Aston Martin Rust Oration

The stone is out, I saw a scan and my right kidney is twice the size of the left, no wonder they operated in a hurry.

My trusted friend feels as if it’s been scorched with a welding torch though…

There was I – happy as Larry on the farm. I got up Sunday morning raring to get on with the airconditioning on ROJ – I’m still rebuilding the condensor box with bits of old Walls icecream cartons, and trying to work out how the network of tiny airtubes go that control the air-flaps in the system.

An hour or so into the day I was not feeling well, stomach cramps and giddiness, by lunchtime I felt like death, so decided to come back to London.

On the train I thought I would pass out with the pain in my side, so once at St Pancras I headed straight to A&E at UCH. There they gave me something that looked like a thunderbird rocket and was told to shove it where the sun don’t shine…. The most effective pain killer I’ve had for years. I was floating above the consultant’s couch.

Railway stations, cross country buses, and hospital A&E departments. If you’re writing a book about weird and wonderful people – those are the places to frequent – and there is nothing private or discreet about a big city hospital A&E late on a weekend evening – especially one near Kings Cross!

I sat for three drug hazed hours watching an entire cross section of society go past, until the results of my tests came back. Kindney stones – not just one, but a whole gravel pit full.

They took me for a scan – one of those big doughnut shaped machines, which rather absurdly had a brand name – it was grandly called a ‘Monatom Sensation 64′. What overpaid marketing dick-head came up with that…?

Anyway, upshot is, I’ve got a stone the size of Mars blocking off the right kidney and two smaller ones inside each. They can zap the smaller ones with ultrasound but the Big One….

Now chaps, be brave. Reading this is not going to be comfotable – and when my chum Andrew breezily suggested I kept my pecker up… well, he’d got it almost in one.

The trusty surgeon will be taking an endoscopic laser and -

Let me just assure you, I WILL be unconcious at this stage, if not from the anaesthetic then from the mere sight of a fully grown man in a gown advancing on my nether regions with a long bendy ray gun…

They will then blast Mars to incy-wincy pieces with the laser and scrape out the debris.

This is all very jolly. In the space of a month I will have had both top and bottom end blasted by lasers – isn’t modern technology wonderful.

I think skiing next week will be a very gentle affair – no black runs for me.

It’s been a truely exhausting few weeks. Work has been unrelentingly miserable, my eye is killing me following the latest lazer surgury, and sorting out my mother’s house is a mammoth task – but who cares, I’ve got an Aston Martin to build!

Being on the farm is always therapeutic, and today was a beautiful sunny day. I spent most of it in the barn sorting out stuff.

We’ve brought Stephanie’s little VDP 1300 up on a trailer – it’s been in my mother’s garage for the past five years, at least now all my car related stuff is in one place.

I’ve got three different sets of AM carpets and laid them all out on the barn floor – some are pretty shot and some I may be able to reuse. I just haven’t a clue where they are all going to go!

After this, one more week at work and then it’s off to St Anton with Angus for our annual skiing trip – yippee.

I’m in Yorkshire for a few days recuperating from my second eye operation. I’be got plenty of time to think about, and plan my next car restoration tasks.

First up is to hire a trailer and take Stephanie’s little Vanden Plas 1300 from my Mother’s garage up to the farm to join ROJ. I’ll also be taking my mig-welder and other tools so everything car related is in one place.

On ROJ I need to carry on with the aircon and ensure the engine bay is ready for the engine later this year.

In between all this car-type thinking, I’ve been out and about with Stephanie and Alicia – today we went to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park to see the David Nash Exhibition – I would love one of his pieces.

Last night we went to see Mark Thomas at the theatre in Huddersfield talking about his walk around the West Bank wall – very clever and funny, but also very near the mark. What was very scary is that Facebook would not allow me to post a comment saying we’d been to the show.

I find that very sinister indeed!

My eye will be taped up for another week and then at the end of March I should get new glasses and be able to see what I;m doing on ROJ. Can’t wait.

After the  emotional strain of the past few weeks it was a great relief to get up to the farm this weekend and get stuck in to ROJ with a spanner.

I spent Saturday taking off the newly installed, but too short fuel line, and replaced it with one that was reassuringly too long.

Today I tackled putting the air-conditioning back together. This needs to go in before the engine and dashboard, so quite an important bit of work. The tourble is that the condensor casing is made of rather brittle 40 year old plastic – so I’ve had to reinforce it in places before I could rivet it together – I’m rather tickled by the fact that part of my Aston Martin was once the lid of a Walls ice-cream carton!

My Mother passed away at just two weeks off her 85th birthday.on the 4th January. We will be giving her a woodland burial next to my Father in the New Forest on Monday 17th January.

I am sorry I will never be able to give her a ride in ROJ, especially as she had been a lifelong Lagonda fan.

She was a plucky lady my mother – flew to her own wedding in a Harvard trainer with her wedding dress in a box on her lap – and carried on adventuring after that.

Yesterday’s setback really was just that. It meant I couldn’t get on with what I wanted to do today, so I ended up pottering and doing a few odd jobs on the car, nothing exciting enough to write about.

What is exciting is the newcomer to the barn. A moss encrusted Gilbern. Powered by a Ford V6 engine, and made of fibre glass, it’ll go like brown stuff off a shovel when it’s been done up.

Gilbern in the barn

Complete with orignal eight-track!

Spent the day fitting the fuel lines – to discover that the main line is a foot too short – so thaat’s another delay, another cost and another job that will need doing again.

One last fling with ROJ before Christmas!

Had lunch at the House of Commons today – not sure how I ended up on the top table with Host Mark field MP, and Daily Mail’s Andrew Pierce – our rather scurulous but highly entertaining guest speaker.

Luckily I had the vivacious Sarah Hanratty and Gavin Ellwood to talk to over the Turkey and frankly ballistic brussels sprouts.

Over drinks I chatted to Lionel Zetter of Political Companion fame and found he was a fellow member of the AMOC… A petrol head will always find another.

Technology is wonderful when it works..

Here I am on the farm writing up the restoration work (almost) as I’m doing it. I’ve got my laptop wirelessly logged into the internet, and the photo card from my camera inserted to down load the photos I took just moments ago.

So what have I been doing this weekend>

Mainly the things that I’ve been putting off as too boring. Like fitting the fuel pipe brackets  (5 of them) and fitting the drainage pipes for the sunroof, and fitting the little brackety thing for the r4ear view mirror.

I have also been offering up the new aluminium sun roof box that we had made as the old steel one was rotten..

The problem with the sunroof is that it does not feature in either the workshop manual or parts book, so I’m havine to rely on examining the old and very horrid rusty one to work out how it works.

The engine is looking good – a couple of little problems solved themselves by taking bits off the spare engine, (the sump and cam shaft.)

A big and very pleasant surprise was to see a very old and close friend who dropped by for tea and dinner. I haveen’t seen Clive for some years yet it was as if 20 years hadn’t gone by.

Now, some photos:

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A piece of decking with holes drilled in makes a splendid tappet holder

I can see behind me…

Lining up the new sunnroof box

Fuelpipe bracket

Sunroof drain pipe