George and the car boots.

Ive been busy organising the move and some of the stuff I no longer need has been taken to the car boot (Julies at Burgh Castle) to sell.As usual my old mate George has come along for the ride but now its possible he's been to his last one.
George has suddenly developed a really bad limp and is hardly using one leg at all.The vet has agreed that at his advanced age (he's nearly fifteen) the only real hope is that strong pain killers might give nature a chance to heal what ever is wrong with hi,it seems risky to knock him out for x rays etc and at that age the chances of surgery of any kind performing a miracle seem limited.
With the tablets he is wobbling about reasonably well and doesn't seem in distress or pain.
We'll have to see,here he is in happier times.

Rusty doors

Looks to me like there's the odd spot of rust in this door bottom off the transit.

Typically the rust you can see on this Mk1 transit door is just the tip of an iceberg,the hole will get much bigger with a bit of prodding and poking.The vehicle spent the past few years parked up on Lowestofts dockside where it was wetted by sea spray every time the wind blew.

Time flies when you're having fun

Has it really been this long? I'm sure there are builders who've built houses in less time than I've taken so far to sort this one out.

I've now had the doors stripped and am making a stair rail after managing to fall down the stairs.

The floor boards are all back down after sorting out the plumbing and wiring and the fireplace that had been covered with tiles (badly) has been opened up.

The taxi and the P5b got through the MOTs just the motorhome and newest Rover to do.

I fitted some wing mirrors on the P5b so I could reverse it easier,a very stiff neck (getting old) was making it harder to judge and I dont really want to wuipe the door handles off on a wall.

I picked up a load of new oil filler caps for the older BMC vehicles at a car boot,I'll try them on Ebay and see how they go.

Still working on the house

I really need Melinda Messenger and that little bald geezer or one of those other DIY rescue shows.The guy who used to own my place must have done the vast majority of his DIY when under the influence of something ,I've seen some pretty rubbish stuff over the years but not for instance tiling over four layers of wall paper or concreting over stopcocks.
We live and learn.

Car boots and rusty pillars

Tried another car boot today at burgh castle.To be honest it was pretty much a waste of time,people just walking round but not spending much at all.With people saying that the closest one at kessingland wildlife park charging 50p just to look round I thought it might have been busier.I did get rid or a few bulky items but didn't take a lot of money.
I thought when I got home I'd have a poke at a rust hole in the taxi that had been annoying me,the hole soon grew.

Taxi hole at base of windscreen pillar.

I cut a patch out of some scrap galvanised sheet and welded it in,it should last a few years at any rate.

A couple of plates curved to shape and mig welded in.

Car booty in a taxi.

I took a load of stuff to the local car boot,Julies Car boot at Burgh Castle.There didn't seem much to take at first so I just loaded it in the taxi but ended up pretty much filling the old girl.When it's all laid out it looks pretty nigh impossible to get it all back in it.

I didn't do too bad getting rid of some gear that there wouldn't really have been a place for at the new home.I don't like the Kessingland car boot,although its closer they tend to squeeze you up together and have all sorts of sily rules about where you can go and what times you're allowed to go on,I can do without a load of petty aggro first thing on a sunday morning.

Still waiting to move

I'm still awaiting the exchange of contracts to move house.Lots of work to do in the new place and years of accumulated junk and clutter to sort out.Then its time to think about MOTs on the cars and transit and sorting out somewhere to move the business to.
can't wait.

Must be summer,the heaters working.

I haven't had much time to do any work on the Rover P5b for a while.One thing I did do was have another go at getting the heater to work.I'd already taken off the heater pipes and flushed it through and set the levers as per the manual.Someone suggsted the internal flaps might be seized so I had another go at taking off all the levers and cables,freed off the spindles and reconneted everything,it seems to be working although I've yet to take it for a long run,too busy at the moment getting ready to move.
Filling the radiator on these cars has to be done in a certain way,topping up with the engine hot and ticking over otherwise they have air locks in the cooling system that cause all sorts of problems.

Moving

I've just agreed to buy a new place.Loads of stuff to sort out,stuff to move and all the aggro of changing adress but I'm really pleased to be moving out of the town.
Lowestoft has been my home and work place for over twelve years but the past few years with the councils attitude to small business have been a nightmare.
Jack,my best mate died the other day.He was getting on in years and had been losing weight but his death came as a horrible shock.He died in his bed,outside the beadroom with his mate George just a few feet away.
I buried him in a garden,rest in peace big fella.

Lowestot and the conservation area.

Waveney Road in Lowestoft is suppose to be one of its so called conservation areas.I wonder what on earth they are supposed to be trying to conserve and why.

