These models are a labour of love I can share with my wife

It began as a way to spend time with his beloved wife, who has Alzheimer's.

- MATTHEW BARBOUR reports

Michael puts the finishing touches to his incredible model of the City of London; above, with Susan on their wedding day and at her care home

But dedicated Michael's modelling hobby has grown into something far bigger.FOR FIVE hours a day Michael McCabe sits hunched over sheets of cardboard with glue drying on his fingers as he makes complex models. By his own admission, this has become his obsession, but one with a purpose, as his nonverbal Alzheimer’s suffering wife Susan watches on with a smile on her face.

"I like doing it when I’m with Susan," he says quietly. “That’s the point of it, really. Sitting there with her, making something.

“She can’t talk anymore but it’s nice to share this activity with her, with so many of my models holding memories for us. It’s our way of being together.”

Michael, 72, adds: “It’s either this or just sitting there watching endless daytime television. And I couldn’t do that.”

A retired maths lecturer and National Teaching Fellow at the University of Portsmouth, he spent most of his working life in a world governed by logic, structure and numbers. Before that he had completed a PhD in astronomy and worked in the electricity industry, only changing direction when privatisation in the 1980s forced him to rethink his career at a time when his young family needed stability.