Excitement is building with Lego racing kit

A GREY, wet January Sunday afternoon stretches ahead.

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The dog has been walked on the beach in the rain, the pile of ironing has been done, there are hours to go until it's time to put the dinner on, and there's an unopened box of Lego on the table.You know where this is going.

Once upon a time there wasn’t much to Lego apart from a box of bricks and your imagination.

There were squares, rectangles, flat bits, sloping bits, windows and doors and not a whole lot more. You could build a variety of houses of different shapes, and you could slot a little wheel into a brick here and there to make a trolley of some kind, and that was about it for Lego. It was a fun way for small people to pass an hour or two, but that was about it.

Now, the sky’s the limit.

You can, if you wish, spend almost £1,000 on a model of the Star Wars Death Star which you can build from little plastic bricks. There are 9,023 pieces in the Death Star and, when you have finished building it, it will be more than two feet high and nearly three feet wide.