Old dog, new tricks

I have sent my apprentice, Sammy-Lou Westwinds, off on a 3-day block release course to learn some more of the technicalities of professional model-making.

She is already quite proficient and skilled in her work. The way she handled the wet bits of our recent scale model of the canals of Birmingham, for example, was quite exquisitely nice.

Sammy-Lou departed for the training base – a secret lair somewhere in the depths of Berkshire – at the weekend. My youngest child and Sammy-Lou’s beau (Derek Jnr) has been pining for his sweetheart already.

I instructicised Sammy-Lou to send myself irregular updates and her first arrived this very morningtime with a surprise attached for myself.

It transpires her main instructorer will be none other than Edward Framley (Mr).

For the unintentionally stupid amongst you, Edward Framley is widely and wisely regarded as the Godfather of Model-Making.

An ageing, conservative with a capital C, bigoted, blustering, belligerent, brutish buggerer of a man, Edward Framley is to model-making what Robert Maxwell was to pension funds – incidentally, I once created a model of the Daily Mirror’s newsroom for Cap’n Bob (as he liked to be called) so that he could stand above it and feel like a 100-ft tall ogre.

Sammy-Lou will be learning from the best, that is for certainly sure and stuff.

But I am also fearful that she might pick up some rampantly obnoxious traits from Edward Framley.

She attached a note from Framley, Mr to myself which simply read:

“Belm, you idiot!

You’ve sent me a female. What use is that?

She won’t even make a cup of tea. Looks damn fine in overalls though.

How’s that delicious wife of your’s? I must make my way over and stare at her again some time soon.

Get lost!

Edward Framley, Mr.”

Sammy-Lou then signed off her own message:

“Up your’s Belm!

Love to Derek Jnr.

Bye

x”

This does not augur well for the future.

Sammy-Lou might learn some valuable technicality lessons, but she could also return even more opinionated and objectionable than myself.

A late entry

I have received a last minute, late, final whistle-style application for the role of Chief Model-Maker.

It is from Alfred Nemesis, 29, son of the late, great, grating Adolf P. Nemesis who was the creator of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon scale model that is widely regarded as the greatest model ever constructed, but which never actually factually existed.

Alfred Nemesis – known affectionately as Curly – has worked with the best in the world in more countries than I have pointed to on a map.

He now wants to settle back down in this country, find a wife and stuff and other things like that.

My shortlist has grown to six and a decision is likely.

Shortlists and longshots

I’m all a dither and stuff.

I have five high quality candidates to become my new Chief Model-Maker following Jonty’s decision to set up an exotic pet shop on the Isle of Mull with his partner Judas.

Two internal candidates have thrown their hat into the ring – not in actual factual way, mind you.

Maurice, my most experienced model-maker but the ugliest man this side of Ulan Bator, is a front-runner in spite of his facially challenged state of being.

Surprisingly, the other internal candidate is not my apprentice (Sammy-Lou Westwinds). Instead it is Old Stumpy Muldoon, the octogenarian sweeper-upperer who used to make models until his eyesight left him – I’ve told Old Stumpy he’s my wild card and he was thrilled to have made the shortlist.

There are also three external candidates of whom I know nothing whatsoever if anything about at all, other than their names, qualifications, abilities, career and personality traits.

They are: Wilbur McIver, 38, off of Scotland and a former apprentice of Sidebottom (senior); Marcus Keithley-Singer, 55, out of the Cotswolds, who ran his own firm until he couldn’t be arsed any longer; and Andre “Snake Hips” Smedley, 42, born out of wedlock, who wishes to juggle model-making duties with the salsa and line dancing lessons he runs for members of his extended family and anyone else who knows him.

Quite an impressive line-up, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Interviews take place when I decide and not a moment sooner or later.

Updates if you’re good and well-behaved.

A decision will be prompt, knee-jerk and announced with a fanfare of mini trumpets in due course.

The chief, the apprentice and the tycoon

It has been a day of surprises and upsets at Derek Belm & Sons.

After literally seconds of speculation, my Chief Model Maker has announced he is leaving my employ.

Jonty is off to fulfill a life-long ambition and open an exotic amphibian pet shop on the Isle of Mull with his partner Judas. I feel this is a niche market and have warned him against it, but he is confident of success.

This leaves me with a conundrum. Who should I promote in Jonty’s place, or should I seek an outsider to fill his freekishly small boots?

The obvious internal candidate is Maurice, the world’s ugliest model-maker. Despite his facial misfortune, he has the experience and thanks to his cyber girlfriend Gravel he now has the self-confidence to do the job.

But do I want someone so facially challenged respresenting Derek Belm & Sons? The public face of the company needs to be pleasant, not appalling.

