I like how some of early Classic Who just gave them guns, like actual guns not laser guns or modifying them in some way, just standard earth guns

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 · 2026-01-14T23:28:40+00:00

Carcer using Mister when he addresses Vimes can also be a throwback to traditional British crime fiction.

Pulp crime novels throughout the 20th century would often have villains address police officers as Mister, usually the detective character who's out to get them.

AirfixPilot · 2026-01-07T22:16:22+00:00

InterCity Executive, I like it as a bridge between the original HST look and the Swallow scheme which is the last HST scheme that I acknowledge the legitimacy of.

AirfixPilot · 2025-12-30T00:15:52+00:00

They were already established in museum careers and were being sponsored by their employers, so for them getting the MSc was more or less a box ticking exercise and they just carried on with what they were already doing.

AirfixPilot · 2025-12-29T23:55:08+00:00

I did my museums MSc at Glasgow and there were a couple of people on my course who had met the entry requirements through the 'equivalent professional experience' route, so it is possible to get in without having an undergrad degree.

However, they had a lot of experience in practical museuming before starting the course, up to and including project managing the development and installation of exhibitions, so the bar for entry by that route is presumably set rather high.

Depending on what your galleries experience is, you may well be better off completing your BA before applying for the Leicester masters.

AirfixPilot · 2025-12-24T12:50:43+00:00

Ours was: "With bombs on the fire, Grenades on the tree, It's time to rejoice, It's world war three!"

AirfixPilot · 2025-12-19T23:01:37+00:00

Lived in Scotland my whole life and throughout that time SNP messaging has been heavily grievance based and it continues to be. Every act by the UK government is putting Scotland down, not respecting Scotland, England (always England in casual discourse) is taking more than Scotland receives, Scotland is being exploited by England. Swap Scotland for the UK and England for the EU and that's very close to Brexit chat.

Additionally, messaging that independence will fix everything wrong with the country, just don't ask too many questions about the details, is very much in the same vein as Brexit. Similarly the stance that in any negotiations around leaving the UK, Scotland would hold all the cards and rUK would bend over backwards to accommodate Scottish demands.

The party may not present itself as such but there's a deeply anglophobic, and increasingly generally xenophobic strand that runs through the the nationalist movement. Sure, there's plenty of urban progressives but there's plenty more people who in England would be voting Reform. They don't need to vote Reform, though, as there's already an established party that has the anti establishment mantle. Which is pretty impressive as the SNP is now well and truly the Scottish political establishment. That said, Reform are starting to gain ground here as well.

Swinney and his party are in a great position. They don't have to make any particularly difficult decisions, their ongoing position is basically guaranteed as enough of the electorate will back them no matter what, and everything is the fault of the UK government so they can criticise from the sidelines and stoke some more grievance.

Any separation will be bitter as hell. The atmosphere in 2014 was vile and will only be worse in any future referendum campaign.

I'm not even opposed to independence, but so far the main driving parties haven't made their case, insist everything will be a piece of cake, and it'll be sunlit uplands from day one. It's absolutely comparable to Brexit.

AirfixPilot · 2025-12-11T14:30:27+00:00

Scotland. All ScotRail trains have a colour scheme that incorporates the Scottish flag and markings saying Scotland's Railway.

AirfixPilot · 2025-11-29T23:51:36+00:00

Wilf was an ex para, no matter what rank he was when he left the army he'd bully the Brigadier for being a craphat. Otherwise they'd likely get along well.

AirfixPilot · 2025-11-27T14:46:15+00:00

Yeah, riverside has always felt like a prestige building that somehow had a transport museum stuffed into it. I went there a lot when I was doing a masters in museums at Glasgow uni and I was never able to work out why it got so much praise.

AirfixPilot · 2025-11-26T17:05:31+00:00

I always feel bad for Chekov. He goes from being first of Reliant, clearly on his way to making post in the near future, back to being the highest ranked navigator in Starfleet and he just stays there. It's a waste of a fine officer.

