It did not immediately seize her attention. But one sunny spring day an unseen psychic force pulled me towards the dark closet where it lay, and I opened it. It was a nice surprise to see how many Meccano parts had survived unchanged from the glory days, and painful to see how many had been replaced by barely usable plastic and rubber.
The manual was ludicrously drab and unappealing, but I picked a random model and it came together well enough. I have absolutely no idea what it is meant to be... If you do, please let us know in a comment!
Unidentified moving thing, from page 52 of this manual
At this point some echoes of the childhood thrill came back. I wonder if I could still have turned back? But alas, I did not.
Over the next few months I cajoled my daughter into various joint efforts. She is far more creative than me and loves making things, but the mechanical aspects (and the torture of endless nutting and bolting) did not appeal to her. So the Meccano gradually became "my thing" and I dropped any pretense otherwise.
But I soon found myself hamstrung by lack of parts - just like my 10-year-old self. Here are two models I did manage to make, barely:
Working cable car or ski gondola thing
Demonstration of a Schmidt coupling
Finally I fell into the arms of eBay.com, which kindly reminds me that I made my first order on July 28, 2015: one lot of "Meccano Erectror Set Pieces Gears Wheels Axles Screws Washers Tools" for $8.50. This must have opened the floodgates: I appear to have bought 342 more Meccano-related items on eBay since then... not to mention the odd unmissable deal on Amazon, Craigslist, or shopgoodwill.com... ouch. I did not until this second quite take stock of this situation. I am on a Meccano diet, effective immediately! There's my resolution for 2017.
And thus began the golden age, subject of a future blog post.
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