Bert Jones's Diary (in case you missed it)

[Marcus Barlow - Show and Events Co-ordinator]

Bert Jones's diary..............

 

...............was a thread by Mr Pok (I think) circa 2002 that I read a few years ago and found very, very funny  , I think the original thread has gone (website changeover?) and Mr Pok is now only a guest  , the first part of the diary was published in WW first two issues 2003 (downloadable), I managed to find a copy of the diary from somewhere     and with the OK from Captain Chairman (and hopefully Mr Pok as well  ) here it is for all to enjoy ...................................

 

Quote: Burt :-

 

''New Year Resolutions

I Will 

· Stop smoking.

· Stop engine smoking

· Drink no more than 24 alcohol units a week. 

· Work on the car three times a week and not merely sit in the driver's seat to read the newspaper. 

· Reduce the car’s corner weight by ten kilos  (i.e. 2.5k at each wheel). 

· Improve mechanical mind (e.g. by reading motoring books rather than the Sun). 

· Learn to adjust carbs.

 

I Will Not 

· Pretend I’ve kept my 4 speed box because its better for track use. 

· Tell my mates a well set up xflow is good for 180bhp

· Sulk about having clam-shells instead of cycle wings

· Envy Catterhams and laugh at Robin Hoods

 

Sunday, December 1 

Car corner weight: broke bath room scales when I lowered the rear wheel onto it. Will have to come up with another solution. Went to the pub to meet a friend of a friend who’s flogging a Burton prepared Xflow for £200. Idiot didn’t show, alcohol units 14 (but effectively covers 2 days as I’ll still have alcohol in my system at midnight), cigarettes 22.

5:30pm - my garage: Ugh. The last thing on earth I feel physically, emotionally or mentally equipped to do is take the head off the engine to see why the b*******’s smoking. Decide make a cup of tea and ask a few questions on the WSCC site. My first attempt elicits the rather rude responses of “use the bl**dy search facility” and “don’t ask such broad questions.” Look at Message Board Chat instead and enter a debate about washing machines.

8:30pm - and still have not touched the engine. My mate, Mick the Spanner, calls round to keep out of his wife’s hair while she’s decorating the hall. Spanner offers to help with the engine. Back in the garage he sticks his finger in the end of the exhaust, examines the blackened digit suspiciously before announcing the engine’s smoking because it’s running rich. “You need to back off the idle,” he says, then wipes the finger on his yellow diamond-patterned sweater.

I whip the Westfield’s bonnet off, point to the twin 45’s and ask, “Which screw’s that then, Spanner?”

11.45pm - Spanner thinks it’s safe to go back home and I’m on the WSCC again. I ask the guys ligging around Techie Talk where the idle screw is. 20 minutes later my simple question has developed into an argument about suspension angles on Megablades(?). 

11:50pm - decide to give up smoking tomorrow. Go to bed with my Haynes Car Electrics manual and fall asleep trying to decipher the index.  

Have  a dream about the Westfield’s bonnet flying off at speed and decapitating the mother-in-law.

 

Wednesday, February 1

Car corner weight: ring Westfield techie guy to find out what the corner weight of the SE should be. Never really been able to understand nasal Brum so asked him to send me the information via email translated into Southern English. 

3:15pm - the wife’s idiot brother, Frankie “Grease Gun” Roach calls to say he’d scored a couple of BRG cycle wings. Arranged to meet him in the pub later. Went on the WSCC site to ask about converting clam shelled SE to cycle wings. As usual the testosterone was flying and they’re busy arguing about the lengths of input shafts?. Cigarettes 28 (but will soon give up for Lent so might as well smoke self into disgusted smoking frenzy). 

8:12pm -  meet up with Grease Gun in the Fickle Firkin. He’s swaying at the bar, a pint of Bass in one hand and a pair of cycle wings in the other. They look OK, although neither of us mention the small fact that they’re still connected to the sawn off stumps of their brackets.

10:10pm - back in the garage with 12 units of alcohol sloshing about my empty stomach. I rest the cycle wings on top of the tyres for a trial fit. Sit in the Westfield to see what they look like and agree all four look the business. 

11:30pm - wake up cold and hungry in the Westfield’s driver seat. 

11:45pm - decide to give up smoking tomorrow. Go to bed with cheese and onion bap and the latest edition of Westfield World. Fall asleep realising the smoking Xflow is God’s way of telling me it will have to go.  

Have  a dream about the Westfield’s fuel tank exploding and vaporising the mother-in-law.

 

Saturday, March 4

Car corner weight: have decided to dismantle each side of the car and weigh the parts separately on a set of butchers scales – realise that I need aluminium uprights. Went of the WSCC site to ask about diff ratios. I got one semi-sensible reply before they started arguing about which is the best curry house in somewhere called Bradford. 

12:30pm – wife comes home and starts complaining about all the over-time she has to work. I sit and listen indulgently as she rants about the amount of our income that’s going on the Westfield’s rebuild. I try to calm her by saying that £3750 for a 250bhp 4age engine really is good value. Finally, I manage to convince her that this will be the last money I’ll need to spend and we really can still go to Florida this year – if I win the lottery.

14:10pm – back in the garage. Have a close look at the cycle wings I’ve fitted and realise they’re from a Catterham. Start to worry in case the Westfield rejects them like a transplanted liver.

14:30pm – after telling the Kingwinford boys never to phone me at home, the wife takes a call from the part shop saying my 4 alloy uprights are ready for collection. She asks them the price and faints.

4:30pm – pop down the chip shop. While I’m out the 5 Blades and Yoko’s I ordered a month ago arrive. Find them neatly stacked in the hall and the wife in the back garden dancing around a flaming pile of my parts catalogues. I give her 20mgs of Valium and put the poor woman to bed.

8:30am - Grease Gun and Spanner came around to help lift off the Westfield’s body tub. For reasons unknown we ended up watching a video of Ground Force. Make a mental note: 2 cases of Bud do not assist car rebuilding.

11:40pm – decide to give up smoking tomorrow.  Go to bed and fall asleep reading a Demon Thieves catalogue I found under the sofa.

Have a dream about the mother-in-law bleeding to death after the Westfield’s screen shatters and a shard of glass slits her jugular.

 

Monday, April 4

Car corner weight: According to the calculations I’ve scribbled on my Rothmans packet, each corner of the Westfield weights 60k; which would give a total of 240k for the whole car. Is this good or bad? Log onto to the WSCC to ask and get side-tracked by a thread comparing Pamela Anderson’s “Bay Watch” breasts to those of Gwyneth Paltrow in “Shakespeare In Love”. I wasn’t in the mood to enter into such frivolous, puerile speculation, besides pre-sag Shirley Bassey would have out-perted the lot of them. 

10:15am - collect the wife from the weekly appointment with her counsellor. She slides into the Golf, glances at the tangled spaghetti that is the Westfield’s new loom on the rear seat and pretends it isn’t there. Counselling must be working, but I still decide now’s not the right time to tell her I’ve cancelled our Florida holiday because it clashes with Donington. I’ll explain after she’s taken her afternoon Seroxat. 

11.05am - In the garage. Drape new loom over the Westfield and try to decipher the single sheet of A4 masquerading as a wiring diagram. Spanner will be around soon so I temporarily hide the loom in the tumble drier in case he mistakenly thinks I don’t know a fuse from a futon.   

11:30am – the wife finds me in sitting on the toilet pouring over a Burton Performance Catalogue. Blushing furiously I protest my innocence and say the paperboy mistakenly delivered it instead of my usual Fiesta, she just whimpers and walks out.   

12:10am – meet up with Spanner and Grease Gun in the Bishop’s Finger for a quick aperitif before we drive to Vulcan Engineering in London to collect my spanking, rebuilt Xflow. I’ve been assured the engine will now produce 160bhp. Spanner reckons that’s 160 at the wheel and Grease Gun argues for it being a crank measurement. Me? I just wish I knew what the #### they were talking about. I measure engine performance by how much it costs, and for what Vulcan are charging me the bl**dy thing ought to give Michael Schumacher wet dreams.  

3:45pm – we stagger out of the Bishop’s and drive to London only to discover the Vulcan is on its half day closing. b*******! Nothing for it, so we retire to the nearest pub for a pow-wow.

2:05am – wake up in the back seat of Spanner’s Allegro with a crick in my neck and the sound of loud snoring from my 2 mates in the front. Try to remember who I am and where I am. Give up and fall back to sleep.

Dream of the Westfield’s fan belt breaking, flying off, and garrotting the mother-in-law.

 

Tuesday, April 5

8:30am – woken up by tapping on window, look up to see a rat faced youngster masquerading as a traffic warden. He orders us to  move out of the bus lane within 30 seconds or he’ll book and tow our car before we can say, Hitler youth. As it happens, Grease Gun manages to name most of the Germany war cabinet before Spanner finally coaxes the asthmatic Allegro into spluttering life.

9:15 – Ye Olde Balti Café. Our full-English breakfast looks like it’s having a cultural crisis. The black-pudding is burnt Argentinean Spam and the “fried-bread” is an American waffle spread thick with Irish lard. Nevertheless we tuck in and a few moments later sit back and belch loudly just so the effeminate Londoners remember we’re real ferret-loving Northerners. Outside, we pass round the Rennie and go in search of my engine.

