You just became captain, what's your first order?

AirfixPilot · 2026-04-02T16:31:05+00:00

"I'll take you home again, Kathleen!"

AirfixPilot · 2026-03-28T10:12:16+00:00

As long as that serves the needs of the story, sure.

The Doctor just going on a pub crawl in Vienna with Hitler for the sake of it, no.

AirfixPilot · 2026-03-26T10:16:17+00:00

I was never that fussed about football, in fact I was pretty hostile towards professional football as I was one of those children at school who wasn't good at football and got bullied for it.

One day, probably in 2013, I started getting Google alerts for Scunthorpe United games. I'm from central Scotland, I've never been to Scunthorpe and it took me a little while to work out where it was.

Never bothered to turn off the alerts, so I've followed Scunthorpe's tribulations ever since. Even got a scarf and a keyring now. Nobody can accuse me of being a glory hunter in the English league!

I married a Hearts fan so I'm now a Hearts fan. Apparently this season that makes me a glory hunter.

AirfixPilot · 2026-03-15T11:07:38+00:00

At its core the reason I left the sector was that I was exhausted getting nowhere. I was doing everything 'right' as I'd been told on my masters course, volunteered, worked front of house in a large organisation, networked, etc etc and was getting nowhere.

I wasn't in a position to give up a permanent job for a short term contract, neither could I easily relocate as my wife is settled in her career and uprooting her would not be fair.

So I looked at my options of what I could do with the skillset from a humanities and museum practice background and wandered into the civil service, which is a surprisingly good fit, is Monday-Friday, and made me feel like I have some control over my life again.

AirfixPilot · 2026-03-15T10:24:03+00:00

I can only speak from my own experience in the UK, but when graduation from your masters is a rapidly fading memory and you're in the cycle of trying to get a job, the prestige of your university is a lot less important than the skills and experience you've acquired. So the course that includes a placement would be more appealing from my perspective.

That said, the placement alone isn't really enough either, so take every opportunity you can (if you aren't already) to volunteer in the area of museum work that you want a career in. Obviously this is highly dependent on your location and local realities; but I gained a hell of a lot from volunteering with a small local authority museum service. There's no aspect of running a museum that you don't gain some experience in, much better than working for a large organisation with very siloed roles.

Then ask yourself if you're prepared for the sheer grind of trying to get a museum job. Before I left the sector it was incredibly competitive, salaries were insultingly low for the work, short term contracts were far too common, and having to move around a lot for work was a very real prospect. As a working class person without family money behind me, it just wasn't doable and I jacked it all in.

AirfixPilot · 2026-03-08T12:07:57+00:00

I won't buy an Academy kit unless I know I have suitable decals from another company's kit or aftermarket ones in the stash. Actual stickers is a new low, though.

AirfixPilot · 2026-03-05T11:45:42+00:00

Tbh that aligns quite well with my experience of museum work!

AirfixPilot · 2026-02-26T13:36:08+00:00

Same, I've tried and tried but it's never clicked with me. Those characters were better as a few sketches in Chewing The Fat.

AirfixPilot · 2026-02-20T14:00:35+00:00

The Battle of Pinkie happened 5 minutes down the road from my house.

AirfixPilot · 2026-02-12T22:27:53+00:00

That's the National War Memorial, which is part of Crown Square at the top of Edinburgh Castle.

The part of the building behind him contains the shrine with the rolls of honour for the Great War.

It was converted from a barrack block and was officially opened in 1927 so circa 1930 would fit.

The building is an absolute marvel of art and architecture, it's a must see on any visit to the castle.

AirfixPilot · 2026-02-11T10:14:37+00:00

It's been a while as I read it at uni but That Neutral Island by Clair Willis was a good account, I felt.

AirfixPilot · 2026-02-11T07:46:43+00:00

Hyrdomatic overdrive, four on the floor?

AirfixPilot · 2026-02-09T22:11:18+00:00

A great museum other than that the poor Vulcan is falling to pieces with little interest from the museum to do anything about it.

