Cromer Simpson
Built by Santiago Plicio in December 2023
A Short Crab Story…
There can be no greater incentive than a gauntlet thrown down betting that you can’t achieve something. This proved surprisingly true in the form of a throwaway comment by my wife on New Year’s Eve, challenging me to make a crab-like model.
Just the year before my granddaughters had photoshopped a photo of me holding a giant crab that I had bought from a fishmongers in Brighton, but like a fantastical character scene from the likes of a Pirates of the Caribbean movie, they had morphed my face and the crab’s body together. It was as we were reminiscing about this the night before that my wife threw down the challenge.
Of course I hadn’t planned on spending time on the last day of 2023 making my 22nd model of the year, but the gauntlet had been thrown and the seed had been set, and besides, it was too blustery to want to go out into the garden.
Within a few hours I had completed the mission, and had achieved the curved shell of the crustacean mini-beast along with its typical legs and front claws, and the only difference was that this one I couldn’t then cook with ginger!
Cromer Ginger Crab is one of my favourites, as indeed is any crab dinner — that’s why my granddaughter created the photoshopped photo of me in the first place — and perhaps like all husbands and wives who have been together for a lifetime, it is natural to bicker and banter like Homer and Marge Simpson regularly do on TV and hence a combination of these things is how we’ve collectively came to name the model.
I must be honest — I’ve never really watched The Simpsons over the years on TV, but I’ve apparently eaten as many Cromer crabs as there are episodes of it!
‘Cromer Simpson’ — my 22nd and final model of 2023.