DIY Utopia

I’m not going to hail a return to the days when small boys were expected to tuck themselves away in the attic in order to construct elaborate miniature villages that lit up at night to later emerge, moth-like as fully formed men creatures (well, most of them anyway) but… model railways do seem kinda cool all of a sudden especially if you think of it as a form of escapism from the current durge of developer-led architecture plaguing our fair cities (well, London town anyways). Be your own urban planner! Collect models of building you’d like to populate your town or city with. You could do something along the lines of Will Alsop’s plan for Barnsley [alsoparchitects.com]. And just to prove the Germans are just as nutty about model railways as the British were, here’s an excellent video for a track called ‘Pilot’ by The Notwist (sorry about the crappy quality, they have pulled the original video off their website, the rotters!)