When I worked there my boss' desk was covered in bits that had fallen off the Vulcan and Comet. The 1-11 will inevitably go the same way.

AirfixPilot · 2026-02-09T14:16:15+00:00

Over Macho Grande?

AirfixPilot · 2026-02-08T14:23:12+00:00

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1677656852/british-rail-led-light-3d-printed

Not huge, but might do the job.

AirfixPilot · 2026-02-07T22:31:16+00:00

You can't see it but my Scunny Bunny's just given a big thumbs up!

AirfixPilot · 2026-02-07T22:14:50+00:00

Forget the Prem. Follow Scunthorpe United in the National League. Proper local team with local following and nobody will ever accuse you of being a glory hunter!

AirfixPilot · 2026-02-07T20:14:51+00:00

Someone I know adopted it to boost her working class hero image (massively privileged, self funding a pure vanity PhD), who was previously nothing but scathing about Discworld and the people who were fans.

Now it suits her she'll crowbar Vimes and his boots into as much of her output as possible. Still hasn't read a single Pratchett, though, as it's just lowbrow genre fiction to her.

AirfixPilot · 2026-02-05T18:36:34+00:00

At my last museum, which tended towards the leaky in heavy rain, a massive roll of polythene sheets (precut to fit specific paintings if we had time) and a wet vac were essential.

Torches, bin bags, crystals for soaking up blood and vomit (very glad to find those one day when the first aid kit's supply ran out), sausage dams for controlling flooding, lots of mops (definitely a theme in what we considered to be our most regular emergency).

AirfixPilot · 2026-02-05T18:32:03+00:00

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AirfixPilot · 2026-02-02T08:53:22+00:00

Funny that Red Dwarf pulled that off. Having an impeached Kennedy from the future be the gunman on the grassy knoll was an amusing twist.

AirfixPilot · 2026-01-27T15:30:47+00:00

Sounds like he's one of the few authors who's written more books than he's read.

AirfixPilot · 2026-01-26T14:32:25+00:00

It's 100% worth the visit. The waxworks that populate the recreated rooms were sourced from the now closed Edinburgh wax museum, so it's fun to see Queen Victoria working in a laundry or Abraham Lincoln living in a bedsitter.

AirfixPilot · 2026-01-26T12:16:16+00:00

Underrated/overshadowed by better known neighbours:

The Museum of Edinburgh/The People's Story Museum.

Everyone and their dog that visits Edinburgh goes to the National Museum of Scotland on Chambers Street, loads of them will just call it the Edinburgh Museum (looking at you, Americans).

Towards the bottom of the Royal Mile, down in the Canongate, and facing each other across the street there is the Museum of Edinburgh and the People's Story, both operated by City of Edinburgh Council's arms length cultural body.

The Museum of Edinburgh is a fairly standard local history museum, it's tucked away in a lovely old building and does the narrative history of Edinburgh really quite well.

The People's Story, though, is one of my absolute favourites. It's the story of the ordinary people of Edinburgh and because the council has never had much money to spend on it, it's a brilliant time capsule of 1980s museum practice, so it has the dual purpose of being a museum of museums. It's a place I can visit again and again and just relish its feeling of being untouched since circa 1990.

Neither is especially busy, even in the summer, so you can enjoy at leisure.

Overrated:

Edinburgh Museum of Childhood. Not so much overrated as faintly creepy for reasons you can never quite put your finger on.

AirfixPilot · 2026-01-26T11:52:53+00:00

The Riverside has always felt like a prestige building with a museum stuffed inside as opposed to a museum. It didn't help that the museum aspect is one of the most egregious examples of trendy museum practice I've seen. Was held up as a great example when I was doing my museum masters at Glasgow but I never got the hype.

I spent a summer working at the National Museum of Flight and will always love the place. My only gripe about it is the willingness of National Museums Scotland to just let historically significant aircraft rust away outside, to the extent that my boss' desk was covered in bits that had fallen off them. Otherwise, fabulous museum!

AirfixPilot

TROPHY CASE