Back to my roots

Despite recent dalliances with such as slot racing and large scale model railways, I find my interests consolidating back with where I started..scenery and model boats.

I suppose it all began with the twin draws of a train set when I was about 5 or 6 and an Uncle with a boat on the Essex coast when I was 7.

I soon learned that hand made model scenery for my train set was much better than Airfix kits, which had parts that didn't fit and that a model boat on Paglesham's oyster beds was a wonderful way to spend a weekend by the estuary. We also used to take the Uncle's boat out regularly and go fishing with with the Keeble brothers on their beautiful yacht-like trawler, Vanguard, (header picture)

The call of the mud and the fresh air with the sounds of an estuary life have been a massive pull on me ever since.

In this cold Winter weather, of which we have plenty to come, I'm sure, I can make small model boats on the dining table and avoid the cold of the workshop.

My plan is to make a series of 1/4"-1ft scale models of British inshore craft, like fishing boats and workboats, putting some of them into a scenic set-piece, which satisfies my other interest of scenic modelmaking.

We won in the end!

Having witnessed the way the RSPCA closes ranks even in the face of an official complaint, we just went to another source and got ourselves a lovely little lad of 14 months from Ooop North.

Since he's never answered to his given name, we called him Alfie anyway and here he is.

He's very well behaved, but our other male, a Basset/Bedlington cross is still a bit peeved by the newcomer and a few set-tos have resulted, but they should sort themselves out.

He loves his bed and his food and seems to have settled in very well.

And another little Hitler

Today, after "she slept on it", a faceless woman who runs an RSPCA rescue centre in Eubrink, near Kings Lynn, Norfolk, called Penny Skate, refused to let us have a Shar-Pei puppy, "because we live in a mobile home".

This stuck up female, who has no idea of how we live, absolutely refused a home visit for no reason.

We are approved by the Shar-Pei Club of Great Britain as re-homers. We currently have a Shar-Pei, a dog reckoned to have a usual life span of 8 years, in her 12th year. We have had her and two other dogs in our house, then on our canal boat, then in a 10ft caravan at a boat yard and currently in a very large, comfortable static mobile home. The dogs are spoiled, cosseted and immensely happy. Our Lurcher, rescued from death a day or two later if we hadn't have had him, was a stray on the streets, but we brought him round to be a lovely family dog who we had and loved for over 16 years.

This ghastly woman has assumed that we were unemployed because I don't go out to work, she assumed that we rent our home, we don't, we paid outright for it and without a home visit, which she refused, how can she possibly know what circumstances we live in. We, in fact, have over an acre of fully fenced and gated land with a large house also on the property which the dogs have complete run of.

They each have their own beds and favourite places. Archie's is the bottom of OUR bed!

We have not had the courtesy of a return call following a reasonable message informing her that the RSPCA, her bosses, have no objection to "mobile homes" and wouldn't dream of judging anyone until a home check is done.

I have sent an official complaint to the RSPCA who have responded that they have forwarded it to the Eastern Region office, so they must agree with our points.

Because we know someone on the inside, we also know some things about this person that she would clearly rather we didn't!

I will not be judged by some faceless functionary who thinks she can play God with animals' and peoples' lives.

She refused to allow an owner his dog back because he hadn't found the dog inside the arbitrary 8 days before they attempt re-homing. As a disabled man he couldn't afford all the rigmarole. Yet this appalling woman told staff not to mention if certain dogs that are difficult or even nasty, if someone wants them.

None of the normal actions done on dogs have yet been done on Alfie. Why not, I wonder? Has Devil Woman got a friend lined up for a fashionable Shar-Pei, because unfortunately they ARE fashionable, but we just love them. We love all dogs anyway. Our daughter's Westie already prefers our place to the house!

I ask you, do these dogs look hard done by?? More anon.

Re-equipping

Perhaps not re-equipping, but re-grouping.

After replacing our old home with a new one, I had the opportunity to set up my workshop in the old home.

With setting up the new one, most of the inevitable "stuff" that needs moving around went into the old workshop until I couldn't actually get in the door!

Now, I have access again and am clearing the new place, too. I knew I'd find things long in storage, but what a great thing it is to root through one's old stuff.

I found photos I thought I'd lost, drawings done years ago and presumed thrown away and bits and pieces that will once again make life easier.

But why does it take SO long? I seem to be satisfied with opening and investigating one box a day. A friend has suggested it's all part of growing older and I dare say he's right, but I will not go easily into that dark night. I think it is a lot to do with mental plans for how it might look when finished and the assumption, almost certainly false, that things will go swimmingly once finished, without having the slightest idea how to ensure that happens. Consequently, one ambles along not knowing quite what to do next, until the light has suddenly gone and another day comes to a close.

Then I read that my 30 year old son, feeling unwell, has looked up his "symptoms" on the net and found that he is suffering from something called "old". At 30!!

