Ospreys which we watched at Garten when only one pair had 

arrived .

Each was inscribed with a label on the base of the model with his lovely neat writing ,always black

and always with an ink pen.

The same pen that taught Sociology all day was penning a summary of his works of art each night.

He had his equipment , his glue,his paint,fine brushes and his wood tools .

While we would sit in the lounge watching Morecambe and Wise and the Two Ronnies with mum.

Dad was in his kingdom creating his delicate scale models .

After he was gone the models live on 

My Phantom from the RAF with its camouflage from a war we no longer fight lives with me still 

The rigging is gone on James Cookes flagship , the gun shields have come loose

But the memory remains

The smells and the vision long lost in the mist but echoing now through my mind .