10:20 – double-parking in front of the Vulcan shop, which looks uncannily like a newsagents, we saunter inside like men who know their mechanical onions. Picking Spam out of his teeth with a feeler gauge, Spanner giggles and asks the bored looking counter man if we can speak to Mr. Spock. To his credit, the guy pretends it’s the first time he’s heard that particularly witticism today. Grease Gun saunters over to a display engine and expresses his amazement at how small Chevy engines are these days. Before the Mr. Vulcan can point out it’s a Pinto I shove my receipt in his face and demand my Xflow. He grunts once and disappears into the bowels of the shop to reappear a  few moments later with my achingly gorgeous engine on a hoist. Forgetting I’m a hard Northerner, I scream like a teeny-bopper and throw myself on the Xflow, smothering its beautiful acid-dipped block in kisses and hugs. Once the wife sees this she’ll be glad I didn’t waste our savings on that conservatory she’s always wanted. Ignoring my histrionics Mr. Vulcan asks where we’ve parked the van. Blushing, we point to the Allegro.

11:45 – after much huffing, puffing and fluent cussing we finally manage to shoe-horn the gleaming Xflow into the Allegro’s boot, tie the lid down as best we can and head for Oxford. I now feel like a man on a mission and vow to have the Westfield back on the road by the weekend.

12:35 – somewhere on the M40. A flashing blue light brings us to a halt on the hard shoulder. Spanner tucks his half-pint whiskey bottle under the seat and waits for the inevitable. The traffic cop, looking unnervingly like Danny LaRue and talking like Elma Fudd, taps the off-side window. To give myself a possible plea bargaining position I’m just about to blurt out that Spanner’s p******** when the cop’s face lights up. He’s an enthusiastic Robin Hood owner and tells us he’s seen many Volkswagen’s rebodied as beach-buggies but this is the first one he’s seen rebodied as an Allegro. Eventually he lets us on our way, but not before he’s whipped out a disposable camera and whacked off a few pictures of our rear-engined car for his mates in the Hood.

2:15pm – creep in the house to find a note written in the wife’s now familiar shaky hand sitting on the kitchen table: 

 

Burt, I’ve gone to my mothers for a few days before I do something silly. There’s food in the fridge and if you want clean clothes you’ll find them stuck to the inside of the tumble drier 

Mary XXX

Ps. The man from Westfield called to say your bonnet is ready for collection.

 

 

2:30pm – call Westfield to re-order loom then call wife. In-between sobs she asks me why I can’t be like other husbands who build rockeries and mow the lawn. Not an easy question to answer so I ignore it and ask if she by chance came across the alternator I’d been storing in the airing cupboard.  

10:45pm – in the garage. For 6 hours we have been trying to coax the Xflow out of the Allegro’s boot. It’s stuck fast and no amount of persuasion will alter that fact. I refuse to let Spanner take his car away and he refuses to leave it in case I tear it apart to get at my engine. b******d could always read me like a book. Eventually we compromise. He takes the Allegro home and I go with him to keep an eye on the engine until the morning when we can hire a proper hoist. 

11:45pm – for the second night I find myself sleeping in the back of the Allegro reading an MPS catalogue by the dash board light. Decide to give up smoking tomorrow.

Dream the Westfield falls off it’s axle stands and crushes both of  mother-in-law’s legs.

 

Friday, June 24

Car corner weight: Finally, I reckon if I’m ever going to suss this bl**dy corner weight conundrum I’m going to have to get along to Local Area Meet (LAM). Email A/O and find there’s a gathering of Westicles tonight at the insalubriously sounding, Quiff and Salami, public house.

9:15am – the cycle wing attachment is proving to be a major pain. So far I’ve tried bolts, fibre glass, Silkoflex, Ducktape and harsh language to connect the pilfered wings to the Westfield supplied stays. But nothing works and the bl**dy things keep twisting on their mounts with a regularity that seems almost malevolent. I’m seriously starting to think the cycle wings are possessed and somewhere out there is a demonic, disembodied Catterham hunting down its stolen body parts.  

10:20am – go in doors and look up “Car Exorcists” in the Yellow Pages. Decided to throw away my old copy of Stephen King’s, “Christine”; just in case.

11:20am – no luck finding an Exorcist so, in desperation, go onto Blatchat for some suggestions. All I get for my trouble is the usual abuse and p***-taking (mainly from lurking Westfield owners pretending to be Catterham owners), although one kindly soul did take the trouble to email me with some suggestions that, although inventive, weren’t anatomically feasible even with advanced yoga and generous dollops of KY jelly.

3:30pm – some of the 5 work-mates and their spouses I’ve invited around to partake in the “engine insertion” ceremony arrive. Surprisingly only one of the wives attends, and she spends the entire time slumped Westfield’s passenger seat hugging a plate of sausage rolls and a box of Tesco’s Riesling to her ample bosom. Nevertheless a good time is had by all and the gleaming Xflow’s now sits in the newly panelled engine bay. I give an alcohol inspired speech and vow to have the Westfield on the road by the end of the month.  

6:15pm - visited the wife in our local psychiatric hospital. Her admissions now into the second week and the doctor’s say she’s responding positively to the ECT and Chlorpromazine. All going well she should be OK for discharge soon. To cheer the wife up I show her the photo’s from the “engine insertion” ceremony I had developed specially. All seemed to be going well until I happened to mention the bespoke stainless exhaust system I’ve ordered. Luckily the nurses were quick and managed get her hands off my throat before I lapsed into unconsciousness. Good thing I didn’t show her colour charts for the 2-tone, metallic paint job I’m considering.

7:30pm - being a LAM virgin I wasn’t sure what or who to expect at these meetings and initially thought I’d accidentally wandered into the winners enclosure of a gurning competition. Still, what they lacked in looks they made up for in enthusiasm. Drink, I thought I could knock back the beer, but these Westfield boys drank me under the table, over the bar and into the car park. Luckily they were all driving otherwise they’d have stood a very real risk of being run over if they’d tried to walk (stagger) back to their respective homes.

11:40pm – decide to give up smoking tomorrow. Go to bed and fall asleep reading the pages I downloaded from the Play’s Kool site.

Dream about the mother-in-law falling into the rolling-road rollers while I’m having the Westfield’s carbs set-up.

 

Friday, July 12

Corner weight: Chanced upon a guy with a Robin Hood in the B&Q car park. He was tying an 8 by 4 sheet of faux-marble Formica to his rollbar which he planned to use to make new bonnet. We started chatting, he seemed to know his mechanical onions so I mentioned my problems with corner weights. He sucked on a tooth and told me I had it all wrong: corner weight is the amount of G-force applied to the car as you go around a bend, not a static measurement of each corner. Laugh, I could have cried, when I think about the months I’ve spent trying to weigh the bl**dy car’s corners. 

8:30am – Westfield World arrives in the post, read it while I munch through a bowl of Albran. Thought the "Readers’ Drives" section was excellent, and even managed to find 2 pages that didn’t mention the Speed Series.

09:25am – in the garage. Fire up the mighty Xflow for the first time. Imagine an asthmatic Barry White trying to give a sputum sample and you’ve a rough idea what my expensive engine sounded like. Spanner, rubbing his weak chin, nodded at the carburettors and said, “accelerator pumps.” Ignoring his vacuous comment, I straightened up the nearside cycle-wing then fiddled with the throttle linkage until he took the hint and wandered off to put the kettle on. Firing up the engine again I guessed from the stench of unburnt fuel that maybe the carbs were running rich, although what this meant in practical terms was beyond me.  

12:15pm – rang the tech help guy at Kingwinford and asked if he had some fix for rich carbs. He asked me some smart-arsed question about jet sizes or something so I told him to feck off and slammed the phone down. The bl**dy cheek of these Northern yokels you ask a perfectly sensible question and they respond by taking the p***. 

2:30pm – Relate offices. On the advice of the wife’s psychiatrist we go to our first session. In the  room we’re faced across the coffee stained table by a pair of poe-faced Relate counsellors. The female counsellor, who looks like Quasimodo’s uglier sister, immediately wades in about me sublimating my sexual inadequacy into cars and the detrimental effect this is having on the wife's mental state. I sit and pretend to listen, while my mind works on a plan for building a G-force gauge. A coughing brings me back to the room. The scrawny male counsellor, looking down the impressive length of his nose, is asking if my car obsession is a decompensation anxiety. Pretending I’m remotely interested I play the game and tell him my only problem is a misfiring engine. To my surprise he suggests checking to see if the carbs aren’t bolted too tightly to the head. Turns out he’s just built a Pilgrim Sumo and for the rest of the session we get along famously while the women fold their arms and glare at us venomously. 

6:29pm  – on the WSCC site. Put the carb problem in the Newbie section using one of my aliases. Wouldn’t do for the lads to think I knew slightly less that nothing about fuel delivery. What I was hoping for was concise linear answers that would help me track the problem. What I got eclectic lateral with everything being blamed from the car’s carpets to a ruptured fuel pump rubber. I think I’ll book a session on the rolling-road. 

