Welcome to the latest in this ever-growing series of posts that see me making excuses for not updating this blog, and promising to do better in future. Where are we now? Three? Four? Who knows? (1)
Anyway. Moving on.
As promised, there's a review (of sorts) of the UCS Millennium Falcon coming up next, but my last post was 26th February 2018. That's over three years ago.
THERE WILL NOW BE A TEMPORARY DIVERSION FROM LEGO BASED CONTENT.
PLEASE BEAR WITH US.
So what's been happening?
Well at that point I'd just undergone surgery for prostate cancer. Chaps, if you're anywhere near the age of 50, if you're black or if you have any kind of family history of prostate issues, then stop reading, make an appointment with your GP and go and get checked. It's not only one of the most common types of cancer in the UK, but caught early enough, it's also one of the most treatable.
To any ladies reading, if you have a man in your life that falls into the above categories, then pester him until he does something about it.
Nobody should die because they couldn't be bothered to get a check up.
THANK YOU. WE NOW RESUME OUR USUAL PROGRAMMING
I.E. RABBITING ABOUT LEGO
A quick look at the Purchase Spreadsheet reveals that there have been 209 separate acquisitions since that last blog post, most of which (2) were small, inexpensive sets.
I've actually built a few sets in the intervening time, including the Technic Lamborghini Sián, Dom's Dodge Charger from the Fast and Furious franchise, the Creator Expert Mustang and the Technic 4x4 X-Treme Off Roader. One (actually, two, now I come to think of it) of these was an awesome build, one was pretty cool, and one currently holds the title of 'Worst Lego set I've ever bought'.
More on that later.
The other significant thing that's happened is that we've had some work done on the house, and that has required us to temporarily rent a storage unit and transfer a number of items to it, from the house. Including all my Lego. This is the first time that my entire collection has been out of the loft at once. Now while my wife and I have no secrets from each other (3), there may have been a few occasions when certain purchases were brought into the house and found their way into the loft before my beloved actually saw them. So, because she doesn't venture into the loft herself (it requires some gymnastics to get up from the ladder and though the hatch) (4) there may have been some disparity between what was up there, and what she thought was up there.
The fact that she only gave me a baleful stare rather than going ballistic, reminded me of a quote by the American humorist, Dave Barry. After getting paid a sizeable amount of money for writing a humorous article about sex... "I said to my wife that I was going to spend it on an electric guitar. To which she replied: (and reader, I believe I married her in anticipation of this moment...)
'Fine.'"
She's good like that, my wife.
Anyway. Rather than talk about Lego sets (which I promise I will in the next entry, so come back sometime in late 2024), I want to talk about the Dark ages. Not the ones from history, which ran from 476AD to 1000AD (apologies to my history teachers, I had to look that up on Wikipedia) but 'Dark ages' in a Lego context.
For those not familiar with the term, a Lego fan's 'dark ages' refer to the gap between when they gave up Lego as a child - commonly in mid-to-late teens - and when they rediscovered a love of the brick. Usually at the point where the term 'disposable income' has become a reality. For some there was no dark age - they never lost their love of Billund's finest export (5), but many of us spent years in the wilderness. For me it was about 30 years, until the 8110 Technic Unimog brought me back into the fold.
But lately I've been wondering whether many people have a second (third? fourth?) dark age? When the bug bit, back around Christmas 2012, I just couldn't get enough of the stuff. As this blog has documented, I started with Technic, spread out into Architecture, Star Wars and, well, quite a lot of other stuff. Rarely a week would go by without a new acquisition coming into the house. Far faster than I could build it, if I'm honest, which meant that when the aforementioned move of my collection came about, rather embarrassingly, around 90% of it was still sealed. Great for resale value, but it hinted that I placed more importance on collecting than I did on building.
But then the purchasing slowed down. To be fair, having cancer (which, annoyingly, made a reappearance in early 2020), will put a damper on your desire to buy toys. Then being made redundant (which, annoyingly, happened in late 2020) does make you think twice about buying anything. If you don't have an income, then it's a bit more difficult to justify spending £200 on a plastic toy. But all that aside, I found that where I used to spend a lot of time trawling for Lego news, looking for new Lego books and all that jazz, I just... wasn't.
That's been the case for about two years, but lately... lately that itch has started to come back!
I guess I can liken it to a couple of other things in my life. I love music. Love listening to it and particularly love playing it. I took up the drums in my late teens (6). The other thing I took up in my teens was videogaming. The lure of the late, lamented Clive Sinclair's 16K Spectrum took hold in around 1982 (my Mum and Dad bought it for me for Christmas, after I told them it would 'help me get a job in computers', which, to be fair, it did), and from then on I was hooked. As well as being full of Lego, our loft is also home to just about every console that Sony, Nintendo, Sega, Atari, Microsoft and others have created in the past three decades.
But I found that if I was in a band and playing music, then the dust grew thick on my consoles. Maybe a few years would go by without me starting a new game. And then something would happen. I'd leave a band, or a band would break up, and I'd put my sticks down. And before too long, I'd pick up a controller and I was back into gaming. The two pastimes complemented each other, but rarely overlapped.
And thus, I think, it is with Lego. For seven or eight years, it was, if not an obsession, then a hobby that I was very, very keen on. And then other distractions got in the way. Not hobbies as such, more "life", but it was enough to put Lego on the back burner.
But I found myself wondering about the next Modular building over the summer. Not long ago I somehow came home with not one, not two, but three Lego advent calendars (7). And last week I was in a local supermarket, and I saw some polybags that had been reduced.
Be rude not to, right?
And I found the pictures I'd taken when I was building the UCS Millennium Falcon, and before I knew it, I was halfway through writing a blog entry about it (8).
I don't think I'd call the last three years another dark age. Maybe 'a gloomy period'.
But I can see a light shining up ahead.
Hey, Lego! I'm back!
Thanks for waiting for me.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
- Six. This is the sixth apology for an unscheduled delay. I could get a job working on the railways!
- Well. Some of which.
- At least I think we don't.
- We really need to get a proper loft ladder at some point.
- Probably Billund's only export.
- More accurately, the drums chose me. Parents. Your child may choose to play the guitar, the piano, the flute or any one of the myriad instruments that are out there. And after many expensive lessons and many disturbed neighbours, they may lose interest just as suddenly as they found it, and set aside said guitar / piano / flute / whatever. Usually at the time that boys / girls become interesting. But if your child is going to be a drummer, it's a disease that there is no cure for. They will tap on anything and everything. There is no reasoning with them. If they're a drummer, they're a drummer and you'll just have to resign yourself to it. Better still, encourage them. It's one of the greatest things they'll ever do.
- Star Wars, Harry Potter and Marvel. Friends just doesn't float my boat. Might pick up a City one if I find it at a discount.
- Yes! It will be published!
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