New Hope

Dom, Toby and I had a great time at Glastonwick. There'll be some photos soon. It was a taster of what it will be like when Althea and Donna are on the road. The lights and sound system were good and attracted a lot of the right kind of attention. When on the second night the members of our favourite band of the festival turned up we were all delighted.

The shuttle bus was a beautifully restored 1956 Metro Cammel 39 seater bus which I fell completely in love with. The guy who owned it was a smashing bloke and we talked restoration for a while. He let me sit in the drivers seat and I had some pictures taken. I loved the sound, smell and smoke of the 6.9 litre engine starting up "mmmm carbon footprint". Photos to follow.

If we'd had the ambulances instead of a rented Citroen Berlingo it would have been ten times better and a lot more comfortable. The weather made sleeping in and dismantling the tents very unconfortable. But I wouldn't have missed Toby's yell of "Fuck off weather!" on the Sunday morning, for all the rain and wind. So for one or two people we use one and for a whole bunch of us we'll take both.

The so called "heavy duty gazebo" crumbled in a mild breeze so I'm starting money back proceedings. I'm thinking about tarpaulins and scoffold poles now. Forget these toy things they advertise on QVC.

Anyway the new hope is due to all the required parts and people all being in the required places with the time and space to do the job. I am once again hopeful that by the end of the week or sooner I will have two working ambulances and can start organising their collection.

I saw a souped up VW Beetle the other day with a black metalic paint job with flakes that split the spectrum in a rainbow like way. I'm thinking about Althea's paint job and the idea of having her in an interesting subtle metalic green but doing the go faster stripes in something stunning is really appealing to me now. I'm thinking of having "nee naaw nee naaw nee naaw" very vaguely written into the stripes. Maybe it can be done by somehow controlling the way the flakes lie in the laquer?

I've seen little eyelids for morris minor car headlamps and am betting those lamps are the same as the ambulances. Going to go out with a tape measure and find a morris minor.