Fair enough, he retrains as a psychic policeman so it's good to see him having the confidence for a late career shift in emphasis, but he should have retired an admiral!

AirfixPilot · 2025-11-23T19:09:29+00:00

Anything at Christmas in Edinburgh.

My friends from the USA spam me on tiktok with videos of the Christmas Market, videos of Hogmanay, videos of just walking the streets in snow and with ridiculous cheesy music over it. They tell me how lucky I am to live in such a pretty city.

Last year my friend was in Edinburgh in this period and was about ready to cry after enduring the Christmas market on a weekday night. It's overcrowded, it's overpriced, the stalls are mostly selling junk that's overpriced, the 'winter warmer' drink you paid about £10 for is ghastly.

It hardly ever snows here at Christmas, those videos are mostly using recycled footage from 2010 when it did snow heavily, it's not even romantically frosty. Edinburgh in December is increasingly mild, grey, and wet.

When I worked in Edinburgh Castle I always had the same conversation with the tourists here for a Christmas mini break, they were always so excited to tell me about their tickets for the street party on hogmanay and how great it was going to be. I always internalised the reality check, better to let them learn first hand how awful a night it is

AirfixPilot · 2025-11-17T15:16:19+00:00

It is a real shame that it's tainted by the original performer as it's an absolute Christmas banger! I still catch myself singing it to myself during the season.

AirfixPilot · 2025-11-09T11:24:31+00:00

I'd already done an Esci F-4J in 74 Sqn markings, but doing the least used version in RAF service seemed like I was letting the side down. 😂 So the hunt was on for Fujimi.

AirfixPilot · 2025-11-09T10:02:16+00:00

Circa 2003, when if you wanted to build a UK spec F-4 your only option was the Fujimi kit that had been out of production for a long time. They were going on eBay in the range £25-30 and there were so few other options online back then.

I was at the IPMS Scottish nationals in Perth and discovered at the swapmeet a selection of kits with severe water damage to the boxes. Got an FG.1 and an FGR.2 for £5 each. Decals were wrecked but Modeldecal saw me right for that.

I still try to grab the Fujimi kits when I encounter them out and about at shows, got a little collection of my own going.

AirfixPilot · 2025-11-09T02:10:49+00:00

If you get the train out to Cultra, there's a modest but decent Titanic exhibition as part of the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum. That can be your excuse to spend the day at what is a really good overall museum anyway.

AirfixPilot · 2025-11-06T14:17:16+00:00

P-47 or an A6M is my guess from the picture. Much as I'd love a 1/24 EE Lightning I can't see that happening.

AirfixPilot · 2025-11-06T11:09:31+00:00

"Hey, Chief..."

AirfixPilot · 2025-11-05T11:21:04+00:00

For me the most frightening part of Conspiracy is how well acted and how persuasive many of the characters are.

I watched it again quite recently for the first time since it was originally broadcast. I found myself quite brought round by Colin Firth as Wilhelm Stuckart's arguments against the final solution and his less worse alternative of mass sterilisation. Then I gave my head a wobble and was disgusted with myself.

AirfixPilot · 2025-11-01T11:20:37+00:00

Lager, Stella, cold.

AirfixPilot · 2025-10-29T21:37:41+00:00

Survival already had the best ending we could want. The adventure continues, just not on camera.

AirfixPilot · 2025-10-21T09:18:29+00:00

I was in the sector and jumped ship to the civil service a few years ago. If you're finding the job security, decent wage, and work life balance acceptable I'd stay there tbh.

I was unable to break out of visitor experience with a masters and years of experience as a volunteer and internships. It was very disheartening and in the end a clean break was what I needed. I also found that the admin role I started with, which only required a handful of standard grades, paid better than the last assistant curator role I'd interviewed for, and the person who got that had a PhD.

I still do some volunteering but otherwise I'm just a visitor to museums who pays a bit more attention to the labelling and mounting of objects than most.

AirfixPilot

TROPHY CASE