Till death...

'But it might come in useful.' There ended a conversation with a man of 57 years. But useful for what? Will bits of an Airfix engine shed bought in 1968 really be useful if youve not used it in 40 years? Probably not. Then I thought how much do we need, and for how long? How much more are we going to build?Here's the basic maths: if we are talking about small-ish exhibition layouts what's the time scale? I'd say about 4-5 years to plan, build, exhibit, write the article. By which time the next thing will be underway. Which is all well and good while we are living, but sooner or later we won't be. So working on our 4-5 year shape and assuming that - taking a biblical three score years and ten as a handy esimate - we can easily work out how many layouts we have left in us. At 57 it's about three. Myself at 46 may have at the outside six; more likely five.Looked at this way it does focus the mind as to what we really want and where we want to be in the future. And there does come a time when that round-the-room system is by far the best option rather than carrying great chunks of woodwork around.