Engine Punk

I've passed this old wreck of a wrecker truck many times but the other Sunday I pulled up in the old Ale Grow (VT No. 23) and had a poke around. I don't think it has much of a future and is fairly well grown in. It lies engineless outside a scrapyard just off the A38 near Doublebois but the scrapyard is a very odd one. Make any enquiries about anything and you'll get a mouthful of abuse and whatever you're interested in will be destroyed before your eyes. I don't know how they stay in business. I'm not really into trucks but old ruins fascinate me and I did all the usual things that small boys do with military vehicles, which is scramble all over them and sit in the drivers seat and make the noises. I didn't know what it was but a little research reveals it to be a Leyland Martian, as immortalised by Dinky Toys. It was no surprise to find out that it was a British Army 6x6 truck but I was fascinated to learn that it would've had a 5.6 litre...

It's taken years but Dobwalls is now by-passed. Visitors to south-east Cornwall during high summer probably don't have very good memories of Dobwalls. It's a village that straddles the A38 just west of Liskeard and due to its position at the western end of the Liskeard bypass it became a bottle neck to avoid. And the residents of Dobwalls certainly didn't appreciate being prisoners in their own homes. From Easter to late September, Saturday is known as change over day. One lot of visitors leaves and another lot arrives and gridlock often ensues. Landlords of B&Bs and self-catering barn conversions are reluctant to let their properties for part weeks during the season so the ritual of change over day and manic chambermaids cleaning rooms and changing bed linen seems to be here to stay. Only by camping can this lemming like ritual be avoided. Cornwall relies on an effective road system otherwise those that support its main industry will stay away. Effective...

Where have all the good reads gone? More books are being published than ever before but it seems more difficult for me to find books I really like. It's old conundrum - I want something original but a bit like something else, an imitation of The Hobbitt or Terry Pratchett. (Yeah, I know Terry Pratchett's an imitator but in a good way with real jokes.) As a writer I am also a reader and at risk of sounding arrogant it was the lack of something worthy of my attention that often motivated to write my own stories. Nowadays it's so rare to read something original that you discover by accident and then come to re-visit. It's hard enough to find something when your looking for it. Occasionally, I've found something brilliant without really trying like The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, as translated brilliantly by Lucia Graves. That's the problem with reading. How do we find something we like without searching for ages and ultimately giving up? ...

This caught my eye the other day. Dodge says its Zeo concept sport wagon shown at the Paris Show is "designed for driving enthusiasts and tree-huggers alike". That’s me! It's a four-passenger sport wagon, powered by a single 268-horsepower electric motor with a lithium-ion battery. With rear wheel drive it can do 0-60 in 5.7 seconds and go 250 miles (400 km) between charges - once the technology is perfected. So long as the technology works, I can fix it and afford it (economically and environmentally) I'll have one. But I can't have one now because the technology is not tried and tested. The Chrysler Corporation is working with "multiple suppliers" on developing batteries that deliver a 300 mile range. The favourite power source seems to be lithium-ion batteries like that in my cordless Dremel although they'll probably be a bit bigger. And take longer to re-charge. In other words the Dodge Zeo doesn't actually go yet. And when it d...

The Paris Show this week was marked by financial and economic gloom. European car manufacturers have been unable to escape tough targets on emissions for new cars and the credit crunch means fewer customers. They are pleading with us to buy their new models and are gearing up to sell us little cars to suit our shallower pockets. Life style vehicles such as SUVs, 4x4s and cross over vehicles – I’ve never really understood this term – are falling rapidly and interest is now in small cheap cars that don’t pollute. The aspirational Chelsea tractors of the noughties “said something about you as a person”, such as like you’re such a lard arse you can’t get out of a car with a seat height lower than your hips and that you want to look adventurous when the only reason you drive a 4x4 is because you’re too fat to walk anywhere and had to drive there. I see this as a good thing. The conspicuous consumption that was spoken of just before the internet bubble burst (remember that?) happe...

I had a good graphic design session with Rebecca Morton at Red Snapper last night. You'll have heard of Beck before on this blog. Dammit - you'll have eaten yoghurt from the pots she designed for Rachel's Organic Yoghurt and seen her work on the Milk Marque lorries. Here she is in action, pointing out something important I hadn't spotted. Of course, as soon as she'd shown me what was wrong it was obvious. She also showed me the amazing things the full verison of Photoshop can do. Well, some of them anyway. "Look how easily I can get rid of the blemishes," she said. "What blemishes?" I replied. I'd been really careful not to get oily fingerprints on my work but there they were. And then there they were - gone. In the hands of an expert like Beck the results were frankly mind blowing - and so quick to make! We've experimented with a couple of ideas but the favourite so far seems to be a refined version of that mugged togethe...

Here's the new cover illustrations for The Horsepower Whisperer . As with any picture on this blog or the one known as Engine Punk if you click on the image you'll see a large image. I was happy enough with the earlier cover design for some time but as soon as I'd revamped my website it looked a little staid. I realized I could do better and ever since then my publishing adventure has been on hold while I embarked on a remembering-how-to-paint trip. I donned blinkers and stopped doing many of the other things I enjoy like writing and welding in my determination to add as much pizzazz as I could to my covers. It became an obsession and I entered that dark tunnel where you strive for perfection knowing that it is really an impossible dream. I never really know what keeps me going during these times for there are no travelling companions but at last I have emerged, blinking in the sunlight, reconciled to the lack of perfection but reasonably happy with the result. It’s be...