Happy Christmas 2020 - What an Interesting Year!

As regular followers of the blog will know, I like to theme my Happy Christmas greeting on the eve of celebrating with a suitable picture that captures the current theme of the blog and, with 2020 being rather nautical here on JJ's, I thought a view of the officers table, suitably adorned for the upcoming festivities and feasting seemed appropriate.

Of course this Christmas is likely one that will be remembered for generations to come after the year that the world has had and my condolences go to all those who have lost loved ones during the pandemic and for whom Christmas will never be the same.

Wargaming has been affected a great deal as has pretty much all activities that thrive on social interaction and, with face to face gaming curtailed since March this year, sitting down to build, paint and rig model sailing ships, together with reading the latest additions to the age of sail book list, has been a fun time filler for my corner of the hobby.

With the festivities looming and filling my time with family, feasting and the normal Christmas activities, I was keen to complete my last bit of model building work before my painting desk shut down for the next week or so and that saw me working flat out in JJ's shipyard to finish off these six British generic 3rd rate 74s, seen below painted and varnished a week ago waiting for their sails and rigging.

Well in between picking up a turkey and other foods, decorating the house, wrapping the odd present, reading xmas cards and moving furniture to accommodate dinning space for our family gathering, I managed to get the job finished yesterday evening, hence the group photo on my table rather than under the lights in the photo-box.

My work pattern during modelling projects is to break the process down into mini-projects and getting these six ships finished has given me a great sense of satisfaction going into the holiday knowing that just twenty more models remain to finish off this collection and setting up nicely my project plans for 2021 which I will announce in my New Year Review.

I hope, all being well that this large collection of models that I have featured being built over this year and late last year will be one we can look forward to being played with around a rather large table when normal social gatherings can recommence and a way of celebrating our hobby and a looking forward to better days ahead.

In that spirit, I wish everyone a very Happy and Safe Christmas with the focus on the promise of better times ahead in 2021.

Cheers all

JJ