The Village Hobby Pt 2: Men and train sets

Hobbies are a low key Faustian pack, at least among those who are in gainful and resentful employment. The deal is that you will work in an unrewarding job that is simply there to bankroll your real life. It's like being a super-hero, you spend all day pretending to be normal, and spend your nights making dioramas of famous scenes from World War II if dinosaurs had been involved - and who doesn't thrill a little when confronted with a 1/32 scale recreation of a T Rex battling a British tank unit on a Parisian street corner, or a Spitfire downing a pterodactyl over Big Ben (yes of course the dinosaurs fought on the side of the Axis - they were recreated using perverted Nazi science, what are you, thick?)

One of the positives of this trade-off is that while you sure as hell don't give work a thought while you are away from it, you can devote time at work to your hobby. Not overtly of course, as for instance waders, a tackle box and a keep-net writhing with angry fish might cause comment as you take communion, but you can certainly give your pastime some thought.

This is because, as anyone who has ever sat in a meeting featuring PowerPoint and has spent the time from Slide three until 'any questions' idly wondering if you could capitalise on the upcoming badger cull by introducing a range of 'Woodland Soups' without being too specific about the content, or the likelihood of contracting TB as a result of ingestion, will be able to confirm, musing is not easily detectable (unless you operate a lathe or are a surgeon, in which case bloody well concentrate and stop wondering whether that triceratops model you ordered for your recreation of the siege of Stalingrad has arrived yet).

If you have a hobby, and you are at work, and your badge says that you are 'happy to help', then you are a fibber. But that's OK because badges that read 'Hello, I'm Gary, ambivalent about helping, but if you want to discuss what would win in a fight, a T Rex or a Cromwell, I am very much your man' are difficult to find, even on the Internet.

When you leave work for good you are unencumbered by nine to five distraction and the fear that your colleagues might find out what you do at the weekend and judge you because you rather like folk dance, or weaving, or competitive masturbation, and you can level up from hobbyist to enthusiast. And there is no better place to see retired folk in enthusiastic action than a railway line run by enthusiasts (unlike commercial train companies, which are staffed by unenthusiasts).

Retired enthusiasts are such a regular feature of steam train lines that you could be forgiven for concluding that the train crew came with the engine when it was new and have simply stuck with it after it was acquired by a trust formed of people who like grease, polishing things and smelling faintly of equal parts soot and sawrfega.

Because maybe it's the grimy faces, but bloody hell do the enthusiasts look happy when they smile. And who can blame them? You know that whooshing feeling you get in your stomach when you see a bloody big loco thunder by and the whistle shrieks and the clouds of steam flow back over the carriages like a white mink stole thrown over the shoulder of a silent movie starlet, well they get that all the time, from marmite to horlicks and in their dreams as well.

Steam enthusiasts are the ultimate hobbyists. You can be enthusiastic about your skydiving, or your golf, or your fishing or God help you your Morris dancing (by the way, putting on some bells, thwacking a twig and doing a jig in a car park followed by ten hours of drinking makes you a Real Ale enthusiast, not a folk dance enthusiast, although the two are often confused), or about dressing up as a Roundhead or investigating paranormal activity (usually in pubs, handy for accessing spirits) but being a steam enthusiast, traction or rail, is commitment. And romantic.