Humble beginnings

The first contact I had with models was when I was a young boy, probably 7 or 8 I used to stay at my grandparents house sometimes and they has some toys that used to be my dads and uncles, I clearly remember a turret less and trackless Airfix Churchill, there where others but I can't remember what they were, I loved that Churchill though, all those little wheels. I used to play armies on their carpet, so as a kid growing up I started to buy the Airfix and Matchbox models and soldiers, roughly gluing them together and slapping army looking humbrol paints on with crappy old paint brushes, those are all lost to time now. In my late teens I moved onto other hobbies, martial arts, sports, girls, I was brought back into the hobby with 15mm war gaming when I was in the army in the mid 90s, but I didn't make my first serious AFV model until about 2002, it was this 1/72 Fujimi KV I, the original model was quite plain, some of the parts were poor and lacked detail, I upgraded it to a B varient by adding the turret armour using plasticard, the bolts were done with stretched spru, weld seem was done with miliput, I scratch built the tool bins and fuel drums from Plasticard and bits n pieces, I remember the this kit had the worst tracks of any kit I have ever built, very thick and stiff rubber, it took lots of 2 part epoxy resin glue and time to attach them in a very unconvincing manner, hence all the mud used to cover the botched job, I really don't like the paint job, I started a long love affair with scratched paint jobs with this kit, but my later models are toned down in this area, I would only give this kit 5/10 since a determined modeller maybe able to make something out of it but a youngster would end up with a trackless kit. The mud is just dirt, white glue and paint mixed together.