Some visitors and new exhibitors imagine the Min is all about collectable miniatures, whereas, really, the Min is the people, the people are the Min. I realised when I turned up to set up, just how much I had missed all the people. I’m always glad to see everyone and interact with all the exhibitors in different ways. I mainly get to know people fairly well when I’ve interviewed them for a magazine.
In an interview we start by talking about the miniatures but usually get on to life in general. There is absolutely no doubt that those who exhibit at the best and most picky show in the world are thoroughly qualified to be there. Unless your reality was horribly marred by something so deep and hidden it rocked you to your foundations, or so obvious and dreadful that you were, for example, wheeling yourself round in it, why would you spend so much time and effort making your version of reality so utterly perfect?
This time one of the lovely visitors, a wheelchair user, was going round giving the exhibitors photographs of them which she had taken at previous shows. Whilst I thanked her very much (there are no pictures of me because I’m always behind the camera and always camera shy, like many miniaturists) I forgot to write her name down. If you’re reading this please get in touch and I’ll put your name beside your work.
So I am finally able to show you what I’ve never in the four years of this column shown you – me! Here I am at Autumn 2012.
I’ve had to photoshop this for the lighting, one of the annoying things about the venue is the tungsten lighting, it’s big, strong and reliable and casts an orange glow over everything. That top I’m wearing is actually bright red and I’m a lot darker generally in the hair and the suntan but that’s me, courtesy of the lovely visitor, because this is the show where the visitors are every bit as nice as the exhibitors. It’s extremely common to see people hugging each other. Behind me in the back ground you can see Bettina, knitting, which means this was probably taken on Sunday or late Saturday afternoon, when Bettina begins knitting between customers. Unusually here, Bettina is looking at the knitting, generally she knits without looking and mostly it’s socks on circular needles. How anyone knits socks on circular needles without looking I don’t know, but Bettina is very clever; she is, after all, the maker of the world’s smallest teddy bear exhibited at the show and sold to a museum and only available to see there or here
here it is. And here, properly, is Bettina, who won’t be seen at Miniatura for a while because she simply cannot cover the flight from Germany and a stay and the table fees and the costs, frequently, for a family member to come with her. This time it was Carolina, who is certainly her mother’s daughter, when she wasn’t serving customers in English, she was drawing Manga cartoons.
I shall miss Bettina so much; you have to sell a lot of crocheted dogs to cover the cost of the trip.
One or two folk are paid to be here, such as Jane who helps in the office, at the left and Gary at the right, without whom no traffic would get into the hall. Also present at the front is Muriel’s friend from the Netherlands, who just comes because she comes and can’t stay away from miniatures and miniaturists, apparently.
Let’s hear it for those who man the phones, it wouldn’t be a show without them.
I could show you a lot more photographs of people but I haven’t asked their permission to publish them, I will just show you Bob, I’m sure he won’t mind, this is such a good photo of a good looking chap.
Bob is an ex geography teacher, which is really important. Have you ever done that thing you do in school geography where you colour countries in a map with only four colours but the same colour can never be on adjacent borders? Bob does that with the floor plan, so you never find artists selling the same thing next to each other. This is utterly vital, not just to celebrate the individual and because we’re not there to compete with each other but because visitors who are short of time can do just one corner of the show and still see a representative sample of the best that the hobby has to offer.
Quite why anyone would visit who was short of time, I cannot imagine, although passengers en route via Birmingham airport, which is next door to the show ground and connected to the NEC by moving pavements, do sometimes spend a spare couple of hours pleasantly at a show instead of just sitting twiddling their thumbs, waiting for the connection.
The connection between all of these photos and many more is that I’m going to put them all in a scrapbook album so that, many years from now, when I have forgotten how to turn on the computer or I’m too old to get into a car, I can look at the photographs and say that I was there, this is the place I love to be and these are the people I love to be with.
It’s like that, Miniatura. It’s like Woodstock, or the Sixties, or watching the Moonwalk.
You just need to say: I was there.
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JaneLaverick.com – knowing the small stuff in life is the big stuff.