The wild card is my apprentice, Sammy-Lou Westwinds. Despite her youngness and relative inexperience, Sammy-Lou is now without a shadow of a cloud the most talented model-maker I employ (not including myself, obviously).

She is currently helping me to complete a model of Birmingham’s canal network – there are more actual factual canals in Birmingham than Venice, did you know? Sammy-Lou is in charge of the wet bits and is doing a brilliant job.

The fact she is a girl no longer counts against her. Indeed, as more of my colleagues warm to the idea of employing women for the first time in our noble craft’s history, Sammy-Lou is something of a role model and trail-blazer.

But it may have come too soon for Sammy-Lou, so I might have to appoint externally.

On top of all this, I’ve also been cat sitting today.

My wife (Mrs Belm) was working as an actual factual magistrate today so insisted I took Christopher with me to my underground workshop as he gets lonely when left at home.

To mark the occasion, she purchased a Richard Branson Tycoon outfit for Christopher – a garish jumper, slacks and an unconvincing beard (he already has the arrogance and cheesey smile).

Christopher seemed to take to his Branson outfit, judging by the web pages I discovered on my computer after leaving him alone in my office for an hour or so.

I think Christopher might be plotting a few unusual take-overs for Derek Belm & Sons.

I found research from Companies House on Fly, Fly and Fly Again (a local airplane charter company), the HELLO!!!! mobile phone shop, The Hints Valley Narrow Gauge Railway and Victor’s Vinyl Vaults, the record store owned by Smelly McPhail.

Quite why he thinks we should branch out into airraft, trains, mobile telephonic devices and music is beyond me, especially as Christopher is a cat and clearly doesn’t have a nose for business.

I’ll be glad to see the back of Christopher, but not Jonty.

Spies, models and personal hygiene

I recently reappeared after several weeks of nothingness.

‘Tis good to be home amongst the ample bosom of my wife (Mrs Belm) and the comfort of her rampant and voluptuous cooking.

I am not too proud to admit I have missed her curvaciousness, both in the kitchen and elsewhere.

It can now be revealed whereabouts I have been lurking.

I received a secret commission to construct a model of the main listening roomage at GCHQ-upon-Severn – spying central and home to the Great British spooks and shady fellows who keep us all sleeping safely in our beds by stopping beastliness and terrierism from over-running our wonderous society.

For obvious reasons of nationalised security and scrutiny I had to keep quiet about my whereabouts in Gloucestershire and the fact that the head honcho himself – James T Bond – was the man I was constructising the model for so he could place it in his bachelorpad apartment to impress the ladies and stuff.

I found Jimmy Boy, as he insisted on being called, to be quite insufferably smug and somewhat lapse in the personal hygiene region.

Quite how he can lay claim to so many conquests of the female persuasion – it currently stands at 007, according to the wallchart he showed myself – is beyond guesswork as his body odour problems are only matched by his halitosis.

But he is good at his job as Chief Spy and he paid handsomely for the model – enough for me to whisk Mrs Belm (my wife) away for a romantic holiday to somewhere or other if I so choose – so I kept my complainage to the minimum standard required.

The model is now complete and making womenfolk swoon – I suspect Jimmy Boy will mark himself up to 008 by Easter at the very least.

I am home and availed of the fragrant Mrs Belm (my wife).

So life has returned to an evenness that is quite satisfactory.

I trust I have not missed too much in my absent-minded departedness and will need to get “up” to “speed” (as the youngest folk say) on goings-on at Derek Belm & Sons as soon as Monday comes around.

In the meantime, ’tis good to be back and even betterer to be back here.

Model-making: a glossary

I am aware that many of you lay “people” will be unaware of the technicalities of model-making and the terms I use.

For example, the “following” joke will mean nothing to the vast majority of you but would have fellow professional model-makers laughing so hard they would be incapicitated for six hours and would literally make themselves wet:

Two Gimpettes walk into a bar.

The barman says to the first Gimpette: “Is that a Scroggins I can see standing outside the window?

First Gimpette: “Yes, he’s waiting for permission to enter.”

Barman: “That Scroggins is barred from this place because of what he did with his pollocks the other day.”

Second Gimpette: “That’s not fair, it wasn’t his fault. Besides he can play a fabulous version of Danny Boy on it.”

(It is now three hours after I finished typing that joke and I had to stop writing as I laughed so much my banana milkshake curdled).

So, back to the glossary:

Kudos – the substance drawn from the sap of Bougainvillea that is used to bind some metals in model-making (I have an image of the extraction machine in my MySpace “pics”).

Gimpette – vessel for spreading kudos, similar to a pipette only made of leather.

Toolage – collection of model-making tools.

Swellings – the safety wear that is obligatory for all model-makers (as seen in my MySpace profile “pic”).

Quimquacks – tiny pin-headed ironwork used for a variety of purposes on many models.

