Over the Winter months I had pondered my approach to the task. The lockup garage was devoid of electricity, therefore ‘power’. How was I to start? Many of the more convenient rusting nuts and bolts could be conventionally unscrewed or chiselled off, but the larger body tub and chassis bolts had become welded together by rust. I had several attempts using hammers, a selection of screwdrivers, chisels and bars but the task was daunting. I questioned why I was doing this in the first place. Gemma and Paul had lost interest, sensibly, the scale of the task was now becoming clearer, the weather was becoming colder.
Accidentally, on a desperately miserable February night, there would prove to be a seminal, brief moment of surprising enlightenment occurring during one of many boozy sessions down at the local pub, the Royal Oak: it would eventually dominate our thoughts for many months to come. The landlord, the ‘Doc’, casually mentioned that wouldn’t it be great if I could repeat the ‘Beaujolais run twenty five years on’ in the November of 2006, using the same car and with the same crew. “But I don’t suppose you could even dream of having the car ready in six months time?” he questioned. I responded by explaining that it would be a super idea but realistically it would be an impossible target to hit. “Bollocks, with my help we could do it our sleep!” I attempted to warn Chris that I had absolutely no facilities to attempt such a task: I had very little space to strip the car, nowhere to store the parts, most of my tools had been lost and even if I had could obtain any, I had no power to operate them. “Don’t worry, I’ll have a word with David, we could load the wreck back onto the transporter, take it up to the farm and strip it there. Afterwards we can complete the rebuild I my double garage at home”. I was never sure at this point whether or not this was just to prove the ‘pub gang’ wrong or Chris genuinely fancied the challenge of transforming the ugly duckling into a graceful swan: the prospect of which I would find out later.
On Thursday 09.03.06 I revisited my ‘cottage in the fields’, Woodfold, which had been the final resting place for the car, after it had been taken off the road, before being moved to Liverpool. Obviously, many others had lived in the place since my departure so the hope of rescuing any old parts, tools or information that I had left twenty years previously, was a real shot in the dark. Another gloomy night, in another foreign land quickly ended the futile expedition; we would have to work with what we had: so the following Tuesday 14.03.06 we made the definitive visit to Marlebone to assess the actual feasibility of the exercise.
Accidentally, on a desperately miserable February night, there would prove to be a seminal, brief moment of surprising enlightenment occurring during one of many boozy sessions down at the local pub, the Royal Oak: it would eventually dominate our thoughts for many months to come. The landlord, the ‘Doc’, casually mentioned that wouldn’t it be great if I could repeat the ‘Beaujolais run twenty five years on’ in the November of 2006, using the same car and with the same crew. “But I don’t suppose you could even dream of having the car ready in six months time?” he questioned. I responded by explaining that it would be a super idea but realistically it would be an impossible target to hit. “Bollocks, with my help we could do it our sleep!” I attempted to warn Chris that I had absolutely no facilities to attempt such a task: I had very little space to strip the car, nowhere to store the parts, most of my tools had been lost and even if I had could obtain any, I had no power to operate them. “Don’t worry, I’ll have a word with David, we could load the wreck back onto the transporter, take it up to the farm and strip it there. Afterwards we can complete the rebuild I my double garage at home”. I was never sure at this point whether or not this was just to prove the ‘pub gang’ wrong or Chris genuinely fancied the challenge of transforming the ugly duckling into a graceful swan: the prospect of which I would find out later.
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