I checked through the e-mails and discovered that I had a private message on one of the forums that I visit and when I read it, I was pretty pleased. It was a simple statement...
..."Hi there!
We're putting "Splat" into the 1/48 Airfix Merlin, do you have any more pics of the nose art?
Thanks!...
To cut a long story short...I painted some nose art on a merlin and now Airfix are putting decals of it into one of their kits. Here's a link to the NOSE-ART and here is a link to some DECALS that were made of it.
I thought... I'll get an e-mail address from him so that I can send some pix and it was none other than Jonathan Mock. Who? That's what I thought until I did a little bit of digging and found this:
So it definitely seems genuine to me. It looks like I will be getting my nose art in an Airfix kit! A child of the 70's greatest wish.
It would be too awesome to hope that it makes it onto the front of the box... but we live in hope.
In other news, Niamh and her family went to the USA on Friday to start her therapy journey. Enough money was donated for the whole family to go and still have enough left over for charitable donations. Here's a link to her story and donations page:
I hope everything works out well for her and her family. My thoughts go with them on their tough journey.
As I sit here typing and looking out of the window at the rain, I think of how we are all guilty of moaning about our lot. Oh look... MORE RAIN... The MOT bill was far too much... I have to get up for work...
... but the more I think of it, the more I see just how selfish that is.
I spent a bit of time in Iraq and Kuwait. While I was out there, the temperature was anything up to 60 degrees Celsius. When you breathed, every breath dragged in dust that, after a while, tasted metallic and it clogged up your nose and coated your teeth. There was a thing we called 'desert bogeys' and it was where the sand and dust mixed with whatever was in your nose and set hard so you ended up picking your nose all the time to get rid of it... which meant you got a lot of nose-bleeds... so you'd try to let it all build up so that you didn't have to pick so often.
When the plane set down at RAF Brize Norton and the doors opened, the sweet, moist air of a drizzly British day swept into the cabin and I smelt home.
Now when I see rain, it just takes me back to that moment and I can't possibly be upset by it...it is just part of life, here in Britain.
And how can we get upset about work, bills, those little bumps along the road of life?
Last year my son got sick. He got REALLY sick, REALLY fast and lost a lot of weight in the space of a week. I thought I was going to lose him... I genuinely thought he was going to die. He didn't and he is now as fit as he was before he got sick but the thing about what happened was... it was a reality check.
I have had a few of those... Rockets in Iraq, conception woes, the threat of losing my son (amongst others) and do you know what? It puts things into perspective.
Where there is life, there is hope. We are the top of the food chain and we didn't get there by sitting by the camp fire hoping for the next Mammoth to walk by and die in front of us. We got there by evolution, adaptation and flexibility. We came up against a problem (as a species) and we fought against it until it was conquered and then we moved on to the next one... the problems are still there but we view them differently. Society has made us that way... how the heck can we justify being angry that our car costs lots of money to keep on the road? It isn't doing us any harm by not having a car. There are other ways to get around. We can do without it... and nobody died because of not having a car. It is a luxury, the icing on the cake, the little bit of extra that says 'I have treated myself because I think I work hard and have earned it'.
If you lose a house... it can be replaced. If you can't afford a car... you use the bus. If things are too expensive... you adapt to your means. If you lose a child... a friend... a close family member (and yes, I include beloved pets there)... these things you can't replace. These things are important. These things stay with you until you die.
It is all about perspective.
The rain doesn't seem so bad, after all.
See you from the restaurant at the end of the universe.
2 comments:
Bravo well done!
Cheers :) I am pretty chuffed about it :)
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