For me, running a shop,Waveney District Council seem only too keen to put obstacles in the way in terms of placing adverts,satellite dishes,parking and loading bays and all the rest,yet turn a blind eye to breaches of the same stupid rules all up and down the road and bend over backwards to provide other businesses with their own loading or parking bays.
I keep wondering what I've done wrong.Is it because I criticise this bunch of stuffed shirts or is it that my criticism seems to ask why some people ar exempt from the rules that I'm forced to abide by?.
Is it that I'm supposed to tug my forelock or join some sort of club and get special treatment.
Wasn't it Groucho Marx who said "I wouldn't join any club that would have me as a member?" I think he was talking about WDC and Lowestoft

Moving stock

I've been wanting to run down the tool business for some time and devote time to other projects. I have literally tons of whitworth,BSF,BA and AF tools to clear out and have been working out the best ways to do so.Ebids auction site is really a waste of time and Ebay is not the force it was,I suppose I could try the 'normal' auction route but without lots of advertising the audience will probably not have the faintest idea of what they're looking at and the prices the tools will fetch wont be much higher than scrap value.To buy some of the really big spanners now would cost a fortune but the demand simply isn't there and people are far more inclined to buy cheap chinese and indian tools than stuff made to a standard and not to a price.
Decisions,decisions.

Lowestofts Rubbish

The council must have been well over a hundred times to the alley close to me to collect bags of household rubbish left there by the occupier of one of the tatty flats on the corner. They know who dumps it,who the landlord is yet chose to do absolutley nothing about it.
I bet if I threw my rubbish out on the street they'd be down on me like a ton of bricks.
They can fart about fining people for putting the bins out a day early yet ignore some tosser littering the place on a daily basis
Why?.
No wonder Lowestoft is such a filthy place.

Trying to save a bit of Lowestofts heritage.

There is a large ex department store known as "The old Tuttles building" in lowestoft that has survived fires,two world wars and lead thieves on the roof.Its owners seem determined to let it fall into a derelict state.
A petition has been launched to stop this building which is of historic importance being allowed to simply fall down through neglect.
The petition is here.Save the Tuttles bulding.

Scams,con men and money laundering.

I see a few directory sites are still carrying listings for the ficticious company "Baconsdozen Industrial Ltd" the sites use my companes name and address but a wrong phone number and or e-mail address.Contacting them usually leads you into a cheque laundering scam run by some Nigerian con man using various fancifull names,sometimes he's even a 'woman' under the name of Precious Brown or Cassandra Casadian. The whole thing farcical apart from the fact that some idiots fall for it and endd up being conned out of money.
My web site is here click to visit .The old adage if it seems too good to be true its probably not true seems lost on people prepared to hand over money to these con artists,I've even had driving licences,bank statements and pictures sent here from those all to ready to believe someone they don't know from adam is prpared to give them thousands of pounds or dollars for cashing a cheque for the,
Sad really.

Autojumbling in the rain.

The weather was pretty poor for the autojumble on Sunday but I sold a few bits and pieces.Mainly sockets and spanners from the shop but some old car spares went as well.I was hoping to find spares for my Rover P5b but couldn't see anything.

Autojumble at the Rednecks diner.

I'm hoping to go to an autojumble at Beccles today.It's early in the morning,I've just got up and had a cuppa and noticed its piddling down with rain.This time last week I was getting ready to leave for a car club meeting at Aldeburgh in bright sunshine.
We'll see what happens later on.

Working on the shop front.

I managed to get some work done replacing lots of rot on the frontage of the shop.being so exposed and getting plenty of salt air hasn't done the paint any good but it's been a long while since any work was done to it.

This was the best of the gutters,there're cast iron and heavy but had managed to hang on despite the fixing screws rotting away.they sit on wood which had rotted away and also ran uphill so water had no chance of getting away.

 The gutter on the other side simply crumbled away to nothing The heavy wooden beam behind was soft and decayed and was cut out and replaced with new.

Two coats of primer and undercoat and a couple of coats of top coat should help slow any future rot down.The wood has beeb fixed to the wall with heavy screws and some of the 'Hard as Nails' type glue.I've been carefull to seal any gaps as before water had been getting in behind some of the timber.

Still up in the air.

Still more work to do on the building.The gutters are rotted out and all sorts of woodwork is crumbling away.The shop is in what is supposed to be one of Lowestofts conservation areas,although with all the plastic windows,satellite dishes and gaudy signs everywhere it's difficult to work out what they are hoping to conserve.However that means that the gutters will be repaired with welding and braze rather than being replace like everyone else has with plastic and the repairs will be in the original materials.
I haven't had much time to do anything to the club web site.Hopefully a few more weeks will see all these repairs finalised.

Latest instalment on scaffolding.

I've got a sort of scaffolding tower outside the shop.Most of it went up Sunday morning.It took the guys two days to get it all up,the road is a busy one and highways don't allow too much disruption so the bulk of the work was done on a Sunday.

Scaffolding aand other problems.

Hopefully I can start work on the front of the building this week.I made the mistake of getting a firm called "Be safe" scaffolding of Lowestoft to erect scaffolding but all they came up with was an endless stream of excuses for delaying work.Thankfully I've now found a proper organised firm with all the right qualifications and in theorey the scaffolding will be up in a day or so.