Aston Martin Rust Oration

Our first piece of media coverage:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jan/26/mps-launch-group-to-tackle-landmines

….Stress out less!

On Thursday 26th January 2012 I will be launching the new All Party Parliamentary Group on Landmines and Unexploded Weapons of Conflict in the House of Commons.

It has taken me six months solid work to put the group together, I have got Ministerial support, a technical advisor from The MoD and interest from humanitarian agencies and commercial operators alike.

My guest speaker for the launch event is Giles Duley gilesduley.com

The War photographer who became a victim himself of a land mine in Afghanistan last year.

It’s been incredibly rewarding work – but I am now exhausted and in dire need of visiting the mechanical psychiatrist.

Perhaps in February I can take some time off and get up to the farm.

Christmas surprise

Poor Angus was supposed to be running a ski chalet for the season – but the day before the first guests were due to arrive he fell over on the ice and broke his ankle. So on Christmas eve we were at Gatwick to collect him – in plaster. Hopefully after the plaster comes off he will be back out to the alps, and I might get a few days skiing in too.

I’ve come to realise that owning an old car is like sex….

When you’re young it’s all throaty roars and squeals of delight,

and when you’re old is all slow starts, grunts, groans and grinds and mutterings of mild frustration, with lots of coughing and wheezing, until you come to a shuddering halt.

When we’ve got Petrolhead Farm!

Every time I go up to the farm it’s like an episode of a vehicular soap opera.

There are the old regular characters like the Renaults, Alfa and Aston. The comedy character of the old Renault 4, the solid old character of the Ford Mondeo, – and the chronic hyperchondriac of the AMV8.

Then there are the regular but infrequent characters such as the Rochdale and the Davrion, and  there are the characters which appear for one or two episodes and then get written out of the script – like the Datsun 240Z, Toyota Hilux and Nissan 200.

This trip I arrived to find Malcom and Phil peering into the engine bay of a very glam looking Peugeot 406.

It seems that Phil sold the Nissan 200 that worked only for his old Peugeot to die on him…

….so Phil and Malcolm went off to buy Phil a new car. …Are you keeping up with this?

After trawling the country for a suitable vehicle it appears that instead of Phil buying a new car, Malcolm saw the 406 and decided he would like a new car, so bought it.

Phil then took Malcolms Renault Clio – which worked, and Phil was happy.

But then things took a horrible turn for the worse – the Pug 406 broke!

So Malcolm now has another car to fix…Stay tuned for the next exciting installment!

Fabricating weekend

I was really pleased with the progress I made over the weekend. Putting the sunroof together has been like an episode of CSI, lots of forensic investigation of rusty bits of metal.

Some of the brackets were saveable,

While others are too far gone, and I’ve had to fabricate  replacements.

While in fabricating mode I decided to sort out the rusty plenum chamber instructions as follows:

1) cut out the rust;

2) Go to Sainsbury’s, buy Dr Oetker Pizza Supreme, cook and eat pizza and use box to make template for hole;

3)use template to cut piece of steel;

4) weld in (job for next visit).

No, I didn’t get the sunroof on. Primarily because I spent half my weekend doing a job I have done far too often on ROJ, and one that I truely loathe. I had to drill out another broken bolt in one of the corner brackets of the box.

But the roof is ready to put together now.

This morning, before leaving the farm, I quickly rivetted the brackets on:

Being a Mercedes part, the sun roof is all in metric – luckily I do have a metric tap and die set.

I also thought that before I put the mechanism back together I would check it over and make sure it’s all lubricated.

Of course no trip to the farm would be complete without admiring a new addition to the museum – this one’s a plastic bodied R$ that Malcolm bought on his last trip to France.

Hooray I hear you cry… At last a blog about the car.

Here I am at the farm, doing exactly what I had planned to do – getting the sunroof mechanism sorted… sort of.

The main problem is that the old sunroof box was steel and the new is aluminium. Where the motor, switches etc are attached there are captive nuts welded to the steel. I was going to measure up and drill the holes before Gary came up with a solution.

