Engine Punk

Have you ever tried reading a Walter Scott novel? I had a go at Waverley many years ago but couldn’t get on with it. Obviously a lot of people rate him. Or rated him. Sir Walter Scott practically defined what it was to come from the other end of this island. They even named the nation after him. I was visiting my – ahem – Scottish relatives in Edinburgh last weekend and it struck me that Sir Walter Scott is probably unique in defining national character. Edinburgh is the best capital city of any country in my opinion - not that I've sampled that many, as I prefer open spaces. Snuggled down among its beautiful buildings, their stones blackened with history, and looking out at the bare green peak of Arthur's Seat beyond Edinburgh's towers, I reckon I can understand what Walt was trying to capture. Edinburgh even has a writer’s museum devoted in part to Scott and his scribblings. I didn’t go in because it didn’t sound very exciting - a bit dusty and smelling of chewed pen...

Here's another Vintage Thing that's happening today - and again in Cornwall. And that's not the designer but his mum and dad. As well as being a family affair, the Toniq R is a road legal track day car built at Trebudannon near Newquay. I’d heard of it from Peter Tuthill’s book Cornwall’s Motor Industry but never seen one until I encountered this one on show at Royal Cornwall. It’s a 21st century interpretation of the classic Lotus Seven. It’s a road legal track day car and comes in two forms. This particular example has a Honda Fireblade engine but there's another demonstrator with a Ford Duratec engine. I understand that the on paper performance is about the same but the driving experience is totally different. On this Fireblade powered example, the engine has been completely rebuilt. The red and green buttons on the steering wheel take care of gearshifts. Red goes down for first and then you frantically press green to keep changing up for the other g...

Here is a future Vintage Thing. Mostly you can recognise a Vintage Thing only with the benefit of hindsight but this little baby has a bright future in front of it. And it’s local to me. It also appeals to me because of my background in Industrial Design. I am always interested in the design process and here it is, happening virtually on my doorstep. Every vehicle starts off as somebody’s idea or dream. It’s the human story of how that dream becomes reality that enthrals me. The Jetstream Sportscar is being designed and built in Cornwall and was on show at the Royal Cornwall Show. I was immediately impressed by the quality of its bodywork and also the specially cast front suspension uprights. When I began talking to the guys on the stand it was obvious they were employing the latest technology. It sounds expensive to start with but the savings in time and development costs easily justify its use. The Jetstream Sportscar was launched at the Autosport show in January 2008 and m...

I went to a strange gig tonight. I suppose my expectations were high, maybe too high, but I’ve come away feeling disappointed. Led Zeppellin tribute band A Whole Lotta Led played at Carnglaze Slate Caverns just down the road from me. My neighbour Dave is a big Led Zepp fan and got the tickets. He’s known along our row of cottages as Dave the Ferret even though he no longer has any. I suppose it’s to distinguish him from all the other Daves, most of whom are called Andrew. It’s just one of those surreal things that go on here. Like the house numbering system. Number 1’s at the bottom of the hill, Number 7’s at the top and I’m half way up at Number 16. Anyway, Dave and I had been looked forward to this gig for weeks. The Rum Store is a great venue but on entering I wasn’t sure I liked the rows of plastic chairs. Was this an indication of the sedentary nature of the anticipated audience? Were we too old to be expected to get up and get down? After a couple of songs I looked...

This year I scandalised my friends and family by going to the Run To The Sun . This event has such a bad reputation that my sister always arranges to be away for the late May Bank holiday weekend. The town becomes so crowded with drunks toting water pistols she felt that she was a prisoner in her own home and now lives abroad, near Truro. But Newquay these days is always like that. It’s the stag and hen night capital of the UK. And apparently 2008 was one of the most incident free events for many years. More of us should go. For me it was a spur of the moment thing. The weather was good, I was down west but everyone else was convinced the weather was bad and wanted to stay home. I didn’t see any of the bands or camp over night, I just went to the Show’n’shine in Tregunnel Hill car park. Vee Dubs would be Vintage Things were they not so mainstream. What teenage girl has not hankered after a Beetle because they are cool? Many years ago, it was said that you cannot tune a Beetl...

This must have been one of the best Royal Cornwall Shows ever. The free-style motocrossers were amazing. When you see it on your screen it looks pretty cool but there's always the thought that it might have been digitally enhanced in someway. Seeing it done live - and while the guys are giving a running commentary on their helmet mikes - frankly had me dumbfounded. Traditionally it rains for Royal Cornwall and I have a happy memory of pushing cars out of the car park when I was kid and getting spattered with tiny droplets of mud from the spinning wheels. Me and my gang looked a complete mess as we set off for home, wearing the badge of our strength and helpful natures but by the time we got home our clothes dried out and the little droplets of mud just brushed off. No mothers got amped about our dirty clothes so that really was a great day, collecting brochures and stickers and sitting on the tractors. This year was the first time I've attended for about 10 years. On that...

