Now there is some good news from today, well for me at least, but things didn’t get off to a great start. Last night in the hotel was was dreadful and I didn’t sleep at all well. This isn’t unusual for me these days but having had a couple of beverages as well as a very long day I thought I would get off to sleep in next to no time. It wasn’t to be. Well that’s not entirely true, I did in fact fall a sleep but that was about two hours before I was due to get up and having not set an alarm clock I then overslept! Things then became a bit of a panic and although I remembered to take my Samsung tablet to take some photo’s I didn’t realise until a little later that it hadn’t charged overnight because I hadn’t put the wall switch down! At least I still had a 30% charge which would enable me to take a few photo’s. More on those shortly.
The show opened to the public at 09:00 and I have to say there was a lot of people waiting to get in. I doubt any records were broken but without a doubt the event was going to be successful. Hopefully tomorrow will prove to be just as popular.
Our display attracted a good amount of interest and I enjoyed a lot of chats with people who liked what I had done and had on display. I even had a visit from Dave Berryman, the Editor of IPMS who wants me to write an article for the magazine. I confess to being flattered but am now concerned about what to write. I’ll worry about then when J get back home. The rest of the morning was spent either at our club display or shopping for modelling “essentials”.
The afternoon saw the judging of the competition. Judging takes about 5 hours or so, there are simply so many models for them to look at and judge. For my part I had entered 16 models, I just thought why not? After the judging we were allowed into the show area to see how we got on. In total there are 8 categories and in each category there about 10 sub-categories or classes as they are called. All in all that makes 90 classes and 90 Gold medals (and Silver and Bronze) up for grabs under each sub-category/class with a trophy awarded too for the best model in the category. The eight category winners are then judged to determine the overal National Champion.
Of my 16 entries 7 of them won nothing at all but 3 did receive “Commended” which was nice. Things got better though as I then found out that I had won 2 Bronze medals, 1 Silver and 3 Golds. Having won 1 Gold at the last show which was held in 2019 I was blown away to have won 3 this time around. This was beyond my wildest expectations but then I discovered I had won the overall Diorama category. As winner of the “Best Diorama In Show” I was now one of the eight modellers whose model would be judged for National Champion! Alas that’s where my story ends. An incredible model was awarded overal winner but for a brief spell I was in with a shout and as they don’t have a second or third place I don’t know if I would have come runner-up or eighth. To be honest I really don’t mind. My day was greater than I could possibly have imagined.
So what models of mine won and which of my models didn’t? Well you will have to wait for that but feel free to guess. Tomorrow I will take plenty of photo’s and as soon as I can I will get a post up.
A very few photos appear below. I will take a lot more tomorrow and I will have my tablet and phone charged! The first four are the Plymouth display. Not outstanding but there were only three of us with models so not to bad really. The other shots are pretty random and may just give a small flavour. More will follow, probably via two or three posts, starting Wednesday I hope.
TIM
The Imperfect Modeller 