11:37pm – decide to give up smoking tomorrow. Went to bed and fell asleep giggling at the prices in the Catterham part catalogue. 

Dream of mother-in-law getting 3rd degree burns on her buttocks after inadvertently sitting on the Westfields hot exhaust.

 

Friday, August 14

Corner weight: Went to Bishop’s Finger with Spanner, Grease Gun and Mark Darcy (the Robin Hood owner with the Formica bonnet) primarily to work out a way measuring the Westfield’s cornering G-force. Darcy brought along the 4 miniature trebuchets he’d used for calibrating his Robin Hood. Apparently you fix the devices on each wing with a counter-weight attached to the firing mechanisms then go for a blat. As the car traverses a bend the G-force acts on the counter-weight and fires the trebuchets. If the car is set up correctly, all four should fire at the same time. Simple and brilliant. 

09:15am – the new exhaust system arrived. Absolutely gorgeous; polished stainless, big-bore manifold squeezing itself into phallic shaped, scarcely legal stainless “silencer” and topped off with a cute Westfield logo laser cut into the bespoke heat shield. I snuck into the garage with the exquisite system and danced about the Westfield taunting my faithful old mild-steel exhaust with it’s replacement. Glanced up to see Grease Gun leaning against the garage door shaking his head. "Just doing some aerobics from the Graham Hill fitness video,” I mumble, trying to hide my burning face.

10:20am – still in the garage. Hit a bizarre problem with the new wiring loom which might be related to the tumble-drying it inadvertently received. While I was fitting the loom I wired in a couple of speakers and a jack-plug so I could play my Kylie compilations on the minidisk at a later date. All was well until I turned on the ignition and Radio 5 blasted out the left speaker with some Arab hollering to the faithful out of the right. To complicate matters, when I used the side-lights the Arab was replaced by a breathless hussy offering strange and unusual phone-sex to a panting punter. Flicking off the side-lights and turning on the heater bade farewell to Radio 5, kept the hussy and introduced Ambulance control. Using the indicators replaced the hussy with Terry Wogan on one flash and some rapper called DJ Ice-Udders on the other, augmented by the World Service when I honked the horn. I’d heard urban legends about people receiving radio waves via the fillings in their  teeth, but this was spooky. I liked it.

1:25pm – Relate Offices. The wife was giving large about the strain of being married to a car obsessive while Miss Quasimodo nodded sympathetically causing 3 or 4 of her chins to wobble like jelly stalactites. Geoffrey, the Pilgrim owning counsellor, looked as bored as I felt and, through a series of clandestine hand-signals, managed to convey that I should try advancing the Westfield’s ignition timing to see if that eradicated the misfire. 

4:32pm – Phoned Kingwinford to ask if they wanted first refusal on my new soon-to-be-patented multi-media loom. Put through to some woman who listened tolerantly then asked if I was on prescribed medication. When I said no, cheeky cow said I should be and put the phone down. Went back to the garage, sat in the Westfield flicked on the fog-lights and listened to Capital Radio while I mulled over the problem of the demonically possessed Catterham cycle wings. 

8:46pm - Quiff and Salami, public house. There’s just no pleasing some women. It’s our wedding anniversary today so, as a treat, I took the wife out for a slap-up pub meal; a ploughman’s with all the pickled onions she can eat. Ok, so it was the same night as the Westfield monthly meet, and I did have a quick chat to the boys, although nothing like the 2 hours she accused me of. Ok, I did get slightly drunk and she had to drive me home but, the thought was there. Still, I’m sure the old girl’ll forgive me when she sees the air-compressor and pneumatic tools I’ve brought her as an anniversary present. 

10:45pm – wife’s gone to bed in a huff and I’m on the computer. Crack open a bottle of Spanish vodka and fire up the Google. Take a hefty slug of blistering vodka and type in: Xflow and bl**dy and misfiring. Informs me I’ve committed a syntax error or some such b*****k* and I should refine my search. This is inane, (take another slug of vodka) if I knew what I was searching for I wouldn’t need the ******* computer to search for it. Type: Xflow, and hit search again. Great, 4,390 results. Take another long pull on the vodka bottle, listen to make sure I can hear the wife snoring upstairs and type: midgets and sex and animals. 

11:59pm – decide to give up smoking tomorrow. Went to bed and fell asleep reading Mr. Fixit’s stainless steel nut and bolt catalogue.

Dream the mother-in-law was lobotomised after the Westfield’s cooling fan flew off and imbedded itself in her forehead

 

Saturday, September 10

Corner weight: Darcy came around in his Hood to demonstrate his medieval system of corner weight measuring. Using Blue-Tac, he fixed the trebuchets onto the Hoods wings. We then went for a blat and my first ride in a Robin Hood. The floral pattern, bri-nylon seats are armchair soft. I look again and realise they are armchairs. Darcy’s made subtle use of kitchen fixtures and fittings in the cockpit and using a modified garlic crusher as an ignition cut-out switch was inspired. The lino covered floor is a bit slippery and the chip-board dash, painted in mauve emulsion was definitely an acquired taste. Our first serious bend and the nearside trebuchet fired, causing the rear wing to fall off. Darcy insisted this was normal for Hoods because of their racing heritage all external parts needed to be quickly detachable to speed up pit stop times. 

09:15am – Relate offices. Faced across the table by the wife and Miss Quasimodo, looking very Essex in a tangerine and mauve shell suit which clashes dreadfully with her ginger moustache. I comment about Pilgrim-owning Geoffrey absence and was told he’d been moved to a more deserving case. Quasi kicks the session off with a psychobabble rant about me acting like some obsessive, sexual retard with homo-erotic penis-envy. I tell she’s talking b*****k*, and make a mental note to go to the library and lookup homo-erotic penis-envy. 

10:32am – in the garage. Flicked on the Westfield’s fog lights and listen to Virgin Radio. With Grease Gun’s help I remove the old exhaust system. Trying to fit the new manifold throws up an immediately problem, the exit hole in body work is in the wrong place. Essentially, I’ve got two choices: move the hole or move the engine. Pace about like an anxious father-to-be while Grease Gun takes umpteen measurements and taps numbers into his sola-calculator. Finally he grins and says, “If we tilt the engine over by about 18 degrees and move it forward by 7 inches the manifold should line up with the hole." ****e. Obviously the existing engine mounts will have to be binned and new ones fabricated. In the meantime we put the old system back on and finish off the Spanish vodka while designing the new mounts. 

11:21am – log onto the WSCC to ask about engine mounts. Get side-tracked by some guy calling himself Snot Green, giving it large about the BHP of his Cossie engined SEi. Snot claims his car puts out slightly more power than a Jumbo jet and wants more. I log out and log back in again under the nom de plume, Scatman, and say I’ve squeezed three 280bhp 4rage engines under my SE’s bonnet and need help finding a rolling road that can handle the power output. I’m gob-smacked when one bloke asks if I’m using a Westfield supplied exhaust system and another wants to know what pedal-box I’ve got in the car. 

12:10pm – hiding upstairs until the wife leaves for Sainsbury’s with her mother; I’m sure the old bat deliberately continues to breath just annoying me. When the coast is clear I creep down and phone Kingwinford to order a new part. The Brummie fools can’t find any of the 6 they apparently have in stock so they’ll ring me back. Give strict instructions if the wife answers they’re to say they’re from the Gas Board.

12:32pm – in the garage. The bl**dy wings have twisted away from their mounts again despite using up my entire supply of Rivnuts. Stomp indoors and phone Catterham. Waited for 30 minutes listening to Barry Manilow before being put through to a salesman who was marginally less helpful than a corpse. After much persuasion, he finally conceded and transferred me through to a technician. This guy made the salesman seem positively animated. I explained the problem, he sucked a capped-tooth then grunted, “Catterham wings are specifically designed only to work with Catterham bracketry.” That didn’t sound right so I asked him how he knew I wasn’t using their brackets. “Because real Catterham owners," he sniffed, "aren’t the sort of working class plebs who’d grubby their manicured finger nails on such prosaic tasks as actually building their own cars."

7:20pm – home from work. No dinner ready and the wife’s not in. Find a note on the kitchen table:

Dear Bert,

Gone out for a meal with Prunella (that nice Relate counsellor you keep calling Miss Quasimodo) will probably be back late so don’t wait up.

Love 

Mary

Ps The Gas Board phoned up to say they have found roll bars and wanted to know if you wanted it in chrome or black. 

b*******, I new this would happen. What should I do? After much thought decide to order the chrome roll-bar.

8:14pm – log onto computer. At a whim visit the Friendsreunited site for the first time to see how many of my ex-class mates are dead or in gaol. One name immediately jumps out at me like a Hampstead flasher, Cheryl Shingles, the unrequited love of my 14 year old life. Without thinking of the possible ramifications I send her an email and attach a picture of me taken 10 years ago. 

