About three months after I met my husband it became clear that he had hidden passions.
I knew he loved trains: that much was clear from his encyclopedic knowledge of railway timetables. He was rendered almost incomprehensible with a combination of incredulity and mirth when I reported to him that I was unable to get a train to his home town of Southport from my nearest London terminal, Waterloo.
A Southerner through and through, I had simply assumed that the gateway to all rail lines lay at that hallowed portal: whereas as any Londoner knows the trick is to get to the mainline station which corresponds to your direction of travel: it’s a bit like the main points of a clock.
At 9 o clock lies Paddington, gateway to the West and Wales. At 11 o clock; Marylebone to Birmingham and the Shires, at 12:30, the stunning St Pancras Station, which serves Nottinghamshire and the East MIdlands – and now Paris.
And my personal favourite is at 1 o clock: Liverpool Street, heading out to the Lantern Wastes of East Anglia.
Etcetera, etcetera. Or so I am reliably and regularly informed.
Accuracy of timetable information, though, is not, of itself, cause for concern. It is when one’s soul mate asks for a model railway set that one becomes aware one’s fate is sealed.
Our first model railway layout was tiny, because we lived in small quarters in a Kentish town, and storage was at a premium.
We had a plyboard sheet and the most diminutive train set one could imagine: it was ‘n’ gauge, which rendered the distance between the parallel sets of wheels just nine millimetres. Even a pencil looked clumsy alongside one of Phil’s miniscule engines.
Man has always loved to bring civilisation where primeval wilderness exists. And so emerges one of the most fascinating facts about people who build and run model railways. For they are simply not content with laying a track network which works, sending the little locomotives flying at breakneck speed, clickety-clacking on their way with all the romance of a full-scale steam train.
No, they want to build all the hills; mark every field; add cows and sheep, homes and pubs. In short, Dear Reader, they want to create Little England in their front rooms, or attics, or in extreme cases, in their back gardens.
It is almost as if every man longs for that imperious finger of the creator which we see, emblazoned on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Any trip to a model railway emporium – a centre of excellence and manufacturer of engines and parts – will amuse the non-modellers endlessly. Because the devil: the really endearing stuff -is in the detail of these worlds in microcosm.
Telephone boxes; hitchhikers; a cricket game: all life is there, in plastic hand-painted miniature.
And how, I hear you ask – how in the name of Mike does one rise to that ultimate of modelling challenges – shrubbery?
I’ll tell you how, Reader. But don’t spread it about.
With lichen.
These days, of course, what with conservation and all that reality, it is synthetic lichen. But the spirit of that most ethereal of fungus lives on, even in its man-made shadow.
It is the deliciously frilly nature of the fronds of this little inhabitant of graveyard, school bench, forest and mountain which makes it so very enticing to our modelling creationists.
The many shades and hues mimic forests and copses: its uses appear limitless.
As I took the dog on a route march this afternoon, I was seeing detail I had not seen in bass-relief before.
This was mainly – and I apologise to Mother Nature and all those wonderful positive thinkers out there – because the forest was verging on the dull this afternoon. It was misty and damp and squelchy and while I am sure the dog adored the decomposure which lurked at every puddle and tree stump, I could not find much to recommend it. Even the greens were grey.
But two moments did give me pause to stay my disgruntled steps, shake the mud off and take a closer look.
One is not part of this train of thought at all, but since she was bright red and spotty and perched on a jet-black gorse seed pod I figure I owe her a pingback. Ladybirds do not get the traffic this time of year. Are they even meant to be here?
The second is pertinent in the extreme, because it was the most beautiful rosette of pale green-grey lichen attached to a tree just above head height. It was the colour I always imagine Jane Austen’s dress to be. Utterly perfect in every way.
This is its moment of glory. The air is full of moisture and life is clammy, and if you are a really clever clump of lichen you will have chosen a site above deer height to settle your fronds and preen. The leaves do not obscure your ethereal beauty or porcelain colouring. Live in the moment, for the moment to be noticed is now.
There was one author who hypothesised that lichen could be a way of prolonging the ‘Now’ so much longer than before.
John Wyndham, that dourest and most uncompromising of science fiction writers, lighted upon lichen as a possible fountain of youth. He writes about what might happen if a strain of lichen possessed properties which would prolong life by 200- 300 years.
He places us in the hands of scientific partnership: Diana Brackley and Francis Saxover, two biochemists. One day part of the lichen falls in a bowl of milk. And in the small area around that speck, the milk does not turn sour.
Soon they have developed a drug: Antigerone. It promises youth for centuries.None of us knows for sure how we would react if we got our hands on it: the two perspectives, male and female, deal with the drug in different ways.
Frances uses it on himself and, without telling them, his family. And that is all.
But Diana? She does what any self-respecting woman would do: she founds a spa.And not for self advancement: but to give womankind a chance to pip the powerful male power figures of the day to the post.
That’s the trouble with lichen. Impossibly versatile.
Miniature masquerading shrubbery, forest pin-up or miracle drug: I fear I have not even scratched the surface of what this little living work of art can do for us.
It is an ongoing story, each twist and turn of which I will be acutely aware after a chance meeting today.
Today’s image is courtesy of a wonderful blog with amazing photography: http://abritintn.blogspot.com/
Kate Shrewsday 
Do you know that you don’t find lichen anywhere in South Africa, at least I don’t think so …
How do the modellers cope? It must be hell.
Right now, I would give my whole kingdom, and all the varied lichens in it, to live in a place which is too warm and dry for lichen 🙂
Apparently over 100 types in South Africa….
I “lichened” this a lot, Kate.
