Not Good.

That’ll be the third time that I’ve found myself approaching the back door of my house and pressing the car key remote. But the good news is…

My experiments with Spelt had until now always produced a loaf the shape and density of a Tudor brick but, this is the third Spelt loaf I’ve made in the last couple of weeks and my efforts have been rewarded with what I can only describe as perfection! And the secret to this success? Vitamin C powder. In the instructions (which I finally got round to glancing at) there was mention of crushing a vitamin C tablet and adding that to the mix. I’d never heard of this before and was interested to try it out. I have vitamin C powder in the house so I sprinkled 1/2 a teaspoon in to the mix and hey presto!

In an attempt to cure the engine fading problem on the Hillman, I made up a heat shield to slip between the manifold and the Paxolin spacer on the carb mounting. I’ve also replaced the thin oil in the damper with 20/50. This Sunday’s proposed breakfast run – a good 100 mile round trip – should put the new additions through their paces.

For the Riley racing car, I learn that the ‘silent third’ box I’ve got, needs a different rear coupling to run an open propshaft. The coupling in the picture is for a torque tube shaft. Luckily, Mr Riley, who I visited last Monday, may have one somewhere; it’s just a question of him finding it.

I also needed another engine mounting clamp. I’m toying with the idea of lowering the engine – to get the CG as low as possible – but to jury rig that I’m going to have to mate up the block and the gearbox and bell housing and see if the propshaft will have an uninterrupted run to the diff. I’m not too worried about the angle as I’ve got a Triumph Vitesse propshaft with a sliding joint that I can adapt. I’ll also have to sort out a new clutch arrangement and put a modern Borg & Beck type plate on the flywheel instead of the Riley one which works backwards (I’m told). I haven’t got to grips with the nitty-gritty of all that yet; I’m more interested in the layout working for the time being.

The painting’s coming along – I’ve added a tyre and some odds and ends over the last couple of evenings.

The biggest challenge with this scene is the over-exposure of the light coming through the main door. It lends the photograph a great deal of atmosphere but I’ve yet to see if I can successfully reproduce that drama in the painting. Initially, I thought I could avoid it and just fill in a few details but, without that burst of light, the painting’s a bit dead. I can tell that I’m out of practice because I’ve fallen into the usual trap of putting things in places where I think they are instead of where they actually are – witness the buttress brickwork between the two windows. There’s no excuse, it’s just sloppy observation.

Not good.