Aston Martin Rust Oration

Every year I go through the Honours lists and grind my teeth at some of the scoundrels that get on it.

Every now and then, someone I know gets a gong that they truely deserve. This year two of my old bosses got gonged.

Dame Julia Cleverdon got a DCVO (she’ll soon have the whole alphabet after her name!!) She was a hoot to work for at Business in the Community, and seeing a whole boardroom full of FTSE 100 CEOs and Chairs falling over themselves to sign up to her ideas was always entertaining.

The Rev Dr Stuart Burgess – the Prime Minister’s Rural Advocate got a CBE – Stuart, who had been President of the Methodist Church, was another amusing chap to be around. He said that after a year of introducing me to Bishops across the country he was most disappointed not to have converted me from atheism – I said it was introducing me to all the blasted bishops the confirmed my atheism!

Congratulations both.

The plight of UK Security

Scanning through last weeks’ PR Week before dropping in the recycling bin - I came across a recruitment ad for intelligence officers at MI5. Good grief – recruiting PR people as spies, what is the country coming to?

What a roller coaster week it’s been in British politics! I had such a busy week at work I decided to spend the weekend with my Mechanical Therapist.. AKA ROJ.

I know I keep banging on about how big a mistake galvanising the chassis was – but it really has been a bloody pain drilling out the captive nuts and threaded mounts, especially when some were so hard to get to.

I decided to blitz the front of the car this weekend. To get to the anti-roll bar mountings I had to cut through the chassis struts – in one mounting hole I’ve got a broken tap which will take time to grind out using a diamond bit.

We’ll need to take great care when welding them back up as Zinc fumes are highly poisonous.

It wasn’t all work as it was Clive’s Birthday – he put on a great barbeque with the now legendary bonfire, where all the wood and furniture comes from each year is beyond me, but everyone loves it.

Istanbul was fabulous.

Followed the From Russia With Love trail from the Hagia Sophia to the underground cisterns, the grand bazaar to the railway station and the ferry up the Bosphorus. The only site I didn’t see was the gypsy encampment – but then I wouldn’t because that scene was filmed in Scotland.

And then of course the Maiden’s Tower was used in The World is not Enough – but again the action was all filmed in the UK.

While not fantasising about being James Bond in pursuit of the lovely Tatiana Romanova, I still managed to spot a few bits of interesting old metal lying around:

This weekend it’s back to the farm for some more of my own Scrapheap Challenge….