8:45pm – log onto Blatchat. Lots of anxiety about Birkin out Catering Catterham. It felt like I was invading their personal grief so to cheer them up I said Kylie was using a Birkin in her latest video but not to worry because Pete Townsend had just taken delivery of a Super 7 and Catterham had just secure the rights to use Gary Glitter’s seminal Leader of the Gang on their future promos. 

11:20pm - decide to give up smoking tomorrow. Went to bed and fell asleep reading Westfield SEight Modular Kit brochure. Didn’t notice the wife was still out.

Dream the mother-in-law is looses all her fingers when she tried to play Frisbee with one of the Westfield’s unfitted alloy panels

 

Monday, September 16

Corner weight: Need to sober up after a night on the town with Spanner and Grease Gun, so we stop off at our local Kebab emporium for a large, garlic donna and chips. For me it was one of those defining eureka moments. As I was handed my kebab the paper split open and sliver of over-spiced, under-cooked goat fell out and landed on my boot. Glancing at the mess, I was struck by the way the garlic sauce had spread out over the brown leather of my Dr Martin  and, in that second, I realised D’Arcy was wrong. Corner weight had nothing to do with G-force and everything to do with spread of static weight over the four corners of the car. Leaping up, I high-fived the air and shouted “Yee-haa,” and did a little jig around my bemused friends. In future, I decided, problem solving would be done with a brain well lubricated with Hook-Norton. 

7:30am – in the garage. With Spanner and Grease Guns help, unbolted the engine and hoisted it into it’s new position before making card-board mock-ups of the engine mounts; which will be eventually made up into metal replicas. Unfortunately, cranking the engine over 18 degrees has caused the carbs to hit the top frame rail. Spanner reckons the rail is only there to act as a support for the bonnet so it would be OK to chop out a section of a foot or so. Decide to check with the club before getting out the hacksaw.     

9:10am – sitting at computer. Log onto WSCC site and ask, what I consider to be a perfectly serious construction (deconstruction?) question about hacking out part of the upper frame rail. Reaction is divided between those who think I’m barking and those that harangue me thinking I’m a lurking Blat-chatter on a p***-taking foray. The Club Secretary sends me a Personal Message stating I will be given a life time ban if I proceed with my plan.  

10:16am – back in the garage. Stand over the Westfield with hacksaw in my shaking hand trying to decide where to cut. Take a deep breath and prepare to saw. Mobile text-message bleep goes off. Turns out to be a message from the Samaritans asking me to phone them before I do anything drastic. Seems they were tipped off by WSCC chairman. 

3:32pm – sitting at computer. Find an email waiting for me from Cheryl Shingles saying she’d love to meet up. She also encloses a couple of grainy black and white head shots. I note Cheryl’s claiming not to be married and to have put on a few pounds. Nevertheless, I ring her and a few moments later we’ve agreed a date for the following week. I decide to take the Westfield whatever it’s roadworthiness.

4:10pm – roll-bar arrives. Thankfully the wife’s just taken her Trazadone so is virtually comatose on the sofa. I don’t think I could take another bout of hysterical crying at the moment. Creep out in the garage and unwrap a chrome, millimetre thick, poorest excuse for a roll bar I’ve ever seen. Phone the Kingwinford. “You’ve sent me the wrong bl**dy roll bar you Northern ******s,” I shout into the phone. 

“Just a minute, sir,” says the nasally constricted Brummie. A moment later, “No, sir, you’ve got the right one. It’s our special SSS roll-bar.”

“SSS?” 

“Yes, sir, Soft Southern ****e roll-bar.”     

7:30pm – go to the area meeting. Find the lads in the car park embroiled in a “yard-nut” contest with a group of scruffy, belligerent Catterham owning yobs. Apparently the rules of the contest are simple: with a member of the opposite team sitting in your passenger seat you have to try and complete as many smoking donuts as you can before they can drink a yard-of-ale. I take the opportunity to examine the front stays of a Super7 to see how the cycle wings are attached. The competition is eventually won by Johnny Blimmy-Rodent driving a Chevy powered Catterham, who completed 4 donuts then did a lap of honour round the car park while his passenger, the WSCC Area Organiser no less, performed a spectacular display Catherine-Wheel projectile vomiting.

9:20pm – Wife out with Miss Quasi again. Also changed her hairstyle, had a nose-ring fitted and now sports a tattoo of a rearing Bison on her left buttock. Nice to see her taking interests outside of how much the Westfield is costing.

10:15pm – message left on my answer-phone by the local police who are investigating a gang who specialise in the theft of kitcar parts. An ice-chill runs through my bowels as the curse of the cycle-wings continues.  

11:20pm - decide to give up smoking tomorrow. Went to bed and fell asleep reading Jeremy Clarkson’s autobiography,  “From Motoring to Macramé – a man and his ego.”   

Dream the mother-in-law has a pulmonary-embolism while trying to clean sweetcorn out of her dentures with my compressed airline.

 

Monday, September 23

Corner weight: Logged onto WSCC site. Read a post from the motley Essex contingent giving it large about hogging the club’s corner-weighing scales for over three years and claiming Southerners were the only members skilled enough to use them. A Northern member was quick to counter-claim he’d had the club’s camber-angle gauge for half a decade and this is why no one south of Brum ever won a race. Logging off, I phoned-a-friend who works in the local  Kwik-Fit and asked what a camber-angle was. Moron started rambling on about toes-in or feet-out, making it sound more like the mechanical equivalent of hokey-cokey. I didn’t have the time to listen to such nonsense so told him to concentrate on flogging remoulds and I’d find out about camber-angles elsewhere.

8:22am – in the garage. With the Dutch courage sourced from half-a-bottle of JD sloshing around my empty stomach, I fire up the B&Q angle-grinder and staggered towards the shivering Westfield. With a quick flick of the wrist the job was done and a 9 inch section of top-tube clattered to the ground. If God was going to strike me down for such blasphemy she was going to do it now. I slumped onto pile of tyres, resigned to my fiery fate, and gulped back the JD before the first lightening-bolt was thrown from above.

10:32am – in the garage. I awoke with a thick head and the overwhelming desire to get the Westfield back on the road. Checking my list of things-to-do I decided a trip to Halfrauds was in order. 

11:15am – local Halfords. I’d just wasted 20 minutes of my life trying to explain to a woman, who’d have walked a Jimmy Clitheroe’s look-a-like contest, what a Xflow manifold gasket was. So far she’d brought me a Cavalier’s oil filter, 2 sachets of screen-wash and a Bart Simpson air freshener. Finally, in desperation, I grab the biro from behind her cauliflowered ear and drew a picture of the manifold gasket on the back of her wrinkled hand. Success, she winks salaciously and scuttled off, reappearing a few moments later with a pair of fluffy-dice and a set of AF sockets. 

11:36am – Halfords carpark. I bump into an excited D’Arcy who’s just spent his kids’ school fees on a dung-brown Dutton. Lifting the bonnet like a 3rd rate conjurer, he proudly showed me the engine. Exactly what manor of engine hid beneath enough caked oil to a keep your average Arab prince in golden finery for the next decade remained a mystery. I smile indulgently as D’Arcy excitedly explains how he traded up from his Robin Hood for this lump of 4 wheeled excreta. I left him scrapping away at the congealed mess in search of the carburettors and headed towards the Death-Burger van. 

1:24pm – in the garage. Kerpal, Oxford’s only Halal mobile welder arrives. On Grease-Guns recommendation I’d booked him for the job of reconstructing the Westfield’s mutilated frame. I tried to disregard his unnervingly likeness to Yootha Joyce from George and Mildred fame however, watching him spend 10 minutes trying to light the Arc welder was harder to ignore. Eventually I point out his error and listen as Kerpal explains it’s his brother, Amish, who’s actually the welder and Amish is busy attending to a family blood feud. I feel it prudent to ask Kerpal about his welding experience. He grins disarmingly and says he’s usually a waiter in our local Biriani emporium but be assured all is well as Amish has explained all about welding. 

1:48pm – in the garage. As I watch Kerpal’s fumblings it becomes increasingly obvious he doesn’t know the difference between an amp and an  Aloo Chat. Enough is enough, so I take away the arc-welder before he can do any damage and shoo him off to the kitchen to make a coffee while I attend to the reconstruction. 20 minutes later the Westfield now has a new U-shaped tube connecting the top-chassis members. Okay, my amateur welding produced more bird **** than a Trafalgar Square pigeon but at least the frame’s back together. As I slip off the welding mask, Kerpal returns with the coffee and a plate of Saag Machli he’s managed to knock up from breakfast left-overs. 

3:46pm – sitting at computer. Find an email waiting from Cheryl Shingles wanting to confirm the time and place of our date. I’m starting to question the wisdom of sending a picture of myself with a full head of hair courtesy of Paint Shop Pro. I decide to tell Cheryl I recently lost all of my golden tresses in a fire-ball crash while lapping the opposition in the Speed Series.

