My Dad would have been 99 today! He didn’t get near having died 40:years ago. I am convinced he set me on the road to the hobby. He used to pick up Military Modelling on his way home for me from John Menzies, he took me to the NMS , then in Queens Street, where l poured over the finds on display not to mention the big model Broch and the life size reconstruction of an ancient British chariot and bought me Almark books off his own back.
We drove down and back in a day to Hadrian’s wall , a number of times, he was a keen friend of Vindolanda, where l was shown the sights and had them explained to me , to Vindolanda where he bought me Roman nails for my home museum, long gone. He also got me Roman coins from shops which l loved especially the fact they had once been held by ancient hands.
After a family holiday to Switzerland where we discovered Elastolin figures for the first time, my Dad sourced a chap in Briton who imported them and sold them from a typed picture less catalogue. I still have some of figures and the wee grey card boxes they came in.
Dad was destined to work in the family pork butcher shop but his mother, my grandma, wanted more for him and helped him to apply for scholarship exams for the Royal High School in Edinburgh which he passed and subsequently went to school there. He was the first in the family to go to university ( Edinburgh) and became a solicitor. German immigrant stock made good.
When he died we found all his Airfix kits and figures in the loft, those he had worked on in the sixties, lots of Blood hound rockets and jeeps, tanks etc all organised made and meticulously sorted into 1 to 1 scale units. The project died as I believe my mother frowned on a solicitor having such a childish hobby, so all was mothballed in the loft.
My dad loved ships, making lists of them and Jane’s Fighting Ships.
He was a great dad and husband.
