Kates Journal

Comments / Typos welcome.

Kathryn’s been very sweet and advised me that my suspected tendancy to over-write comes out quite strongly, uh, when I write. I’m attempting to turn it down a little. I’ve trimmed this a bit, and I’ll try to trim and edit it based on people’s comments…

——
The room was bathed in the neon glow of the alarm clock. The blinds kept out what little early morning sun was around, leaving the blinking digits to illuminate the cluttered interior and, under the duvet, the lurking figure of a boy.

The radio crackled into life (it was cheap, and crackled into most things), bringing news of a traffic jam on the Westway, again. Not that it mattered; he lived well outside London, but it made him feel part something bigger than his small suburban existence. Not that that mattered anyway; all of the events being earnestly reported were currently falling on the ears of someone deeply asleep. His head buried in the feathers of the pillow, his mind elusively detached.

But slowly, The Clash being broadcast from the little white box dragged him into the land of the living. Well, in a limited way. The actual, perhaps unintended result was that he attempted to burrow deeper into the pillow, making himself one with the mattress. Perhaps, just perhaps, if he thought hard enough about it the day would go away and leave him in peace.

The radio didn’t stop playing though, at least not by itself. After a few minutes a wiry hand crept out from under the duvet and felt it’s way across the bedside table. Hunting along the row of buttons it found ‘Snooze’ before making it’s way back under the duvet. Unfortunately for the boy, the ‘Snooze’ function failed to stop the sun continuing to rise, and the sunlight began to filter through the trees, then the blinds, and finally he could ignore it no more and as the radio crackled into life again bringing forth ‘I Believe’ he crawled from the bed.

Pausing only for a somewhat theatrical switching off of the radio he went, cursing en-route, to find his dressing gown.

“How do you get from London Calling to bloody I Believe in 10 minutes?” he muttered to the room.

Staring at the disorganised clutter he awaited some kind of response.

“No, bloody thought not” he mumbled.

“Kim! Are you up yet?”
“I’m getting there.” he shouted back.
“Getting there? Are you actually out of the bed?”
“Of course I am mum!”

He could here the mutterings about the inappropriateness of the ‘of course’, but decided that discretion was probably the better part of valour and made his way into the bathroom. One brief shower later he was fishing in his battered wardrobe for a school uniform. ‘One more year’ he thought to himself. Then he’d be able to wear whatever he wanted; well, sort of, to school.

And then she crept into his consciousness. Would she be there today? Sometimes she was there, at school, and sometimes not. No one ever seemed to comment on it. At least, not where he’d overheard them. Not being Mr Popular meant he kind of lacked on the gossip front, only catching what was said loudly enough for him to overhear. Being almost invisible, at school at least, helped on that front. Not that he normally cared for such conversations, but since her occasional appearances – and the slightly odd fact that her name was only ever called at register when she was there, he’d become more interested conversations to which he’d normally not be a part.

“Bye Kim. Have a good day at scho..” he heard his mum disappearing out the front door.

By the time he grabbed his coat he heard his mum’s fiat pulling away. He cursed again – he’d missed his lift to school, again.

“Ah well, better late than never”

He chanted his teacher’s favoured comment on his late arrival – then he considered other clichés he could use for his arrival, grabbed his Walkman, and stomped down stairs. At least he’d get breakfast. He’d probably get some kind of warning at school, but so long as he made his first class they’d not care. Mind you, he thought, one of these days if he was early he might see her arrive. He looked at his watch.

Not today though. Today he’d be lucky to make registration, and he’d only make that if he didn’t eat. He perched on the stool and poured out Cornflakes. Breakfast first, then school.

I know I’m not the greatest writer in the world, but I’m debating carrying on with this. Sort of. In a way.

—-

Outside the stars glint appealingly, calling her to come out again. She’s done it before many times, and she slips quietly from under the covers. Her family are well used to her nocturnal nature but even years on don’t know what she does when they’ve gone to sleep. She dresses quietly, picking her clothing in the half light of the moon, it doesn’t matter anyhow, at this hour there’ll be no one there. No one but her; exploring alone.

She knew what clothes she was going to wear anyway. Stuffed down at the back, behind everything else, she selects her favourites. Carefully stepping over the crease in the carpet marking the fractured floorboard that hits some pipe or other waking the house, she descends the stairs. Counting each one quietly, stepping with care, and listening for the breathing of her parents. Any change and she pauses. Waiting for it to settle again before placing her foot gently on the next stair.

She’s been here so many times, she skips the steps that creak and stands, quietly, in the darkness of the hall. Her next challenge is one of the harder ones. Extracting her bunch of keys, the ones that will allow her to reenter this world, from the pile of keys on the shelf. Her family aren’t the neatest, and her keys occupy the lowest space in a pile of discarded metalwork. Fingers carefully working she moves each bunch; her Mum’s car keys, her Dad’s office keys, her Mum’s locker key. Finally the light catches the edge of the lettering on her door key, she slips them into her hand, listens once again, before stealing for the kitchen door.

