The joys of relic ownership

The last couple of weeks have been rather interesting, due to fabulous spring weather and renewed vim and vigour in our social circles.
So after several barbecues, ignoring the computer completely, a trip to Ciney in a freinds nice old Porsche (that doesn't break down - this is important) and a few trips in my own tatty triumph, I finally am having little problems creep in.
Obviously, if your car is 41 years old and in dire need of restoration, it's not going to have modern Toyota-esque levels of reliability. Hell no!
So after spending a couple of hours with a friend sorting the carburettors, we noticed a timing problem wit the engine. after my treck to Ciney a couple of freinds (on who normally lives in Estonia!) popped by and sorted the distributor. So what happened next? Ah well, the electrical connections decided to go to pot. I thought I had sorted the problem with a replacement wire, so on a warm sunny evening went for a drive, to pay the lad who had sanded, repainted laquered and balanced my wheels. On the way back the car died...

Bugger.
Luckily this is a great way to meet people who have the same illness! A rather pleasant chap in Habay who has recently got rid of his Triumph Spitfire for a very nice AC Cobra replica helped me out (yes, I set off with no tools...), and I got home before the wife started worrying. :)

How do you make a car look 1000 times better than it is?

Let your wife take a photo.


Well, it was wonderful this weekend, so I hastily put the car back together and went to Insenborn. We are officially sunburned.

Love is in the air…

(Yes, yet another reference to a cheesy hit…)



Well, we are celebrating the slightly-removed-because-of-Geoffrey-Chaucer archaic right of fertility.
Obviously, the romantic overtones will be subdued on my part today, as the cat decided she’d howl at our door for food at 6 in the morning, I’ll have sat over eight hours in a boring office, an hour and a half on a train, will have a job interview this evening before rushing back home to take my lovely wife to the restaurant, to pay three-times-the-price-of-yesterday food. By the time we’re home I’ll probably be dead on my feet, so my wife’s pleas for baby making practice will fall on deaf ears until the weekend.

Such is life eh?

Other than the happy event of me being able to spend an hour with the woman I married, a friend has returned from his jaunt in the midlands with lots of bits of Triumph. I hope to pick them up this weekend. We’ve had sun all week, so by the time I get the car bolted together, we should have some monsoon weather…

Not much, but something so you know I'm not dead...

Well that was a beautiful weekend!
As well as soaking up sun, catching up a bit on my studies, getting rid of the last of my head cold, changing the oil, sparkplugs and that on the rust bucket, we celebrated the 60'th Birthday and retirement of my wife's mother.

They all decided they'd had enough... at 5am...

I can't even say I'm too old for this!

Quick update.

A bit absent due to being in extremely deep shit on the subject of the assignment I have to return to the Open university for the 31'st of January.

Anybody knowledgable in Java is welcome to my home, and will get free beer and stuff if I pass this assignment.

Feel miserable. Back soon.

Workin' 9 to 5, what a way to make a livin'....

Not that I know anybody who works those hours...



I am one of approximately 120 000 workers who cross the Luxembourgish border every day, from Monday to Friday. More precisely, I an one of the forty-odd thousand who cross from Belgium to Luxembourg and back, all to avoid the Belgian propensity of removing 50% of ones wage before it his the bank account. To put this into context, it's like the population of Norwich suddenly disappearing for eight hours (minimum) a day.

Apparently, 300 people go the other way to work... I haven't worked this out yet...

Now, Luxembourg has a small any very well maintained motorway network (unlike the rubbish the Belgian state seem to throw on the floor), which gets saturated every day of the working week with my fellow labourers, the thousands of wagons coming to fill up with cheap(er) diesel (fags and booze too...) and the pensioners who are probably paid by the state to drive in the second lane at 84 km/h and take two parking places on industrial sites with no shops. So as you can imagine it doesn’t always flow like the Danube after heavy rain.

I would like to point out at this point that I am probably the most boring driver ever. I stick to speed limits, use all the paraphernalia like indicators and lights, and generally render the passenger experience as soporific as hot cocoa and CNN on a wet Tuesday night.

Having lived in Leeds, West Yorkshire, and sitting in a major traffic jam, I know this is not a major issue, and largely replicated throughout Europe, but I was recently wondering if people’s behind-the-wheel behaviour is endemic, or if it is my notoriously bad memory painting pretty pictures.

So dear reader(s)… do you also experience:
1. Vehicles braking to overtake and then flooring it once they pull in?
2. BMW’s flashing their lights for you to get out of the way as you overtake a mile of wagons, while stuck behind half a mile of other cars?
3. “Exocet missiles” that go from slip road to outside lane, then outside lane to exit?
4. Ditherers, who pull out regardless of the vehicle beside them?
5. Brake testers, who’s only aim in life is to be in front of you, then slam on the brakes?

Please leave your own experiences, I’m curious :)

Sundays are supposed to be for chilling out...

A quiet weekend, where not much happened... well apart from a couple of friends at long last finding a house, and a night out near Rochefort with some particularly good wine.

The car is on stilts, as the wheels are being sandblasted and painted by someone who know wht they are doing (ergo, not me). I've also put the newly painted hood frame back on. I'll have to knock it off though as I have an Uni assignment to finish for the end of the month... shame, I prefer messing with the old rust bucket.

Oh yes, Dizzygood - for whom I muck around on the bass - will be playing a concert on the 19th of April in the Clausen area of Luxembourg... so if you're in the area...