6:55pm – Watching television: Glancing up from Robot Wars I notice the wife’s walking like she’s clutching a pair of Green-Stuff brake pads between her ample buttocks. Placing a large packet of frozen Petit-Poi on a dining chair she lowers herself gently onto the peas. The wife’s haemorrhoids playing up means she’s in the mood for serious conversation. Sniffing back a tear, she blurts outs, “Bert, I want a divorce.” I let out an involuntary sigh of relief, for one horrible moment I thought she was going to demand I sell the Westfield. I nod my head sympathetically as the poor woman let’s forth a litany of pent up emotion aimed at me apparently ignoring her for months. At this point I can’t but help noticing that Chaos2 is putting up a spectacular display against Thermador, so I put my head on auto-nod and hope Chaos can get it’s flipper working properly.

7:35pm – in the garage hiding from the wife. Decided to try and work out why the reversing light keeps cutting out. Slide under the car and examine the wires connected to the gearbox. Touch the positive terminal with a screwdriver and suddenly Jane McDonald singing, You’re My World, is belting out of the fuse box and Louis Armstrong’s seminal version of, Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah, is coming out somewhere near the petrol tank.

7:55pm – in the toilet. Reading through the latest Westfield World. A story on the letters page catches my eye about a guy who inadvertently brought a Catterham thinking it was a Westfield. The man only realised his mistake after he’d parked up on the WSCC site at Stoneleigh. Luckily the St.Johns ambulance crew were on hand and managed to remove the flag-pole although what happened to the Westfield pendent on the end of it remains a mystery.

8:37pm – in the garage. Spanner and Grease Guns have popped around to lend a hand dropping the engine in. Spanner’s managed to knock me up a couple of billet alloy engine mounts so we cross our fingers and prepare to lower the mighty Xflow. Spanner heroically volunteers to positioned himself under the Westfield to guide the engine onto the mounts. All was going well until the B&T chain slipped through Grease Gun hands. The unfortunate Spanner lets out a cry that sounds like Graham Norton doing an impersonation of the late Thora Hurd. I secured the chain and looked under the car expecting the worse. We’d missed the mounts and the entire engine weight was now resting on Spanner’s vitals, thankfully keeping my freshly painted sump from being scratched.

10:15pm – in the kitchen. We were on our second bottle of JD when Spanner mentioned a potential problem. “How are you going to change the oil with the engine cranked over at such an angle?” he slurred. Grease Gun scratched his weak chin for a moment and said, “Simple, hoist the two left wheels onto ramps, which would put the sump in a horizontal plain.” I was too drunk to understand a word they were saying and was just glad the engine was back where it belonged. 

11:52pm - decide to give up smoking tomorrow. Went to bed and fell asleep reading Dale Winterton’s impressions of the Westfield XTR-Turbo in HELLO magazine’s celebrity road test: dream the mother-in-law inadvertently amputates a foot while trying to remove a verruca with my angle-grinder

 

Friday, October 1

Corner weight: One of life’s great truisms states: your level of pedantism will be in direct relation to the amount of beer you’ve imbibed. So, it came as no great surprise when my conversation with 3 crapulent locals propping up the bar in the Bishop’s Finger turned toward defining the problem rather than finding a solution. We were arguing about corner-weight (CW), as one does, when John reasonably asked, where exactly did a car’s corners start and finish. The landlord  chipped in by stating grandly that you couldn’t measure CW at the wheels because they were obviously not at the car’s corners and a true CW should be taken at the outer-lip of the bonnet and rear of the body work. Admittedly he’d made a gloriously pedantic point, but, I wasn’t about to let that get in the way of unreasoned argument. “A Westfield, “ I slurred, “is specially designed to minimise weight by being corner-less. If you want to calculate corner weight you have to use a rolling road specially adapted for trigonometry.” I backed up my assertion by calling them all sheep-****** perverts then stumbled out of the pub in a huff.        

7:12am – in the garage. Now the engine is nicely cranked over, I fitted the new exhaust system, finishing the exit hole with a stainless weather strip. I try to fit the bonnet and discover to my horror it now fouls the carbs. b*******. Nothing for it, so I get the Dremal out and carve a hole in the unsuspecting bonnet. 

11:15am – in front on the television. I’m minding my own business, watching a rerun of It’s a Royal Knockout when the wife sidles into the room and sits beside me. Thinking she seen the latest bank statement and the inexorable debits to Kingwinford, I prepare myself for the inevitable. Instead, a hand snakes across my thigh and gives my nuptials a playful squeeze. Now, I’m by no means a prude, but a wife wanting sex with her husband seems a touch unnatural in this age of readily available internet pornography. Leaning over, she nibble one of my ears and murmurs, “Bert, darling, is it okay if mum stays with us for a few days while her kitchen is being redecorated?” I’m about to protest when I feel her grip on my vitals tighten.  I smile weakly and nod my head. The grip loosens. “Good,” she grins enigmatically, “I’m sure the two of you will have so much to talk about.” 

1:25pm – in the garage. Standing back and examining my Dremal inspired handy work I’m pleasantly surprised at the results. The exhaust exits low and the carb filter exits high through the new bonnet hole. I decide to test the engine. I quickly connect the fuel lines and then fire-up the mighty Xflow. It coughs, splutters them catches, blipping the throttle an induction noise akin to one you might expect Ruby Wax to make if she was being pleasured by David danglerinson spits out of the bonnet aperture. I like it. The problem of the slipping cycle wings remains, so I make a decision to visit my local Catterham owners club and find out how to secure the bl**dy things for once and for all. 

3:43pm – The Croissant, Ye Olde Tea and Scone Shope. Turned up at my local Catterham owners club meeting and was made to feel about as welcome as a blow-footballer with halitosis. I introduced myself to the blimp of an AO,  Duncan Smyth-Cravat, and followed his wobberling buttocks as he staggered to the back of the room under the weight of a tray piled high with 4  Devonshire Clotted cream teas. I was expecting to see 3 other people at the table, but Duncan was obviously a man with an appetite to match his girth. I waited until he’d gorged before asking if their was a special way of attaching Catterham cycle wings. He fixed me with a piggy eye (disarmingly, the other remained focused on the food), grinned maliciously and touched a porky finger to his bulbous nose, “Boy, Catterhams are held together with a secret ingredient.” 

“Which is?” I nodded expectantly. 

Jowls flapping, Duncan laughed, “Boy, we swear a blood-oath never to divulge The secret.” 

“How about if I brought another round of cream teas and a flagon of Sarsaparilla?”

“Done”, he grunted, licking his lips, “Catterhams are held together with MRP, that’s Money Reinforced Plastic to you oinks. Shred a wad of £50 notes and combine with half-a-litre of resin, this mix will bond anything Catterham to anything else.”

6:45 – In the garage. Engine’s running hot. Spent most yesterday and a sizable chunk of today trying to bleed the mighty Xflow’s coolant system. Spanner popped around with a jug of treacle (don’t ask) and suggested I crush up a couple of Windeeze tablets and put them in the coolant. He reckoned if they removed trapped air from the human digestive tract they should remove trapped air from a few rubber pipes. Daft though it sounded, I  thought I’d give it try.   

9:12pm - Quiff and Salami, public house. Local Area Meet (LAM). It’s the AO birthday and the LAM lads have ordered a stripper. Before the “entertainment” arrives a heated, alcohol fuelled discussion starts about much of a Westfield’s frame can removed to save weight without compromising rigidity. Maybe I was missing the point, but there’s something incongruous about a bunch of guys with Olympic sized beer-guts arguing about saving a kilo of weight. The stripper arrives, looking for all the world like Dot Cotton in drag, then proceeds to shed her clothing to the rhythmic sounds of Benny Hill’s seminal Ernie, the fastest milkman in the west. I watch stunned at the gyrating geriatric struggles to remove her support stockings then tries to sprinkles Horlicks over her breasts, but can’t reach down that far and ends up putting her back out to collective cries of, “Get ‘em on.”.

11:12pm – in front of the computer. Email from Cheryl Shingles. This time she enclosed a picture of herself. I’m amazed she’s worn so well; doesn’t seem a day over 30. With an amorous lump sprouting in my trousers I decide to bring our date forward. I’m just about to email back declaring my undying love when I notice a copy of the Daily Mirror in the background of her picture sporting the headline: Thatcher Becomes Britain’s First Female Prime Minister. 

11:33pm – still in front of the computer. Log onto WSCC site and peruse the Cars For Sale section. A guy from Manchester has posted up a picture of a SE he’s flogging. If Ann Widdecombe had acted as a surrogate mother to Clare Short and Lily Savage, their collective off-spring would have looked like this car. The engine was from a Honda CB250 with a chain running the full length of the prop tunnel before joining up to cog on a differentialess rear axle. The suspension boasted polished copper wishbones and the body-work looked as if Stevie Wonder had painted it in hepatic yellow bathroom emulsion using an electric toothbrush.  The owner described the car as being used daily but, for what, we can only guess. 

