IPMS (UK) Column Life Beyond?

My apologies if some of the following seems familiar as I have previously mused on similar aspects of our hobby, but I’ve been giving particular thought to the question of whether modellers also have other hobbies.

- Chris Ayre

Ours is quite a time consuming pastime and it’s very easy to allow the hours to slip by whilst concentrating on the creation of that latest masterpiece. Even researching the subject requires a certain amount of dedication, let alone all the fettling and fiddling, fixing and finishing. Obviously, we all work at varying paces and to varying standards but this is a hobby that requires attention to detail and that means allocating a fair amount of time to it. So, do you have time in your life for the luxury of other hobbies?

Regular readers will know that I’m not often able to devote enough time even to this one hobby, let alone any others, but there was once a time when I could produce a list of hobbies and interests. It was quite an impressive list, which included photography, travel, reading, model making (!), swimming and music, amongst other things and was, as you might have guessed, appended to my CV. Most of those things really were genuine interests, although as I have a tendency to point out, anyone who wasn’t particularly sporty was prone to include swimming on their list. I’m lucky enough to have been able to incorporate some of those interests, such as photography, into my working life, which is just as well I suppose, given my appalling time management. I guess also that some of those pastimes do in fact feed into my modelling. But they’re not standalone hobbies. Photography, reading (research) and even travel to some extent, all support my main hobby and help to broaden it… and perhaps that’s another reason why it’s so time consuming!