Aston Martin Rust Oration

Last night was the AMOC 75th anniversary ball in the Banqueting House on Whitehall.

Great evening with music by the Scots Guards, the best piece of lamb I’ve had in years and copious amounts of Taittinger.

I met the great Herr Dr Bez and chatted with him about simplicity in design and the Bauhaus tradition (Angus, you’ve taught me well…)

I also met a man with 3,500 Scalextric cars in his loft, an Aston Martin and a Bentley in his garage – and Stephanie accuses me of collecting clutter!

Congratulations to the organisers for a wonderful evening. (now where are those paracetamol…?)

No chums in this years dissolution list – just an old boss in the form of John Seldom Glummer.

I’m not talking about the coalition, but my weekend on the farm.

I had a very early start on Saturday to meet Chris Packham and the BBC Springwatch team. The morning went off very well, only marred by my bus hitting a kid out on his bike and wearing headphones at  4am! Luckily he only had minor injuries.

Got up to the farm about 11am and got stuck right in.

Fettled and repainted the oil coolers and the aircon condenser -I used a wide spatula to straighten some of the veins that had got bent and am quite pleased with the result.

I will change the gearbox oil cooler as the screw fittings look shot on this one.

A word of advice to anyone fool-hardy enough to take on a nuts and bolts restoration as I have… Put the bonnet hinges on BEFORE the brake servos…!

Notice I have fitted nice brand new hinges to replace the very rusty original ones.

This week is also quite momentus. The engine is being assessed for the rebuild.

My charming American colleague has just suggested that Wedgwood should produce a Dave and Nick commerorative plate to put next to her Charles and Camilla one…

And so the work begins….as if it ever bloody stopped.

We’ve got a coalition – and they do genuinly seem to like each other. In fact i had to look closely at the photo on No 10’s website to check they weren’t holding hamds…