11:55pm - decide to give up smoking tomorrow. Went to bed and fell asleep reading the bit in Ulrika Jonsson’s autobiography where she claims to have made whoopee with Sven Goran Eriksson in a Catterham Superlight R: dream the mother-in-law melts her dentures and loses most of her facial tissue after using a Bic lighter to check if she’d cleaned out the Westfield’s fuel tank properly

 

Saturday, October 8

Corner weight: The Bishop’s Finger Pedant Society has once again drunk enough to discuss corner-weight (CW). Baz, the yodelling roofer, claims CW is a virtual measurement because each bend you take will cause the CW to change depending on the radius of the bend and your speed. Gravity and G-force, mumbles D’Arcy drunkenly, before sliding off his stool. Pert barmaid, Vikki, picks up our empties and giggles, “Silly boys, corner-weight is a dynamic force not a static measurement. If you modelled a computer simulation of the torsion and tensions across the chassis you could calculate the torque both laterally and longitudinally which could then be dynamically applied to unsprung weight and suspension tolerances over a positive and negative movement plane.” Stepping over D’Arcy, she giggled again and disappeared behind the bar. 

We look at each other astounded, mouths agape. “Well what do you think boys?” I ask eventually. 

Baz rubs his chin reflectively before saying, “Defiantly not wearing a bra.” 

“….or knickers,” slurs D’Arcy from the floor. 

10:27am – visit to Kingwinford. Parking Spanner’s Allegro well away from the factory we slip on Porsche sweatshirts and walk to the reception. Spanner, Grease Gun and my good self are ostensibly here to collect a pair of sports seats, but thought we’d blag a test drive or three at the same time. Entering the factory’s scruffy reception area I sniff appreciatively at the lingering smell of engine oil. The chirpy receptionist smiles a hello and Grease Gun leers back. Ignoring my boorish friend, I saunter over to her desk like a man weighed down with the worries of having more money than he can spend. “I phoned a week ago to book a couple of test drives, “ I lied. She nods and presses a green button on her desk. A moment later a harried, middle-age man appears with what looked like a nylon ginger mop stuck to his head. Now, I’m not one to mock another man’s vanities, but this guy’s wig would have had Bernie Ecclestone sniggering. Trying to ignore his mullet I said we were here to test drive their cars and could he hurry up because the Porsche was double parked. He shuffled uncomfortably and said the only car available at the moment was something called a Megabusa. What’s that I asked? Grinning proudly Mr. Mullet says it’s a Westfield powered by a Suzuki Hayabusa engine. Hearing this Grease Gun starts sniggering and Spanner tells Mullet man to stop p******** about and go and get something decent with a Xflow in it. Mullet grins like a shark and says to Spanner, “Why don’t you give it a spin, sir?” 

12:11pm – The Pheasant Plucker, just outside Kingwinford. Two of us are sitting at the bar with  pints of some sickly Northern brew and a couple of flaccid Ploughman’s. Grease Gun glances at his watch, then nods at the toilet, “How much longer is he going to be in there?” Still fuming I growl, “I don’t ******’ care, but he’s not getting back into the bl**dy car with us until he’s washed his underwear.”

3:14pm – on the toilet reading Westfield World. The mag now has an Agony-Uncle section hosted by the arboreal Dougie dangler; Jungian Psychotherapist and spanner man to the stars. Described as cross between Jeremy Paxman and Eddie Izzard, Dougie has offered his unique brand of no nonsense advice on personal and mechanical conundrums in every magazine from Fiesta to National Geographic for more than 20 years. Dougie column starts in the next issue; can’t wait. Interesting item in the For Sale section. Look at the contact number and see it’s Wayne the Essex AO, no less.

3:35pm – in front of the computer. I’m a worried man. Cheryl Shingles has emailed me a picture of a recipe for boiled rabbit with a short note demanding to know why I’ve not responded to her previous email. I can’t shift thoughts of Fatal Attraction out of my mind and wonder if I should end our budding relationship here and now. Of course testosterone wins the day so I email back and ask what veggies should I cook with the rabbit. 

4:15pm – Ring Wayne the AO. Great news, he hasn’t sold it yet. Arrange to meet him tomorrow night.

5:23pm – in the garage. Taking Spanner’s advice on trapped air, I’ve mixed a jug of water with 3 packets of Windeeze and pour the lot into the header tank. Jumping into the car, I fire-up the mighty Xflow and rev the engine until the temp-gauge it’s Rubicon of 80c then switch off. First I hear a deep rumbling from the bowels of the car then, a screeching hiss. Deciding discretion is the better part of valour I leap out of the shaking Westfield and dive through the garage door just as the radiator cap blasts off followed by a Krakatau of a mechanical fart. Lying on the ground outside the garage, gagging on the sulphuric flatulence billowing out of the open door, I look up to see my neighbour peering over the fence at me. “What the heck was that, Bert?” 

“Trapped air,” I cough, trying to clear my lungs, “thought I could get rid of it with 3 packets of Windeeze.” 

“Next time I’d stick to the recommended dose,” he frowns, then disappears back to his gardening.

6:15pm – Phone call on mobile. PC Traipse has contacted me as part of an on-going enquiry into stolen kitcar parts. I tell him my Westfield is a component car not one of those cheap kit things, so he’d be better off investigating a Catterham owner. PC Traipse still insist on wanting to examine my car and arranges to come around the following day. I immediately phone D’Arcy and tell him I’ve got some pukka Catterham cycle wings for his Dutton he can have gratis. 

7:35pm – in the garage. D’Arcy has pulled his junk heap up to the garage door in preparation for the transplant. I slip on a face mask, fire up the grinder and expertly slice the Dutton’s integral wings off. The body work immediately sags so I quickly Duck-tape on the cycle wings before he notices. Job finished. D’Arcy stands back and wipes a tear from his eye as I explain, if he painted a 7 on the bonnet people would think he was driving a real Catterham. Overcome with gratitude, he whips out a bottle of brown ale and cracks it (literally) against his bonnet, then announces grandly, “I christen thee Dutterham.”

7:44pm – Outside chez Jones. I watch in relief as D’Arcy and his dire Dutterham belch away in a grey cloud of bubonic motor oil. Finally I’m free of the accursed cycle wings. Or am I? 

8:12pm – in the garage. Looking at the Westfield without it’s cycle wings fills me with mixed emotions, can’t decide if I should go back to clam-shells or spend even more of our holiday money on Kingwinford originals. If the wife ever sees the state of our bank account she’d take out a Fatwa against me. Decide not to decide and go down the pub instead. 

10:55pm – Come home to an empty house. Second time the wife’s been out this month which has only added to my suspicions since she started bleaching her moustache and having a monthly French wax. Also, I accidentally found a dubious note the other day while I was going through her coat pockets. It simple said. “

See You At 7pm, Usual Rendezvous – E"

11:18pm – in front of the computer. With 7 pints of Light and Bitter topped off with a kingsize Pot-noodle sloshing around my stomach I log onto WSCC site and ask about a cure for the mighty Xflow’s over-heating. 20 responses later I’m reeling at the number of eclectic ways to plumb a simple Xflow. One guy from Rotherham had a particularly novel solution by plumbing in a total-loss cooling system. Apparently he’d fixed a 40 gallon pressurised water tank in place of the passenger seat and run pipes fitted with fine sprinklers through the bulkhead and into the engine bay. When he started the car an auxiliary pump would power up and spray cooling water over the engine and gear box. He claimed 8 mp(water)g and said if he didn’t have to use £5 worth of WD40 every time he wanted to start the engine the system would be very economical. 

11:59pm - decide to give up smoking tomorrow. Went to bed and fell asleep reading Pope John Paul II favourite motoring anecdotes: dream the mother-in-law suffers oesophageal haemorrhaging after drinking a glass of the Westfield’s brake fluid thinking it was her Senokot.

 

 

Sunday, October 9

Corner weight. Take the car down to the local weigh-bridge and bribe the operator with a bottle of Tesco’s own label Riesling, a box of Black Magic and pouch of rough-******* for his pipe. The plan is simple: drive the car onto the weigh-bridge; jack up 3 of the corners, leaving on one the weigh-bridge. Repeat the process 4 times and, hey presto, problem solve. Takes me less that an hour and I now know each corner of my car weighs exactly 545 kilos; which means the Westfield is in perfect balance; even if it does weigh a few kilo’s more than I though. Can’t wait to brag about it on the WSCC site. 

9:14am – in the garage flicking through the copy of Mother & Baby I found in the betting shop this morning. Reading through the mag, I chance upon an interesting article on baby burping. Now, I’m no expert on rug-rats but, it was easy to see the parallels between a mother trying to wind her kid and me trying to free the trapped air in the mighty Xflow. Lacking a crane and a 20ft shoulder I thought I could improvise by hoisting up the car with a block and tackle then giving the engine a pat with an industrial sized rubber sledgehammer. I’ll talk the plan over with Spanner and see what he thinks. 

10:26am – on the toilet reading Westfield World. There’s a lot of space given up to something called the Speed Series. I’m not exactly sure what this is, although the obvious conclusion would be a race of some sort. Now, call me old fashion but, why would anyone race something with the aerodynamics a breeze-block and the structural integrity of a Big Mac? 

