The Blues

The Carpet Whisperers Do Hobbies

On August 2, 2010, in Family, Life, by Rosie

Funky and Chicken are The Carpet Whisperers

Recently, newsagencies around Australia have been offering a special package deal: buy parts of a model aeroplane each month, collect the set over 24 months and build yourself an amazing aircraft to admire.

Sounds interesting and stimulating. Challenging enough for a soon-to-be 79-year old bloke who is excellent at fixing thing, fastidious about the structure of stuff and so meticulous about his person, you could easily iron a shirt beneath his armpits. Without worrying about using a fabric freshener.

Around January this year, Funky drove his motorized vehicle* to the newsagent to purchase the first pack. *We’d call it a car, but it’s so pristine that such a simple term doesn’t do it justice. Let’s just say that Funky’s motorized vehicle shines so brightly, it functions as a solar panel. If he’d allow it to be taken atop a home, it could provide energy for a household for the next hundred years.

But this story isn’t about the Funkster’s car! That requires an entire book’s worth of documentation.

Getting the small kit home and opened on the kitchen table, Funky remarked to his Chicken, ‘well this task will keep me alive for another little while, anyway!’

To which Chicken replied, ‘oh yes. At least two years worth!’

Such is the tone of conversation between the couple. When Funky admitted how much the model cost, Chicken continued the banter: ’That’s a hell of a lot for a plane that’ll be made out of matchsticks!’

To which Funky replied, ‘um, that’s just the first part of the kit!’

Once they’d got the pleasantries out of the way, Funky spent the best part of a couple of days assembling the initial section. He was banished to the other part of the house, so that when people visited (to view the new carpet, without shoes!) they wouldn’t see the mess of matchsticks, glue and sweat from the effort.

Funky is a man of immediacy. Thus, once a section of the kit is purchased, it must be done until completed to absolute perfection and admired at every conceivable moment. If the first part took him two days, the second took the same amount of time, and the third was similarly challenging.

Then Funky and Chicken struck a hobby hitch!

The first issue related to the length of time over which the plane would be assembled. They had basked in the comfort-zone of two years. It was destined to be completed in 2012, regardless of the threat on polar caps, the state of the world economy or hell freezing over. The local newsagent announced (via the kit) that this timeframe had elongated to four frigging years! Not only did this change unsettle Funky and Chicken’s biorhythms — making them question what type of incompetents were running the show! — but it also heralded continuing conversations about longevity and the completion of said plane.

Good God!

The second hurdle occurred when the newsagent failed to get the kit sections in on time. The paraphernalia had advertised the second Thursday of every month so Funky ensured he was at the door by opening time on that day! Often, the latter components were running up to two weeks late. ‘If they were there at all!’

Funky was inconsolable. He couldn’t get the fifth section anywhere and searched newsagents high and low and high again. It was like living on a hobby hitch rollercoaster, where your face is distorted by calamity, you want to scream, get off, but you’re trapped. So damn emotional.

Again, when Funky finally got the section, he had it completed in a matter of days, thus making the time between procuring parts quite excruciating. For everyone.

Chicken had a great idea. ’Just take your time with it, love. Do a little bit, and have a break. Make the month really last!’

‘Yeah, I should. But I just can’t. I can’t!’

He’s on a hobby high when all is going well. Unfortunately, many of these moods are followed by a hobby horror and the only thing that will calm him down is thinking about how the plane will (eventually) look.

Not exactly like this, but the complexity is definitely there. Think of millions of tiny stick-pieces, many of them smaller than a tic tac and thinner than a sewing pin.

It’s only a task for the genetically insane or the patient ox waiting for the slow earth to turn (or something as crazy as that mixed up analogy).

A report that’s come to hand over the last two days states that Chicken and her guest were sitting in the kitchen on Saturday, enjoying a chat and a cuppa when Funky was heard to cry: ’Ohhhhhhhh. I really hate this’.

Chicken didn’t bat an eyelid, turned to her visitor and said ‘oh don’t worry. It’s just his plane. It really gets to him.’

Jeez! They don’t make hobbies like they used to!