It's been a horrible day weather wise and Weymouth lost 3-1 away in some horizontal rain in Hitchin. So, to brighten up my blog today, I shall be including references to straps and velcro, gaffer tape, inter-racial relationships and lots of underwear.
My chequebook took a surprisingly light hit today. I'm sure it was braced for a damn good pasting, I know I had been. Getting a 29 year old vehicle through an MOT after it had been off the road for 18 months should have cost me enough to pay off the debt of several small African countries, however Jamie, my hairy little magician had once more performed miracles. 110 of your finest English pounds. I can live with that. It had some minor welding issues, a bit of tidying and a headlight with a squint. Bizarrely, that was all that was required to obtain one of those fine VOSA related pieces of paper.
I popped over to Jamie's establishment (J B Restorations for anyone with bodywork or squinty headlight issues) and found the van parked outside. The roof appeared to be held in place by an industrial sized luggage strap. This was apparently a requirement to get it through the test. I had visions of the luggage strap snapping on the journey and us spilling huge quantities of underwear across Europe. Jamie has however assured me that the hinges on the pop up roof are fixable. This is also good news, we'll need the pop up section. It's not that Jo and I are particularly tall. With two of the offspring joining us for half the trip, if they are able to sleep in the pop up roof, it will do away with the need to velcro them to the ceiling of the van.
I've now left Jamie with instructions to 'fix everything'. Hoses covered in gaffer tape, that dodgy bush that he has discovered in the gear box that apparently makes it virtually impossible to find 1st gear at traffic lights, roof hinges and any other piffling matters that are bound to cause problems before we reach Upwey in June 2013. Hopefully that will keep him out of mischief and keep my non road legal vehicle off the road for another month or so. He also offered to do a complete respray job. I hope he's got some tartan paint.
In other news, we now have a partially Finnish and partially Poole based team (still awaiting news from the Swiss/Devon team on whether they are joining us). Part of team 3 is in Gibraltar and will hopefully be getting their application together upon his return. Slightly closer to home, we have also had interest from Gloucestershire and Wigan. It's truly becoming a little bit more global (well, beyond the borders of Dorset at least ).
We have also had various promises from teams that they shall be trying their best to bring ice creams, interesting moustaches and hanging baskets. I look forward to seeing how they get on.