I cut the whole panel off the old box, and will rivet it to the new.

And that’s a job for tomorrow.

I’ve just covered over 3,900km of Turkish roads – and my backside felt every one of them!

Not only that, but it was freezing to boot…

We started in Istanbul – I once said it was my favourite city in the world, but having experienced the mayhem of the wider conurbation I must amend that to ‘my favourite historic centre of any city’.

Turkey really is an amazing country – there is just so much Biblical myth and history that happened there, as well as huge swathes of ancient Greek followed by Roman and Ottoman history. Some of the sites we visited dated back to 5000 BC.

Two things I was really looking forward to – and turned out to be huge disappontments – were the hot air balloon flight over Cappadocia, which went far too high for us to see and appreciate the amazing rock formation, and scuba diving at Kas, supposedly one of the best dive sites in Turkey. I saw more sea life under Swanage Pier!

Cappadocia from the air

Cappadocia from the ground

Like our trip to Vietnam we went with Explore because they have really, really knowledgeable – and charming – tour leaders. On this trip we had a young man called Firat, who was one of the best Archaeology Professors I’ve ever had.

Here he is explaining that most of Pergamon is now in the Berlin museum to some very cold students…

The historic sites were fascinating, and  the natural ones – such as Pamukkale were equally astoiunding.

One of my favourite sites was Ephesus – where these amazing Roman villas were on show

My next favourite was probably the ancient city of Troy – much more of an archaelogical dig than a museum exhibit.

And to stick to the blog theme of movie vehicles… here is the horse used in the movie ‘Troy’

And now for the rust…

No holiday would be complete without a bit of old car spotting:

This was Kamal Ataturk’s magnificent Cadillac.

Turkey was awash with these – Renaults made under licence by Dacia.

Turkish tuk-tuk

Poor old Pug 504

No idea what this is, but I wanted the house AND the car…

An old Dolmus bus.

Another common sight, a locally made Fiat called a Murat.

This Chevvy Nova was only one of a number of old Americana I saw, but wasn’t quick enough with the camera.

Travellers in arms

We have been very lucky in the past with our travelling companions, and this trip was no exception. We had a group of Jolly Canadians and a fiesty Irish lass who kept us all in stitches. And Rhiannon has a rival for the Lara Croft look-alike competition.

Ashley as Lara Croft….

Getting the new company up and running AND pulling together a new All Party Group is taking its toll… I need a holiday! (and a haircut)

Saturday morning we’re off to Turkey for the half term. This time next week we’ll be floating over Cappadoccia in a hot air balloon – I’ve been collecting the fuel in Westminster.

Today I did something I’ve never done before. I went to a Geek fest to get Dame Diana Rigg to sign my first edition of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

The trouble started when I was identified as being from another planet….

I was arrested…

…and summarily executed!

…..I got better……

Mazdas are stronger than Fords

Poor Stephanie. Her little car came off second best when a Mazda MX-5 ran away from its driver and rolled backwards into it.

Hardly a mark on the Mazda.

Now we have three cars that all need mending. Damn, damn, damn…

It has been such a busy few months, setting up a new company is harder work than it looks!

It’s also been great fun. I’m setting up an All Party Parliamentary Group in support of the humanitarian landmine clearance agencies, and there is a real political appetite for it, but rounding up the requisite number of members involves scheduling and rescheduling meetings over and over. It was great at the Party Conference last week, I managed to get three MPs to sign up on the spot.

I still haven’t sold my mother’s house, and that’s an annoyance, I need my weekends for the car.

Saying that, I did get up to the Farm a week or so ago. Using an old hotel maid’s trolley and some foam pipe-lagging I’ve made a very useful painting trolley, I’ve now primed all my new aluminium panels.

The rest of the time I spent taking apart the old rusty sun-roof to try and work out how it works. My new one needs to be drilled out and assembled, and I think I now know how to do that.

Finally I had such a lovely send off when I left the farm. The farmer’s grubby little grand-daughter gave me such a sweet wave I had a smile on my face all the way home.