I’ve been obsessed with cars since before I could walk, but in recent years I’ve noticed an alarming trend. Actually, it isn’t really alarming to me, but my wife is certainly becoming a little perturbed. You see, I’ve found myself increasingly being drawn to other “old junk” as she likes to refer to it, in addition to the cars (and bits of said) that already litter our suburban semi.
Fortunately, for my own safety, I haven’t yet been bitten by the ‘bike bug (although it’s surely only a matter of time), but the groaning shelves are being overloaded still further by books on yachts, tractors, powerboats, planes and steam trains, plus Airfix kits of Ekranoplans and warbirds.
It’s all about the lure of machinery, the oilier and smellier the better – preferably with a light coating of surface rust and some faded signwriting. Mmmmm. The bottom of the garden is my domain, where I’m lucky enough to have a shed and a rickety asbestos garage, the latter already crammed to the rafters (and in the rafters themselves) with car parts – chipped windscreens, rusty doors and desirable period optional extras that are too rusty to fit to the car but that I just couldn’t resist buying.
The conversion of the shed into a proper man-nest began with a delicious old solid-beech workbench that a teacher friend of mine rescued from the skip when his school refitted its CDT workshops (although I think they’re called something different these days) with nasty plastic tables. And now I have moved on to the garden itself.
