Fabrication

Weds.26.09.07. Louisa, of ‘Woolies’, responded to my mail very quickly by 9.30am, unfortunately she cannot supply the mounting rubber. She did offer the name of ‘Allon White’ who can price the windscreen mounting strip for £13.45, a piece they would directly purchase from Melvyn Rutter. Given this news, I think I need to phone John of Life’s Motors. 

In the meantime, Chris has continued to dismantle the car preparing the way for the tub lift off. 

Thurs.27.09.07. The aluminium panels have been formed but necessitated final adjustments on the car before we could be certain that they had been fabricated correctly. Chris Catterall is very cautious in his approach and very proud of his work so he suggested that bulkhead units should be measured then scribed on the car before the ultimate, permanent fold could be made. Because he had followed the patterns precisely there were some anomalies of fit but nothing that couldn’t be redeemed by gentle filing and shaping. But, as expected, the usual, unsurprising questions had to be answered. “Why has he not cut this one like the other one? He’s cut the slit in the wrong place; that would never make a perfect box; that front panel won’t even slide down!” Finding these faults was all very predictable, so too was, “Listen, listen, I could have done better than that without all that machinery, you know you can’t trust anyone these days!”

I now find all this relentless criticism tiresome, predictably hackneyed. Formally experiencing irritation I now found that my defence mechanism automatically kicks in withdrawing instantly into my black vacuous hole remaining calm, slightly fractious. I have experienced this reaction on countless occasions; the simple fact is that nothing is ever quite good enough unless Chris himself has ‘done’ it, the statement is always shrouded under the guise of, “I’m a perfectionist you see, they used to call me Christine in the trade because I wanted everything just right, like a woman.” Perhaps in the trade they had not in fact heard of the term, ‘sexist, over critical chauvinistic, know all’. Mind you, I don’t think that many in the ‘trade’ would have entered the ‘big word’ contest either. Or, is it I who is the weaker ungrateful shoddy artisan, big on rhetoric, feeble on delivery?

Up until this moment Chris had been beavering away cleaning many of the exposed parts of the chassis. Rubbing away at the creeping rust with angle grinder and 120’s to later re-seal with Hammerite, whilst also, re-routing the choke and accelerator cables, linking the fuel system to the carburettors, re-glassing the steering bearing socket, re-painting the steering rod shaft, cutting the petrol filler cap cavity and re-connecting the hose. Is it just me, or is there something strangely ‘déjà vu’ about all of this ‘re’ stuff?