11:17am – in the garage. Blissfully bolting in the new seats, I’m taken aback by the wife’s sudden appearance. Behind her was a bizarre woman who looked like John Wayne wearing a pink jump-suit with Gretchen embroidered across her ample bosom. I smile weakly and hope they’ve not noticed the Westfield’s new seats. I’m formally introduced to the Germanic Gretchen; who wastes no time in barking out that she’s now wife’s new counsellor. Ignoring my outstretched hand, Gretchen sniffs at the air suspiciously, “Is dat alcohol I can smell, Herr Jones?” 

“N, n, no,” I stutter, “the car’s got a wind problem I’m trying to cure.” Hearing this, the wife laughs just a little too hysterically and sits on one of the new seats while she fumbles out a Temazepam. Gretchen glares at the Westfield’s claustrophobic interior and asks, without preamble, if I’m an autoerotic fetisher for owning such a constricted car. Trying to make a joke I say, “No, I’m just into your usual stuff, rubber sheets and enemas et al.” As soon as the words tumble from my mouth I realised my mistake: never mention enemas to a German frau. 

“Das ist gut, Herr Jones,” Gretchen almost smiled, “da clean bowels makes for a gut husband, ja?” Sniffing at the air again she said, “I think your crampt car would benefit from an enema, no?” Then, with a clap of her large hands, she bellowed, “Come, Mrs Jones, we have to counsel.” 

12:33pm – in front of the computer. I’m a worried. Cheryl Shingles has emailed saying that she wants to come over to my bachelor pad for a night of fun and frolics. Deciding that I must be a man and sort this before the wife finds out; also decide that Grease Gun is just the man to do it for me.

2:14pm – in the garage. The seats are now in place and look succulently sexual with their colour-coded 4-point harnesses. I’ve been practicing and can now get in and out of the harness in a shade under 30 minutes. I bolted the clam-shell back in place and immediately saw a problem; they cover up a good portion of the expensively polished manifold as it exits out of the car’s bodywork. Decide drastic action is in order so go into the house and grab the remains of the Spanish brandy I was saving for Christmas.

2:24pm – in the garage. Fortified with a belly full of the fiery Spanish fly I feel confident enough to fire up the angle grinder. Saying a quick prayer of contrition I chop off the rear half of the nearside clam shell. Taking another deep slug on the brandy bottle I shape a piece of corrugated Perspex with the angle grinder and fix it onto the circumcised clam-shell with 4 self-tappers and a good dollop of Plumbers Mate. I now have a Perspex observation window through which the hoi polloi can view the gorgeous exhaust system unhindered by fibre glass emb*******ance. 

4:21pm – in the kitchen being interviewed by the local car-crime officer. I hand PC Traipse a coffee and explain that my Westfield is 100% kosher. Licking his pencil, he asks me how to spell kosher then spends the next 10 minutes scribbling in his notebook. The young PC, who reminds me of an uglier Andrew Lloyd Webber, finally finishes writing and insists I show him the Westfield.

4:35pm – in the garage. PC Traipse gazes at my car and frowns like a man who just been goosed by Valerie Singleton. He obviously hasn’t the slightest clue as to what he’s looking for or at. Licking his pencil again, he asks shiftily, “What’s the engine?”

Patting the mighty Xflow I say proudly, “Race spec 1600 Ford unit.” 

Narrowing his eyes, the PC points at the rocker-cover triumphantly, “Then, why does it have Burton written on it?” 

“Because, it’s a Burton prepared mighty Xflow,” I reply patiently. 

“Does it run?” 

“Do bears shi….. never mind, I’ll show you.” Sliding into the new seat, I fire-up the mighty Xflow and rev the engine until the temp-gauge reaches the magical 80c then switch off. As soon as I hear a deep rumbling from the Westfield’s bowels I say, “Hang on a minute, I think I can hear the phone.” Jumping out of the car, I just make it outside as a screeching hiss is followed by a gigatoic blast as the radiator cap flies off and fills the air with a putrefying stench. The hacking cough inside the billowing garage tells me the young PC is alive, if a little battered.

8:47pm – The Ferret’s Scrotum public house, the WSCC Essex Chapter’s monthly meet. Dressed in the de rigueur shell-suit and fat, gold-link bracelet I pull into the car park and see a line of white Westfields with bumper stickers proclaiming, My Other Car’s An Escort XR3i Cabriolet. Inside, the theme pub I follow the (great) smell of Brut to the function room where I was met by shell-suited Wayne, the AO. Flashing gold capped teeth, perm-a-tan Wayne thrusts a pint of Bucks Fizz in my hand and takes me to the function room where he keeps his portable lock-up. Checking we were alone, Wayne unlocked the miniature garage and pulls out a magnificent pair of mink, fluffy dice. I paid the asking price without quibble and leave before he changes his mind. Once outside I carefully wrap the dice and set off for home safe in the knowledge that the wife would forgive me all my sins once she sees what I’ve brought for her birthday.

11:55pm - decide to give up smoking tomorrow. Went to bed and fell asleep reading Bamber Gascoigne’s scathing critique of the Westfield build manual: dream the mother-in-law is crushed by the Westfield after catching her support stockings on the pneumatic jack.

 

 

......as that doyen of existential philosophy, Friedrich Nietzsche, once said, ".....if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." 

 

Wednesday, November10 

Exhaust noise: Decide to fit an after-burner to the Westfield’s exhaust. Simple enough job: With Spanner’s help we quickly drill and tap a hole at the end of the silencer for a spark plug, then connect the plug to the ignition system via a steering wheel button. Finally, using a vacuum switch, we run an auxiliary fuel line into the exhaust, 8 inches before the spark plug. When I fire up the engine, the back-pressure will automatically feed fuel into the hot exhaust which will vaporise the fuel. Then, when I depress the button, the plug ignites the vapours and sends a flame out of the rear end. Well, that was the theory anyway. To test it out, I load the Westfield on a trailer hauled by Spanner’s Allegro and drive down to the local rolling-road and bribe Clint, the owner-operator, with a bottle of Tesco’s Russian Riesling and smuggled pouch of rough-*******. At 3,000 revs Clint gives me the thumbs up and I press the after-burner-button. With a noise akin to a Harrier jet fighter porking Liam Gallagher, a 40 foot spear of white hot flame erupts out of the exhaust, cremating Clint’s Siamese cat and setting fire to Spanner’s Allegro in the process. 

8:10am - Sitting on the toilet reading an article in Health & Efficiency about some Jessie from the West Coast Reliant Owners Club. Seems some flatcap has copied me by putting an after-burner on an enemic three wheeler, but he’s added to the pyrotechnics by spraying methanol and iron filings directly into the flames. I don’t pretend to understand the mechanical hieroglyphics, but the bottom line seems to be: I need some type of fuel that will burn hotter and brighter if I really want to impress the boys and girls outside the ACE cafe. Log onto the WSCC site and ask about rocket fuel. Receive a response from a local guy called Mr Plums who says he’s got some for sale. Arrange to meet him later in a pub. 

8:19am - In the sitting room. To solve the over-heating oil, I decide to change the mighty Crossflow’s anaemic, mechanical oil-pump for an electrical high-output jobbie. A quick States-side call to the illustrious Burg and Burg to enquire about the cost of their billet oil pumps. Their reply would have had Bill Gates needing a bank loan, so I slam the phone down in protest, take a long slug of Irish Vodka and decided there was always a better (cheaper) solution. Whilst I’m deep in thought (drunk) my gaze wanders to our fish tank in the corner of the room. I’ve never really shared the wife’s fondness of terminally stupid Guppies, but the little fish did give me the germ of an idea. If the tank’s electrical water pump could circulate 24 gallons of diluted fish excrement, it could certainly propel the oil around the mighty Crossflow. Of course, altering it to run on 12 volts might be a bit tricky.

12:46pm - The snug of the Firkin Gherkin. Meet up with a scruffy, one-eyed, bandana-totting, guy calling himself Mr. Plums. Despite wearing a food-stained Robin hood OC jacket, Plums claims to be a life-long Catterham owner, although the heap I saw in pub car park looked suspiciously like a Dutton with 7 scrawled on the bonnet with a laundry marker. Acting like a furtive Crack dealer, Plums ushers me into the Gents so we can examine a specimen of his rocket fuel. Plums tells me it’s the real McCoy, recycled from the defunct Russian space programme. Taking out an eyedropper, he carefully measures a single drop into the toilet bowl, throws in a lit Swan Vesta and leaps back just as an almighty bang and black mushroom cloud envelopes the latrine. At a fiver a pint I can’t complain, so I buy quart, which he’s pre-packet into a plastic milk bottle. Not wishing to be caught with potentially dodgy gear, I stuff the bottle down the front of my leatherette chaps and return to the bar. Mr. Plums doesn’t hang around, so I leer at, Joss, the delightful barmaid and decide to stay for another beer. After 11 bottles of Dutch courage, and a couple of pickled egg sandwiches for good measure, I sidled up to the overtly chesty Joss, and ask if she fancied a garlic kebab after the pub shut. She glances at the bulge in my chaps and nods the affirmative. 