Goose Jam – a toxic paint in natural form, but when heated it becomes harmless and is perfect for daubing on model buildings to keep them watertight.

Porksheath – protective coating for models of persons.

Fiddlings – the solid foundations of all models, without them the pieces would simply collapse or implode.

Plums – used for shaping foliage and other greenery, usually spherical.

Gobblers – a set of small hammers used for bashing metalwork.

Splanker – a form of wrench or grip.

Tunc face – the model-makers own font size used for signage lettering.

The wrong ‘un – a specialist minitaure screwdriver for tricky internal screwage.

Plumpy pillows – substance used to represent clouds on models of mountains and other curvy mounds.

Twattering – using a large mallet.

Fockle – a small sawing device.

Mingey – a tool for scraping out little crevices, nooks and crannies.

I will update and add to this glossary when the law permits it.

The early days

I cut my modelling teeth, so to speak, with none other than Sidebottom (minor) of the legendary Sidebottom, Melchet & Sidebottom.

As you could probably imagine, it was truly a batptism of fire, a rare privilege and the best possible start an impressionable teenage model-maker could wish for, although it wasn’t without its hardships.

My first day at the Sidebottom, Melchet & Sidebottom “nerve centre” – a sprawling former aircraft hangar in the Staffordshire Moorlands – is one I will never forget.

The exact location remains a secret to this day to all but a select few due to the sensitive nature of some of the work they do for the security services. I myself was transported in blindfold within a blacked out transit van, along with every other employee, for the entire five-year apprenticeship I served with the illustrious trio.

On that first day I ended up helping Sidebottom (major) and Melchet themselves to complete a particularly tricky church spire for a scale model of the south-east quarter of the centre of Wem.

If I felt I was on “cloud 9” after that first day then I was brought down to earth with a bump every day for the next five years. The quality of work was amazing – Sidebottom, Melchet & Sidebottom still set benchmarks the rest of the model-making world aspire to – but Sidebottom (minor) lived up to his reputation for being a difficult man to work with.

He didn’t speak to me at all for the first six months of my internship, I was merely expected to watch, learn and understand.

When he did finally speak directly to me, his first words were: “If you were a woman, you wouldn’t be allowed within 50 feet of here. I’d either have you imprisoned or would take you as another wife. Are you a woman?”

I took the unorthodox question as a test – but Sidebottom (major) suggested it had more to do with bottle of cognac his younger sibling had consumed for breakfast.

We rarely “conversed” in the conventional sense throughout my five years with the company and Sidebottom (minor) invariably called me “Woman” rather than by my name. But I eventually emerged an experienced and accomplished model-maker in my own right – I had all the big names in the industry (Badger & Titley; the Bushy sisters; Frobisher) clamouring to employ me.

I chose the smaller Felching & Frogatt as I knew the opportunity to express myself would be greater.

On my final day at Sidebottom, Melchet & Sidebottom I finally received what I considered to be respect from Sidebottom (minor).

“You are a passable model-maker and you leave here armed with the knowledge, tools, wit and wisdom to do a decent and honest day’s work.”

They are words I will remember for the rest of my life. There were more words from Sidebottom (minor) that day, more in the final five minutes before I headed to the blacked out transit van than I’d heard in five years. But most was incoherent babbling brought on by another breakfast of cognac and corn-based snackage. The last words I heard my mentor and hero say before his elder brother bundled him away were: “If it doesn’t work out you could always find yourself a decent man, get married and become a housewife.”

I prefer to dwell on the “You are a passable model-maker…” tribute than those final words.

The irony is, however, that within days I did actually meet the person I would marry just six months after leaving Sidebottom, Melchet & Sidebottom and starting work at Felching & Froggatt – the future Mrs Belm, obviously, not a man.

I remained at the behest of Felching primarily for the next seven years (Froggatt was more of a silent partner at that stage due to failing eye-sight and an industrial accident that had robbed him of the tips of four fingers and six toes).

During that time we completed projects that earned national and international recognition – the Arbroath harbour model and the recreation of the Winter of Discontent in miniature being two of the most famous.

Armed with this experience, plus my apprenticeship at Sidebottom, Melchet & Sidebottom, I took the brave decision to branch out on my own in 1994 and form my own business.

Belm & Sons was something of an instant hit and we have gone from strength to strength.

I did receive a congratulatory note from Sidebottom (minor) on the 10th anniversary of Belm & Son. It stated: “I never thought a woman would cut the mustard as a model-maker. But, Mr Belm, you have proved me wrong.”

That note has pride of place in my workshop.

A confused and confusing man though he is, I owe Sidebottom (minor) a huge debt of thanks and without him I would not have been able to take my place in the model-makers hall of fame (inductee 2002).