Our garden club has an annual garden walk, which is pretty big deal in the town come July. Each year, we say “this was the best year ever” to be repeated the next year. For five years, I have done the “write-ups” for the guidebooks; a few hundred words about each garden, the homeowners, a few botanical names thrown in. The first year I did it, I was more than nervous about it. I wanted to honor the homeowners, who put a great deal of sweat and toil into their gardens for one day of seven hundred or so “guests”. I set out, pen in hand, to interview the gardeners, and all went well, until I came to one garden that I couldn’t quite tell why it was chosen from the closed gate. You guessed it. It was a railroad garden. The homeowner, who happened to resemble the actor Brian Dennehy in looks and in stature, was quite an avid model railroader as well as a watercolorist. He invited me inside to his workshop and talked and talked and talked for over an hour and then we went outside and he told me more. Actually, it was really quite fun and it challenged me to write an interesting piece and compelled me to get a local newspaper involved.
His wife, however, spent the weeks before the walk, carefully planting all of the miniature trees and lichen around the Rocky Mountains of his outdoor tracks. I’m sure she could have used some time in Dianne’s spa.
Dang. I took up an awful lot of your space here. Sorry.
Space is limitless for a good story, Penny, and that was brilliant! I shan’t forget it, and I must pass it on to Phil…the funny thing is, one can get stealthily drawn into model railways, even if one has no interest in trains at all: this one sounded like the perfect garden to me….
We do get some here, in damp corners of gardens, in damp seasons. BUt as we are seldom as damp as you guys they are not as common for us.
I also love the so subtle colours, but I never thought of them as Jane Austin’s dress.
I’ve visited a few people where I have been taken to see the baby train shrine. One had a full double garage complete with it, you entered on hands and knees and came up in the middle.Amazing!
And ingenious! Whatever the idiosyncrasies of the model railway movement, their capacity to surprise you never falters 🙂
Re: Jane’s dress: I’m sure the national trust has a similar colour they use in their houses. I’ll go rooting about and find out.
“Impossibly versatile” What a perfect characterization. Lichen is so rugged and stubborn surviving and even flourishing in harsh environments. I have been reading about proposals to try to deliver several of the most hardy species to Mars. If there is the slightest water perhaps it will survive and begin terraforming the atmosphere. I think there is CO2. And alga too could work. And in thousands of years perhaps a limited breathable environment will be created. I am not a scientist but the possibilities here are exciting.
I feel a science fiction novel coming on, Carl…..
Hi Kate. As for the prospect of greatly enhanced lifespan, I think of Bilbo Baggins, who, having lived to a great age on the back of That Ring, felt “very stretched”, and was glad to go to the Grey Havens at the end of Lord of the Rings.
I think one life is enough to cope with, thanks, rather than stretching it out!
We used lichen on (your brother) Joe’s railway layout – on a big board above, and the size of, his bed. Great fun.
Love Dad
I remember it well, Dad. I think it was my introduction to modelling lichen, although Phil has acquainted me more thoroughly with it over the years. Happy days.
This is brilliant.
Your imagery is so vivid:
“Miniature masquerading shrubbery, forest pin-up or miracle drug”
I suppose our sci-fi author could’ve considered the title “Day of the lichen” at some point?
This is a benchmark for blogging excellence!
Thysleroux, you are very kind 🙂 I have a feeling that if fungus had any form of IQ the lichen would be at the high end, but compassionate and empathic, unlike our old familiar triffids. But as we are all painfully aware, I am making it up as I go along: Day Of The Lichen may still be a best seller waiting to happen 😀
Another fascinating post, Kate. There is loads of lichen on the Matopos Hills outside of Bulawayo in Zimbabwe – amazing colours. It always struck me that it has survived rain and drought and years and years. I wonder what lichen would tell us, what wisdom and knowledge it could share, if it could speak?
I love that your husband uses it for his model railway – how lovely.
Sunshine xx
I does have something prehistoric about it, doesn’t it, Sunshine? It should have the wisdom of most ages as a consequence. Very beautiful, very strange, a wonder, really 🙂
Love the image.
Did you know lichen’s are very complex organisms? They are:
‘are composite organisms consisting of a symbiotic association of a fungus (the mycobiont) with a photosynthetic partner (the photobiont or phycobiont), usually either a green alga…’ (from Wiki.)-
I know modellers who still use them. (One of them in this house…. but not for train sets – for Warhammer – or at least he did until he ‘grew out of it’! )
(The shed is still full of Warhammer – do you know anyone who may be interested?!)
LOL not offhand Pseu 😀 So we’re talking about fungus which can, by dint of clever partnership, photosynthesise? Have I got that right? Sounds the perfect combination!
Wonderful post. Especially enjoyed:
* Even a pencil looked clumsy alongside one of Phil’s miniscule engines.
* It was misty and damp and squelchy and while I am sure the dog adored the decomposure which lurked at every puddle and tree stump, I could not find much to recommend it. Even the greens were grey.
That green reminds me of the old style Denby Ware.
That is spot-on, Pseu 🙂
Glad you enjoyed it, Nancy 🙂 strange what we notice when we don’t have blousy Summer to take our attention 🙂
Heavy stuff, that’s a lot to take in. I think I’ve learned something new today. Several somethings.
The nice thing is that if you forget the whole lot it matters not a jot 😀 Soon the leaves will grow and it will be covered up for another year….roll on Spring and evening dog walks!!
It was always a treat when my father would invite me to join him and his intricately painted / decorated model train set in the basement. I was otherwise told to steer clear (at which point I amassed my own collection). And derailments!!
With n gauge derailments are far more likely. Laying the track is a work of fine precision…model railways are not toys, are they? More often they are works of art…