6:11am – on the WSCC web site. Someone has proudly posted a few digital pictures of a Smega-blade they’d just finished updating. If this car was a dog, you’d call the vet and put it out of its misery. I’m not sure what was worse, the roll-bar that had been fabricated with 15m copper gas pipe or the Draylon *******-pile covering the home-made soft-top. I mention I’m thinking of taking the wife to one of these Speed Series weekend things for a few days peace and quiet, under a canvas roof, with invigorating sound of nature surrounding us. A couple of Northern lads tell me their region is hosting a hill climb at the weekend in aid of their local Liver Unit. I decide to take the plunge and invite the wife as a way of apologising for the amount of money I’ve been spending on the Westfield. I only hope she has enough cash to cover our petrol, food and that great digital speedo I saw at Halfrauds yesterday. 

10:34pm - In the kitchen. The wife’s home from her counselling session with the Teutonic, thunder-thighed, Gretchen. I smile warmly, take her coat and sit her down at the dining table. A sure way into a woman’s purse is via her stomach so I’d pulled all the stops out and made my speciality: Vesta Paella al la mode, washed down with ½ a bottle of the Co-op’s best Belgium Chianti. I mention the hill climb thingy and, to my utter surprise, she seems quite taken with the idea.

11:15pm - In the sitting room. With the wife gently snoring upstairs I quietly examine the fish tank’s water pump watched intently by 28 pairs of beady Guppy eyes. The pumps wiring seems simple enough and I shouldn’t have a problem adapting it. As an experiment I gently prod the earth with an insulated screwdriver. A suddenly flash has me blinking away the black spots. As my vision clears I squint at the tank and see 28 small bodies floating up-side-down. Oop’s.

11:55pm – decide to give up smoking tomorrow. Go to bed reading Albert Schweitzer’s account of his classic road trip across the alps on a Pre-LIt with mechanical tuberculosis. Dream the mother-in-law accidentally gives herself a course of Electro-Convulsive-Therapy after her NHS hearing-aid gets tangled up in the Westfield’s ignition system. 

 

 

 

Thursday, November 11 

Exhaust noise: Went to a quiet wooded area in North Oxford to test Mr Plum’s rocket fuel in the Westfield’s after-burner. As per instructions, I’ve mixed in ½ a tea cup of iron filings to the fuel and then put the mixture in the reservoir tank of an anaemic Scottoiler I swapped with D’Arcy for 34 back issues of Fiesta and a well thumbed Readers Wives Special. Starting the car, I wait while the Scottoiler starts dripping it's concoction into the hot exhaust. And, wait. And wait. Damn, bl**dy stuff’s not working. On the ride home, I’m waiting at the traffic lights when the Crossflow suddenly coughs like an asthmatic toad and a sledge hammer hits me in the back as I catapult away in a banshee wail of pyrotechnics and burnt hydrocarbons. Chancing a glance in my mirror, I just catch site of the rapidly receding shape of a smoking Ford Ka that had the misfortune to be besides me at the lights. 

7:54am - In the kitchen, nursing the mother, father and probably the second cousin of all hang-overs. The wife doesn’t seem to have twigged that 28 of her beloved guppies have metamorphed into 7 goldfish, looking suspiciously like the very fish that recently inhabited next-door’s pond. After my post-kebab liaison with Joss I’m more determined than ever to get the SE’s after-burner sorted so I can schmooze with the type of women who appreciates a man with a volcanic side-pipe. But that’s for later, this morning I’m going to sort out the Westfield’s recalcitrant ignition system. I’ve already junked the OME set-up and spent the wife’s hairdressing money on a danglery little set from Demon Thieves. Once fitted, I can get on with the cooling system and the car’s ready to ride up to some place called Leeds for the Hill Climb tomorrow. 

8:57am - In the toilet reading the local free paper. Chance upon an ad selling high colonic enema equipment. Even with my rudimentary knowledge of colonic irrigation I realise that I might have stumbled upon a seriously good tool for bleeding the gas out of the Westfield’s congenitally deformed water cooling system. I ring the advertiser. A sensuously coy female, with a thick French accent, introduces herself as Gigi and murmurs that I could come around after lunch.

1:17pm – Cowley road, Oxford. Gigi’s unpretentious address is salubrious situated above a lug-worm shop. I knock on the Formica, laminated door and get buzzed in. I’m not sure what to expect, but certainly not a leiderhosen clad dominatrix looking like John Bulishi on a bad hair day; complete with purple lipstick and bright yellow Marigold gloves. “You are a very naughty boy,” Gigi scolds in an impenetrable Basque brogue, “now you must be punished.” 

I’m not exactly sure what this punishment entailed, although a large bucket of soapy water and a goodly length of rubber tubing seemed to be involved. Keeping my buttocks firmly pressed against the door, I hurriedly explain I’m here to buy the equipment for my Westfield and my bowels do not need purging. Gigi frowns, slips a white coat over her leiderhosen and wags a finger. “Naughty boy, why don’t you make yourself comfortable and slip into some nice black rubber.” 

To be honest, the rubber cat-suit looked quite inviting, but I was a man with a mission and rubberise frolics would have to wait for another day. I reluctantly shook my head and said firmly, “I’m here to buy the enema equipment you advertised for sale.”

Glancing up at a row of rawhide whips hanging from the wall, Gigi smiled and murmured, “Now, you are being very, very naughty.”

An hour later, with legs firmly crossed and half a stone lighter, I left Gigi’s flat with a box full of second-bottom goodies.

3:14pm – In the toilet reading a copy of Rubber and Cream monthly I’d found in Gigi’s box. A scream from the sitting room has me hopping down the stairs with my trousers flapping around my ankles. I find the wife in front of the fish tank staring at the goldfish. “Wwwhat’s happened to the Gggguppies,” she stutters. Feigning ignorance, I suck a tooth and mumble, “looks like you’ve been over-feeding them, darling. Cut their food down for a week and I’m sure they’ll return to normal.” She thanks me for my concern, then wags a stern finger at the Guppies while she explains to the fatuous fish that they’re now on a diet.

6:55pm - In the garage. I’ve jacked up the front of the SE and Spanner has the pallor of a condemned prisoner being strapped into an electric chair as he sits unsteadily in the driver’s seat ready to start the beast on my instruction. Grease Gun is hiding behind 6ft sheet of titanium in the corner with shell-suited Wayne, the Essex AO, who has agreed to film the event for prosperity. Kerpal, Oxford’s only Halal mobile welder, is outside the garage wearing his welding gear and clutching the worlds biggest fire extinguisher. Nice to know the boys have such faith in my mechanical abilities. To quell their anxieties I’ve liberally medicated them with three pints of triple distilled Poteen mixed with half a dozen crushed chlordiazepoxide. Our plan is simple: I’ve feed the colonic irrigation pipes into the guts of the mighty Crossflow, Spanner will keep the revs up and, all going well, the motor should purge itself of unwanted air. 

6:22pm – In the garage. I can’t put it off any longer, I cross my chest, give Spanner the thumb up and cover my eyebrows as he fires up the mighty Crossflow. The car starts without preamble and roars like a haemorrhoidally mean lion with every blip of the tetchy throttle. Tension mounts as the water temp gradually climbs into the 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, then slips menacingly past 90. Kerpal’s deserted his post for the kitchen where he’s trying to whip up a yam Dhansak; Wayne is shivering in his Kevlar reinforced shell-suit and Grease Gun is slobbering mess behind his titanium barricade. 

6:27 - In the garage. The water temp rises to 105 and, with cataclysmic visions of blowing head gaskets, I shout at Spanner to abort just as the garage reverberates with a stupendous flatulent bellow as the mighty Crossflow expels it’s unwanted gas; the temperature immediately drops into a healthy 60, and happily burbles away like a new born baby on it’s mother’s breast. Success. 

9:40pm - In the garage. The electronic ignition is a doddle to fit, so I drag the Guppy loving wife into the garage to witness the mighty Crossflows inaugural firing on a brand new digitally mapped spark. Blipping the throttle for a good minute, I smile like a trout and tell her to watch, listen and learn from a master mechanic; then, with a final flourish I thumb the start button. The mighty Crossflow turns over once, twice, thrice. Frowning, I pump the throttle some more and try again. This time, the engine burps like a wart hog and a cloud of burning fuel shoots out of the carb, setting fire to my chaps. Running around the garage, screaming like a Jessie, Kerpal drops the frying pan and chases after me trying to dowse the flames with his extinguisher. Finally the fire’s out. The wife looks at me with her Diazepam addled gaze and says, “Very nice, dear, but is it supposed to do that?” 

11:55pm – decide to give up smoking tomorrow. Go to bed reading Cilla Black’s evocative tale of losing her virginity to a Seight owning Northumbrian Priest with a taste for Guinness massages. Dream the mother-in-law gave herself oesophageal varicose veins after accidentally drinking a pint of the Westfield’s brake fluid thinking it was lemon tea.  ''

 

The end (?)

 

 

[Marcus Barlow - Show and Events Co-ordinator]

BTTT for anybody who has not yet read.............................the best never ending story ever 😁

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

Wow, blast from the past!

[Marcus Barlow - Show and Events Co-ordinator]

indeed 😁

[Stuart]

I actually found him in a search for something a few weeks ago so was reminded of this.....