Lliam West is a self-publishing legend in Cornwall. You'll see his books in many different outlets but all those outlets have one thing in common - their Cornishness. Starting with Pandora in 2001, he's sold over 20,000 copies of his books by focussing on where his readership is likely to congregate as they look for a little piece of Cornwall to take back with them. And Liam's evocative thrillers are just what they need. I caught up with Lliam on his stall at the Royal Cornwall Show at the weekend. He told me that what I consider to be a remarkable sales record has been achieved by a great deal of hard work and driving up and down the county. "I'll approach a gift shop and offer them my books on a sale or return basis if I see they have some empty shelf space. I'm aiming at the "grey" market so feature a big house somewhere in Cornwall and many links back to the past like a secret mission undertaken in World War Two, the effects of which are onl...

I think part of the secret to Mrs Jo Jo's success is the low seat height Mrs Jo Jo belongs to the same equipe as the Salamanda Special. Both are Austin Sevens but have been modified along different lines and at different times. Whereas the Salamanda Special is a modern interpretation using authentic materials and with a wonderful eye for detail, Mrs Jo Jo is a real piece of Brooklands history. Mrs Jo-jo's engine room The trick with whispering up significant horsepower gains from an Austin 7 engine seems to be to connect a blower to it, often of an equivalent capacity. In this case a Powerplus vane supercharger pressurises the little engine and it would seem a cruel thing to do to it if it didn't keep coming back for more. I've heard whispers of 60 bhp from a blown 747cc Austin 7 engine so that's a very healthy power to weight ratio. This one of the joys of an event like Wiscombe - you can get up really close to items of interest Wiscombe was its firs...

Following on from VT17 , John Deacon was telling me of Bill Martin a legendary grasstrack racer and Douglas rider from Cornwall who rode his bike around the wall of Redruth railway station. Nothing very special in that - except that he was on top of the wall! This triggered an old memory of mine. I'd seen an elderly and fairly rotund gentleman being helped onto a dirt track Duggie at the West of England Traction Engine Rally back in the eighties. I had a vague idea I had photographed his machine. Searching for something else in the Anarchadia photo archives, I turned up a photo of a dirt track Douglas. And - very rare for me - I'd written down some details on the back. It was indeed Bill Martin's 1928 500cc dirt track Douglas. I remember the knobbly rear tyre. I think the cover was very old. I doubt you can get that tread pattern any more. To me, this bike looks fantastic. Even the hand change and rudimentary springing don't put me off. Hossack double...

I've been digging away at my IT problems over the last few weeks. The most significant ones were of video quality, stemming from dropped video frames and invalid arguments. Well, I think I now have the answer. As I thought it means a new PC. Laptop hard drives only work at 5400rpm. Typical desktop speeds are 7200rpm. My little Acer is just not quick enough on the uptake. So to what should I upgrade? I did the sensible thing and asked my webhosts, Flying Flounder. Eric and Helen live not far from me in the Cornish countryside. "Have you ever seen a pig eat?" Eric asked me. I have but not recently. So we put on some boots and visited Babe and Curly in their comfortable sty. We even tried Eric's Farmer's Boy weighing tape on them. You put it around the amiable pig's armpits and the circumference of the said pig then translates into weight. Babe and Curly turned out not to be too fat but "nearly ready." Later we retired to Eric's ...

I attended a very thought provoking talk in Liskeard last week given by Phil Hosken, chairman of the Trevithick Society. The subject was Bio-Fuels and how they might used to provide an environmentally sound power source. Since then, my thoughts are in a state of constant provocation. Phil set the scene for ethanol by explaining how Brazil, with a surplus of sugar beet, has adopted ethanol as a partial substitute for petrol. The US is also developing it for use in internal combustion engines. Henry Ford intended it for use in all his early models Model T Ford, reckoning a farmer like Henry’s dad could produce enough ethanol from an acre of ground to run a Model T for 15,000 miles a year. Hitler relied upon ethanol and the Volkswagen Beetle was designed with this fuel in mind. This may have influenced the Brazilians interest in the fuel as the Beetle was built there until 2003. Ethanol was virtually the only fuel in the early days of motoring until the oil companies set up their su...

Don Letts introduced punk to reggae and was a member of Big Audio Dynamite with ex-Clash rocker Mick Jones. He was in Plymouth last night, where the Arts Centre showed two of his films, and participated in an all-too-brief question and answer session as part of the Flipside film festival. My main interest centred on his Grammy award winning documentary on The Clash, Westway to the World , but also showing was Dance Hall Queen . The patois on this Jamaican film was so difficult for my west country ears that sub-titles would have been useful but by the end of the film I could pick up the gist of it. It's a kind of West Indian Calendar Girls but instead of stripping off the central female character empowers herself through dancing - provocatively. Don revealed how he wasn't at the Rock Against Racing gig thirty years ago. Methinks we could do with another of those. He said Joe Strummer had just stolen his girlfriend so he was sulking. He read extracts from his autobiograph...