An Orgy of Unintended Destruction

It's been an orgy of unintended destruction.  At least, that's the way it feels.  Through a series of accidents, negligence and sheer incompetence on my part, various bits of model railway rolling stock and spares have ended up damaged or destroyed.  It's all happened over a short period of time and has left me feeling deeply depressed.  Not only is it costing me time (in terms of repairs) and money (in terms of replacing the items damaged beyond repair), but it has also left me despairing at my apparent inability to keep anything safe, to not wreck or ruin anything of value in my possession.  It's sheer carelessness and irresponsibility on my part.  Anyway, it's also been a shock discovering the cost of replacement components - I've had a lot of this stuff for years, decades even, buying it when it was cheap and plentiful.  Well, you know something?  It's neither of those things now.  I've just bought, online, a replacement unfinished locomotive body, for instance.  I ended up paying for it what I paid, many years ago, for two such bodies, plus their complete tenders in a job lot!  But that was back when Hornby had moved production to China and were closing their Margate factory, resulting in a fire sale of redundant spares. 

I obtained quite a few spares that way.  Most of them have ended up being used on various projects - one of those tenders is currently part of one such, near completed, project.  The body damaged beyond repair was about to go into the paint shop as part of another project, which would have utilised the other tender from that job lot, but now the other body - tentatively destined for yet another, longer term, project - has been pressed into service and the new body will go into store to replace it.  So, all of this has come as a real setback just as I was working myself up to moving some of my outstanding projects to completion.  (I found an excuse in a short notice international Zoom call to put off applying the lining to the L1 last weekend).  Still, I've just been pricing up a replacement spare I need to repair another damaged item - far pricier than I expected.  Mind you, I could cannibalise another item still safely in store to effect a temporary repair, but that's just putting off the problem.  But, at the end of the day, it's all a problem entirely of my own making.  I really need to start learning how to look after my stuff properly.