Sunday, October 31, 2010

You do what ?



I find this video fascinating. Here we have Rod Stewart, pop star, collector of lithe blonde women and occasional "hell raiser", being embarrassed to admit he has a model railway.

Like all of us who share his hobby, at some point people will find out what you do for relaxation. Once this happens you find yourself staring into an abyss. You know it is a good and interesting hobby. You know that skills, knowledge and patience are required to achieve the results you desire. Despite this you fully expect, just like Rod does in this clip, that what will follow the revelation is a torrent of mockery.

In fact, the host actually goes on to be very impressed by his guests work. Maybe that is so he gets another chance of an interview in the future but I like to hope that's it's because the models are really rather good. Of course the first thing that wows the uninitiated is the sheer size of the project but we cognoscenti appreciate the quality.

However, if a gentleman with all the "cool" qualitifcations I mention above (Look, I know da Kidz don't thing he is cool but stay with me on this) gets embarased by his hobby, what about the rest of us ? I reckon that only 3 people I work with know what I do in my spare time. A couple of them because it's on my CV and another because she's a freind who I've menetioned the magazine stuff to. Everyone else gets to rattle on about endless television programmes or football teams but were I to mention toy trains, any small credibiltiy I have would vanish. OK, so there is a tightrope to walk between banging on about railways all the time and treating it as a perfectly normal interest, but I'm sure it is possible.

(Hat tip to RJR for bringing this one to my attention)

3 comments:

neilart2 said...

I have noticed that on Facebook most people only admit to getting drunk, listening to popular music, having a take-away, watching TV and films, computer games and maybe playing football but very few admit to actively doing anything that might be vaguely creative.

David Smith said...

I wondered when he would be interviewed about this. It's ironic that he is happy to go public in the magazine but evades the subject where possible in interviews. The only reference in the interview with Piers Morgan last night was a repeated story about his father giving him a guitar when all he wanted was a model railway.

Come on Rod be more open, like Pete Waterman.

David Hughes said...

I once shared an office with 3 other people, one of whom was my boss. We had a visitor, who my bossed introduced each of us to ending with "and this is Hughes, and he makes model railways" (sneer). The visitor's reply was "what gauge and scale?" and it turned out my boss was the only person in the room who wasn't a railway modeller!