Astrid: Murder in Paris

Some of you will know where I'm going with this. If not, bear with me and I promise the title will, hopefully, make sense well before the end of the blog.

Easter weekend has been quiet here, allowing me to crack on with revision for the five exams I've got coming up. When I was a lecturer, I had a reputation for getting students through their exams, but I've never been good, myself, at revising using conventional techniques. What works for me is something more akin to how I rehearse my conference speeches. I can't remember things by rote; I need to build a story that lets me reconstruct things in context by pulling them from my unconscious mind. The downside is that I never managed to learn the alphabet from A-Z or multiplication tables. The upside is that when I learn something, it is by applying it in the real world in the context of other things I know.

One day, I'll accept that. In the same way that I need to accept that my modelling projects often follow the same pattern. The long, fallow periods when I'm not actually modelling and feel guilty about being the archetypal Armchair Modeller are more productive than they appear, both to others and to me.

Collecting and hoarding ideas and bits and pieces without doing anything with them hides another process that even I'm not party to. 

This struck me this morning, reading an article about procrastination as a creative process. 

One thing my wife and I have found time to do over Easter, is to start watching Astrid: Murder in Paris on Channel 4. This is actually a Franco-Belgium detective show, originally called Astrid et Raphaëlle. You might have seen Patience, the British remake of it.

Essentially, it is the story of how a detective,with undiagnosed AuADHD, though that is not made explicit, and an autistic archivist work together to solve puzzling crimes. Personally, I think the original is better than the remake, which is, itself, very good. The reason I think it is better is that it makes Astrid's lived experience more central to how she solves issues. That lived experience is also a lot more painful and overwhelming. At times, it isn't easy to watch, especially if it resonates with you.

One thing Astrid does is to physically make a pictorial collage of archive material on the floor of a room, that to others might look like a complete mess. And it can even look like a confusing and overwhelming mess to her until something happens that provides a catalyst for the underlying meaning she has unconsciously been exploring by mapping it, making it crystal clear. She can also hyper-focus on something that to others seems irrelevant, and sometimes is, in the short term, but not in the long term.

Whilst I was diagnosed as dyspraxic as a child, I know many around me suspect I also have some ADHD characteristics. That isn't surprising, because we know neural diversity has several dimensions. Perhaps that is why the interactions between the two characters makes so much sense to me.

From a modelling perspective, it means my sudden bursts of creativity and action are often preceded by long periods of chaos and procrastination, along with shifts in focus.

Take the Cadeby based projects.

The recent Apedale event reminded me that it is now forty years ago that Teddy died. Meanwhile, my original, quickly built, Cadeby micro has been sat on a shelf since the house move, unused and with the stock in a box somewhere in the attic. My thinking since the move has been taken up with the future of my 7 1/4" assets and the N gauge projects.

At least, my conscious thinking has been.

But the micro has always been there, denuded of trees to fit in a space it wasn't built to fill.

It might have been very simple, built on a free baseboard from Tim Horn, and designed to work using a shuttle module, with a non-functional turnout leading to a siding to display locos. But I'm emotionally attached to it. There has always been one downside to it, To fit the small baseboard, I scratchbuilt a pastiche of the ex-army prefab that housed Teddy's 4mm layout. It was a quick build, using Redutex woodsiding, partly as an experiment to see how it worked. In my own eyes, it didn't, with massive gaps between planks and proving hard to get sharp corners.

I bought a resin replacement from a wargame supplier, but then Hornby brought out their version, which was a lot better, but at a stupidly high price point.

Earlier this week, I found it for sale at an equally ridiculous discount.

You can see the difference in size between the sheds.

So I'm now back to considering ideas for the long-shelved (groan) bigger version of the micro. There are a couple of key design issues. One is that Iwant to use the Peco OO9 starter trackset, the other is that I need somewhere to put it. That is a real challenge because of the width. This is the only idea I have, but a shelf layout above a door, only viewable from halfway up the loft ladder, is hardly ideal.

Finally, a reminder that this weekend is the Macclesfield show.

I'm planning to go on the Saturday morning. There are some great layouts booked, but...

The big "but" for me is their published policy about photography and SocMed over the weekend.

Like many recent shows, they are applying a blanket embargo on photos from the show until it is over. An embargo I intend to comply with.

The argument, which makes sense on paper, is that people won't bother to go if they've already seen photos.

But my experience is the opposite. If I see photos that make the show look better than I expected, then I am more likely to make the effort to go in person. Either the next day, or next year.

They are also claiming ownership of the copyright for all images taken at the show. I don't think that would stand up in court. It isn't on public property, which has some bearing, but it isn't their property.  The National Trust, for example, recognises that it does not own the copyright of images taken on its properties, but does, legitimately, own the rights to the commercial use of images.

That makes sense,  I have heard of issues from other shows about 'Influencers' causing issues by making long videos that have been intrusive on exhibitors, traders and visitors, but I haven't seen that myself. I do see how that could be a problem.

I've no doubt this will be a great show, perhaps with a few teething issues from being at a new venue, but what if it wasn't? What if people went on day one and realised a show was a rip-off? Outside of the model railway world, thankfully, we can all think of examples of that.

For my own part, I've always tried to give shows reviews that are positive but fair. I felt bad posting some of my views on the Manchester show, but I still felt it was reasonable to say that there were two, quite large, layouts, where I didn't see a single train move.

Anyway, for what it is worth, before I get banned from the exhibition for life, here is my review of last year's show. The list of this year's layouts looks even mouth-watering.