She wonders who thought that sliding doors were a good idea, and she attempts to hold the door mid point between the scraping bottom guide and the squealing top casters; moving it slowly and carefully she is able to peer through the kitchen window. The street is jaundiced by the glow of sodium vapour, but no houses glow anaemically from the opposite side of the street. She slips out, her key holding the lock open until the door is quietly shut, and as she finally releases the key she feels the release of the outside world.

The girl steps out onto the street, still carefully checking, but at this time no-one arrives, and she is free to slip through the world unnoticed. She wanders suburbia, quietly taking in all that surrounds her. Her runners crunch across the gravel, the silence briefly broken but returning and washing over her. This, she thinks is freedom. But it is, as always, short lived. After an hour or two the cold of the night eats through her clothing and she slips back home.

A repeat performance takes her quietly up the dark stairs, praying internally that no-one will awake – there would be too much to explain. Eventually she wraps herself in her duvet, the warmth seeping through her and drifts to sleep.

So, this was going to be a whiny depressed post. A fed up rant at all things DAF shaped, at myself for my desire to run classic cars as daily drivers, at the world for frustrating me every time I think I’m wining. That kind of tedious thing.

Why is this? Well, because this weekend an awesome band of wonderful people descended on Slough to aid and abet me in my classic car and MZ fetish. Enablers, one might call them. They rock. Nikki and Kate and John I’ve known for many years and they are known lovely people. Kate has overlooked my initial poor first impression (If I’d've written to Points of View I’d've been ‘angry of Colerne’), and is incredibly patient for someone with no interest whatsoever in classic cars with her partner’s interest and my obsession and came to Slough for a day which would be both long and involve very little of interest to her (she was also awesome because she helped Kathryn out).

Nikki has been mentioned many times, respected EV advocate she may be, but there lurks deep in her soul a dark secret. She still likes classic cars, even if they’ve got an Internal Combustion Engine. And while she’s not quite into the quirky bizarritude of classics that I am (Is it Communist? Is it Obscure and impossible to get new bits for? I’m in!) – she gathered her cadre and brought forth a person who I’d only met once before who possibly wins in the awesome stakes, because he injured himself in the call of getting someone he barely knows mobile in a non-ev.

John, for long time journal readers is a known fine gent. I recall him ferrying me back home after I had my wisdom teeth removed and while I was still under the effects of a general anesthetic. Despite me living 45 minutes from Bristol by that time and the fact it was snowing, he took me home and looked after me for the afternoon. He came, he soldered, and he went. He rocks too.

But Adam, Adam perhaps wins for helpfulness beyond the call of duty. I met him once, and between him, Nikki, Kate and John I felt a pining for Bristol. They are all part of what makes Bristol such a good place to live, and his generosity is proof that good human nature is extant. He came and helped out for an entire day to assist in rebuilding someone’s car who he’d barely met.

Between them they bring ‘rocking’ to a whole new level.

So why the rant?

Well, while disassembling and reassembling the engine I discovered this:

And the general response from the owner’s club was “you’d've noticed if it was a problem by now” – but let’s be honest, that relied on me actually doing my research properly, and I was slack. With the engine very hot it more or less runs on both cylinders, not well, but it does. Pulling the plug from either cylinder produced an engine that ran attrociously. I should, however, have done it when cold. Or looked at the plugs from both cylinders. When I stripped the engine I wasn’t certain how so much oil had ended up in the cylinder bore. I should have thought more about it.

We needed to move the Minor to extract the DAF from the drive. The minor wouldn’t start. I suspect that the fuel pump needs priming – two weeks of baking heat have presumably evaporated the fuel. That has never happened before, though, and was frustrating.

On reassembly of the DAF, on Saturday night, at around ten PM, the engine limped and dragged the car around at the speed of a sloath. It actually required people pushing the car to get it back up on the pavement. After the very unfortunate and expensive discovery that I was on an early shift yesterday, not, as I’d thought, a late (requiring in the end 2 taxis), I came back from work and looked at the car. John, from the club, suggested that the uneven running might be that it was still firing on one cylinder. It was.

Because the side with the cracked head? It’s full of oil. I can make the car run beautifully for about 30 seconds by cleaning the plug, after which the oil fouls it completely and that cylinder becomes a display only one. The car is not immobile, but not driveable. As I contemplated the rust that needs repairing, the miriad of problems it’s had (70k miles is not a huge amount, but I think the maintenance has left something to be desired) and my (perceived) manifold failures in decision making, I was feeling deeply frustrated.

