Thank you everybody for the wonderful comments. Because of those, I'm inserting here a little interlude regarding the background to this story.
As many of you have guessed, I built this zoo in small parts. I only have a dining table to build Playmobil upon - so I built one part; then dismantled it, and built another part:
I wanted to build a zoo, and I couldn't afford all the lovely things that I thought I'd need. I had things like walls, but I had nil zoo animals apart from a baby monkey and a shark (which doesn't get used, so please don't await the shark exhibit). So I bought some 'bargain' secondhand sets which included zoo animals. My bargains looked kind of like this:
OK, so now can I build a zoo out of what I've got? It was like a personal challenge. I did buy two new sets to help - one is a group of animals that Toby won't even see; and the other was the recent add-on hospital radiology set, to help along my veterinary hospital. But that was all. The rest was 'making do with what I've got'.
I did build every part, even though I didn't photograph every part. (I don't think anyone wants to see endless toilets in every building, as well as the public toilets that Toby passed, or used, for example.) Here in the recent veterinary hospital, as an illustration, the red arrow shows one of the very unexciting Scrub Rooms, where the vets wash before performing operations; and the green arrow shows the very dark Dark Room which joins onto the Radiology department.
I didn't build the zoo in order. I 'knew' the story about Toby - that existed from the beginning of my idea - but I didn't do it in sequence. I bulit whatever part I fancied doing at the time. The Veterinary Hospital was actually the
last part I built. That was built in sections, and took two weeks to complete at two hours per day. In the meantime, Mr Raven and myself had to eat at our computer desks. As you can see above, there was no room left on the dining table to actually dine there.
The whole zoo took 51 weeks to complete. It wasn't built non-stop of course. Other parts of life happened, and sometimes I built other unrelated things in-between. But I started it on 2nd December 2014, and completed it on 27th November 2015.
(And if you are observant, you can guess what was built when. The summer-build parts are beautifully light and bright; and the winter-build parts are ... not. Sometimes, I
had to take photos right there and then, regardless of the lack of light or the stormy weather, before my muddy-paw cats came in and trampled all over my nice ground-cover cloths or card.)
On with the story tomorrow.....
