My First Car

While applying for a National Insurance Number for my foreign wife, I had to answer some rather odd questions, which included the 'security question' "What was the colour of your first car?" If you discount all the red-oxide primer, multi-coloured over-spray and white roof, I suppose it was grey. I started to go off on one about the 4" roof-chop, but was cut short by "What was the surname of you favorite childhood friend?"...!
Way better than an external hard-drive as a keep-safe, is my Mum's kitchen pin-board. Several decades worth of happy memories and vehicles. This is my Wolseley Hornet. Essentially a regular 70s Austin Mini with the same transverse 850cc engine, it was badge-engineered as both a Wolseley and Riley, with its chipmunk nose fake radiator grill. The derrier has a carbuncle boot with miniature finned rear lights. My younger brother (on the left here), is sitting on his Mongoose BMX with ACS Zee rims, he's also sporting Simple Minds haircut with above the ear water-mark, so I guess that puts the date at ± 1981. My elder step-brother (on the right) came down from Wales with his MIG welder which seemed very space age at the time. Having spent literally years honing it, my step-dad sent it to the scrapper while I was away at college, before it ever rolled under its own steam. BP

Spalding Rocks

Spalding Lincolnshire - Gary's home town, is a fairly average British fen town. There are some pretty houses along the river, it has a rich canal history, a weird long thin Chinese where they used to make rope in the oldendays (and now they make noodles), and you can get a great curry at the Indus restaurant.
On 29th May 1967 a certain Jimi Hendrix came to town, and for £1 you could see him, Cream, Pink Floyd and bunch of other 'new kids' get handy with their wah-wahs. But it wasn't until I was in Paris with Gary recently, while visiting the FAT club's secret lock-up, that I realized how much he loved his humble home town. He found a netball in the garden with the name emblazoned across it, picked it up and kissed it. BP
Even these Japanese Auto Racers are rocking Spalding.Spalding is also home of Sun-Pat