The first day of stripping the Burlington

Fri.17.03.06. We have bravely committed to a second day of examination of the cars’ basic structural condition. It is St Patrick’s Day when traditionally anyone who has even the slightest whisper of a connection with the Emerald Isle has a strong obligation to throw a ‘sicky’, sing monotonous Irish ballads with the sole intention of getting momentously pissed. I wonder if this will be significant. The piercing wind unrelenting biting cold are still with us but at least today there is sufficient daylight so we can see what we are doing. The project is still in the balance because of the possibility of the warped tub. During the morning we pressed on with the removal of the wings and nose cone. I think Chris was very impressed with the huge range of nuts, bolts, screws and fasteners that I had used on the car. He was particularly astonished at their different sizes notably how appropriate they were for the job. But, because of their diversity as well as lacking the relevant ‘Imperial’ spanners in our extensive toolbox, we had to revert to the all-embracing applications of the angle grinder to remove many of the corroded nuts and bolts. I had made such an outstanding job of fixing the parts that it was often impossible to release them in the conventional manner. It was a successful day but still there remains the big question as to whether or not we should proceed. Even though there was much removed from the car we still couldn’t reposition the tub to make sure that there could be correct alignment. I am still quite depressed at the thought of abandoning the car, but the boss will have the last word, as such it will be the sensible decision.

In the Oak the celebrations for Patrick’s night were underway. I thought that the only place to steer clear of the dreadful Irish banging on about fucking convicts, potato famine, being screwed by the British and other crimes against those lovely, charming Irish gypos would be the Oak, but unfortunately not. Coinciding with our time of arrival of 6.05, Doctor Dave sparked up with the Rivers of Appin Rye from Galway Bay in 1842, in the key of Z, by 6.25 and 35 verses later he’d finished. Fuck me, this is exactly what I wanted to avoid. So much so that I stayed until 12.30am.

Midway through the evening Chris had subtly tapped up Dave Brown, who as well as being a fireman is an excellent carpenter, to fashion the dashboard of the car. This was forward planning at it’s best; we had not even determined whether or not the project would be ‘off the ground’ when he was blagging him into a meeting tomorrow to measure the prospective difficulties of turning a gearstick from a solid piece of mahogany. I have got to hand it Chris, he could probably also sell “how not to be a complete moronic twat” to Liam Gallagher subsequently converting him to Christianity.

Tomorrow is ‘D day’. It could be the budding prospect of creating a wonderful car or filling a skip full of rusty metal