Richard and his sister.

We were met by a young girl. Pitch black tousled hair, equally sooty rings encircling her eyes, blank white faced, ruby lipped Punk Goth. Torn, stained, grubby, torn ‘T’ shirt, skinny black jeans polished at the knees and arse, she was quite comfortably wrenching the cylinder head from a six cylinder block. She beckoned Richard who emerged from the dark recesses of the railway arch. He looked a sight in his complimentary oil stained pin stripped suit. A tall man, possibly only in his mid thirties, offering a warm, a cheery greeting. Glancing around for the first time we realised that we were surrounded by stacked wrecks of cars, various engine and body parts, rotting interiors, worn tyres, peeling, bruised wheels, all partly submerged in the pitted muddy yard. There was no semblance of order, certainly not the Aladdin’s cave of riches that I had imagined from the phone conversations coupled with the beautifully graphic illustrations in ‘Triumph Monthly’. Chris naturally responded negatively, the trauma of city hustle; the prospect of dealing with a ‘scrap man’ instead of a genuine spares supplier was not a positive healthy combination.

Richard proudly presented the chassis, which was by no means ‘mint’. We examined a selection of other ‘mint’ chassis’s along with other ‘out of the box’ parts, all of which were shite. The other components, the re-conditioned ‘diff’, complete front suspension unit and the gearbox proved disappointing. ‘Hammerite’ rust preventative paint can hide a multitude of sins. I felt a definite change from being cheerfully optimistic, idealistically eager to a mood that was rapidly turning to despair