I was feeling a little better today, having at least organised supply of a replacement head for not very much, but it wasn’t going to arrive for at least a week. I resigned myself to at least another week of hire cars, and prepared to go and collect the rental – and then couldn’t find my debit card. I swore and stomped around and cursed the world. Kathryn very sweetly put up with me, for reasons I can’t quite work out, rather than telling me to grow up, which is what I really should have done.

Having found it I went and collected the card, and came back to find an incredibly nice e-mail from another star of incredible proportions. A fine gent in Ireland offered to send me a spare 44 cylinder head, potentially such that it would arrive this week. Potentially enabling me to get the car back on the road at the end of the week. If I catch the colleague from work, the welding might be done, and lo, the DAF shall rise again. Hopefully I&A will ring soon with a “the car’s ready” message and all shall be right in the world. Ish.

Kathryn and I found this stove:

kicking around on the street near where I live. Sadly there was no-one in and it looks like they damaged it a little during it’s removal. But it’s almost certainly repairable, all there, and appears to have been left out for scrap.

If anyone wants it, give me a shout and see if I can sort it :) It’s a terrible shame for it to go to waste – it’d be ideal if someone’s doing a green/eco house project :)

1) Kathryn drives much more economically than me.
2) It took me much longer than it should to work out the DAF’s MPG. Given that I think she’s still not running quite right (mixture wise), and am pondering whether there’s some clutch slippage going on, we should be able to get better fuel economy from ‘em.

The result of the pondering is that a 1974 DAF 44 returns, with an economical driver, 38mpg (which equates to approximately a CO₂ rating of 194g/km (or, adjusting for how optimistic auto manufacturers are, about 155g/km). That latter ‘adjusted’ value is disconcertingly close to a Mini One.

But the government in their pseudo-green drive are scrapping cars that are just as green as the modern ones, discounting the energy required to build cars, and essentially are propping up companies that failed to adapt to changing market conditions with more environmental destruction. Thanks Labour. Don’t think you’ll be having my vote. You’ve actually driven me to voting for the Greens. Seriously. I never thought I’d do that.

Sadly, incidentally, there’ve been some classics which were casualties of the destructiveness of this government… Anyone who said Classics wouldn’t be affected want to reconsider that answer.

Anyhow.

In other news, I’ve been continuing to ponder the construction of an EV-DAF. Slightly prompted by Mr Clarkson’s annoying take on the (probably awful, but his whining about all EVs and his belief that climate change is all in everyone-elses heads make me want to recommend it anyhow) Honda Insight Mk II*. I knew it’d been done before, albeit somewhat badly – Nikki B, of the a minor journey EV blog & appearances on EV cast waved it at me a while ago – essentially, this conversion consisted of a Milkfloat motor dropped into a DAF with some scaffold board to support it. That the owner claimed it moved at all was no mean feat.

What I didn’t realise is that it’d been done somewhat more thoroughly somewhat earlier; twice. Shell used the cute little DAF to build a Fuel Cell Hybrid (yes, seriously) in the 60s.

I wonder if the technology of producing an extremely poor energy carrier for nothing is close to maturation yet ;)

Apparently it wasn’t great – but what do you expect from 60’s fuel cell and electric motor technology? The colour choice was good though :)

What was more interesting still (although the photo was very cool) was that there were two independent companies that built DAF 44 EVs in the states (in the 70s). CHW, in Athol, MA. (who later became ‘ElectriCar’ – and seem to have disappeared) and a company called EV Propulsion. Although the DCA chap has figures for CHW’s cars (around 60 produced) he didn’t mention how many EV Propulsion converted… But that, lack of money, time, space, and plans to do it in a vague and hazy future haven’t stopped me mailing them.

Still, there’s plenty to keep me entertained on them as it is. Vixy’s off to an actual factual garage to have the brakes done, although I’m going to have a little go at mixture again tomorrow, having invested in a colortune. I’m also going to give her actual new spark-plugs. We’ll see how that whole thing goes. Her new door should arrive in a couple of days time too, just a case of spraying it to, uh, match and fitting it. I’m looking forward to her having a window winder that works :)

Jejy’s new wheel bearing is sat in the lounge too, all ready to be fitted, and I’ve got a ’source’ hopefully tracking down a silencer (or two), wheels and some clutch shoes to re-con. The new drum and inlet manifold have arrived, so that’s all shiny. Lots of work to do there…

I’ve got a quote for fetching the ‘zed from my mum’s to here. I think I’ll go make it accessible, and then get the couriers to bring it over.

Unrelated but very, very good: We were sat in the garden and one of the birds (?sparrow) decided it didn’t want to wait until we vacated the area – and hopped around a few feet from us (literally, 2-3 feet), fairly much disregarding us. It was really just incredible.

Unrelated but very, very bad: Change we can’t believe in.

* I always rather liked the look of the Mark I, although tbh I want an EV that looks all futuristic and modern, not a Hybrid. Basically I want an EV1. Yes, I’m still whining.