I told him to wait for the next 28 years and resolved to get this new workshop sorted out with renewed vigour.

Amongst the many fascinating things I rediscovered whilst re-equipping/grouping was this old instant photo of the very first job I ever did as a modelmaker in the car design industry.

It is a model, full sized, of the engine cover for the then new, New Beetle. I didn't take the photo as I would have been sacked for doing so and rightly, but an engineer took it and left it laying around, so I kept it. It was made first in clay, then a quick glass fibre mould made over the clay and a moulding made in the mould. Usual processes.

Then it's fettled and filled till it looks smooth and fits the space allowed (not always the case despite CAD drawings!)

Finally it is sprayed from a distance with satin black paint to have that grainy look of much moulded plastic and the name cut out of aluminium sheet and polished. A stock VW badge was added and presto! It took two days to do, I got an instant reputation for working well on my own and being quick. Job done. The fascinating thing was that when I'd had a weekend home and went back on the Tuesday morning, the cover had been laser scanned and working CAD drawings produced and pinned to the wall behind my bench!

Without setting up the new workshop, I'd have completely forgotten about this photo and almost forgotten the job.

I went on to do any number of fascinating jobs for VW, Toyota, Renault, Audi, SMART, Ford, Volvo, MG and Prodrive over the next few years until I was told that computers had replaced model makers and I was too old to re-train at 47.

Skills lost to the world are rarely replaced.

More attacks on our freedoms

My son has recently decided to get his "project" going. He has a Triumph GT6 Mk1 chassis and all the original running gear, registration and log book.

He just wanted a body of a 50s style to put on it.

It was when we ended up with a superb GRP Austin Healey 3000 body at a great price that we realised we're not allowed any more to build a car without the permission and controls of the "powers that be"

We, in the car game call them the nazis. Pettyfogging busy bodies and nosey Parkers whose only grip on real life is to spoil it for the rest of us in the spurious name of "safety".

I have built cars, my father built his own cars as did my uncle (see earlier blogs entries) and my son spent nine years restoring classic sports and racing cars to the highest level. Cars worth millions of pounds.

So are we to be told we need the permission of some faceless job'sworth on a fat salary before we can touch the rough and ready, poorly designed and executed Triumph chassis with our magic?

Alas, we have no choice. If we touch the chassis with a saw, grinder or welding torch we lose the registration and have to be regarded as a new car and pay them £540 for a short examination, which, if we fail on the slightest item , we have to pay again for a retest.

So by way of the huge middle finger to all these nazis, we are leaving the precious chassis alone and modifying the body which they don't care about. We are moving the front wheel arch back 8 1/2" so it fits the Triumph chassis. As an ex modelmaker for the car design circus, that is not a big deal for me. But for those who do not have my experience it could prove a stumbling block too far.

So all we need to wonder about, having, as my Dad would have said, "shot them up the arse",

is what do we call it? A Trealey or a Healumph?

Blogger doesn't work any more!

It's a pity, but this lovely blog template is no use to me since the facility to move photos to where you want them has disappeared. Without being able to contact blogspot direct to ask what's happening, I can no longer use this blog, after so much work.
If anyone knows the answer or how Blogspot can be contacted, I'd love to know.

End of an era...for us

This weekend we appear to have sold our boat, which was also our home for some time.

After a week of timewasters it looks like we've finally found this fine old boat a sympathetic new owner with the energy to finish the restoration we started.

For us this is the best news. We were concerned that she should find a good home and we priced her accordingly. Ok, we won't be getting back a fraction of what we spent on her, but I always say, "Everybody's got to live somewhere...do something" and, of course, everything costs just to live.

We had some great times on her and at the yard where most of the work was done. We met the sort of fascinating "real" people we would never have met otherwise. We saw places and did things we would never have done otherwise, so how do you value those things?

It will seem strange to not see her when we get up in the morning and retire to bed. She's been a major part of our lives since 2003. We saved her from almost certain destruction by British Waterways (hereafter correctly described as "the Enemy").

Because monies were owed to them for licensing they were prepared to take her away and put the dredger's shovel through her the week after we bought her. A fact of which we were unaware until some time after we bought her.

That a Public body should commit such an act of vandalism is an obscenity. And one which only the people who enjoy our extensive canal system would be aware of.

And so, by cruising her after a bit of a tidy up and spending all our money and time restoring her we have at least saved this most historic of vessels for the future generations who will see her and see a properly restored example of a type of canal boat so sadly neglected today.

We and a previous owner have compiled a long and detailed history of her from launch day to the present which is there for those future generations to call upon.

We were never more than custodians of her. At least we saved her from corporate vandalism and her new owner is acutely aware of that. Indeed he has saved a few old artifacts himself in his time.

And so to pastures new, whatever they may be.

We look forward to some time on her again when she is newly afloat again in her proper element.

The pictures should be placeable, but no longer are for some reason.

Apologies on Google Blogger's behalf.