I had a spare hour this morning.

Hoovered, washed, polished and waxed the boot wheel well and spare.

Polished the toolkit last week.

I think that I need to get a life.

I think I'm at the other end of this spectrum...took the Coupe to the Italian car meet at The Departure Lounge this morning - unwashed. Yesterday I thought, "I must give it a proper clean". This morning, 'Maybe there's time to just do the wheels'. Then, 'Sod it, I'm already half an hour late, at least it looks like a daily driver'.

Like wink, I left my car as it was after having been covered up since August and Brands Hatch.

Unlike him, having uncovered it and trying a start up, I discovered that the battery was flat shortly afterwards so put it on charge and by 7pm it started the car fine.

Shift to 9:15 this morning and I had moved the daily driver out of the way ready to leave in the coupe only to find the battery was flat again.

A quick check on line found that the local Euro Car parts had one in stock so collected it and swapped batteries over and got away around an hour late.

After some heavy traffic round Farnham, the bypass and A31 were clear, so I started to enjoy the refreshed suspension (top mounts, rear dampers and hubs and 4 new tyres) and it was amazing just how quickly cars were disappearing in the rear mirror.

Just before reaching Alton, I noticed the engine management light coming on, but the car was still running well, so carried on to the meet where, as I suspected, the MAP sensor lead had disconnected, so a very easy fix: It had done it once before.

Wink and I were chatting and we both noticed that my light covers were not their usual clear selves so I decided to polish them when I got home.

Then I noticed that the windscreen was grubby and with an earlyish morning drive east to Brooklands tomorrow cleaned the windscreen properly.

Wasn't going to do anything more, but then there was bee crap spots on the paint, plus the odd spiders web, so I ended up washing the thing after all.

Back to Alton, as usual it was good to chat with Italian car owners, coupe and otherwise. That's it now until April next year.

I drove my car a thousand miles from the UK, left it on the drive three months with occasional excursions, and seriously considered washing it. Then I drove it back to Joe's

..... and for two years in storage with the battery disconnected it never when flat and started everytime when needed, now that's impressive.

Just for fun I have been checking the voltage on the old battery : It's going down by almost a volt a day.

Today I made a new washer for the nutmeg grinder using two (new) plastic car battery terminal caps stuck together, cut roughly circular and with a 5mm centre


Get I more out to need.

Well yes, even though the starter started, er, stopping literally on the drive over

Neil