Engine Punk

A chair grown by Full Grown (Photo : Full Grown) Soon after I wrote The Wormton Lamb , some freakishly large baby sheep were born locally . Now I hear that someone is putting into practice what George Ransomes was doing. In The Wormton Lamb , George was a bodger,  a hedgerow carpenter. He came from a long line of bodgers, people who made perfectly good chairs and tables out of scraps rejected for more professional furniture. However, he had an idea. wouldn't it safe a lot of effort if you just grow the trees into the shapes you wanted? Why can't you grow your own furniture? The Wormton Lamb is a fantasy but I am delighted to hear that the Full Grown furniture company are actually doing this! They didn't get the idea from me. They were concerned about the waste created by the traditional timber trade and the result is a piece of organic furniture that has no joins ! It has better structural integrity and has less material waste. Its labour intensive and time...

Tony Gane looks quietly confident at Santa Pod in 1968. (Photo : M Wheeler) Twas at this year's Powderham Show, I got talking to Peter Batty, organiser of award winning MCC stand, when he told me about an Imp powered dragster that he'd campaigned in the sensational seventies. It sounded nuts. He said it would run a 12 or 13 second quarter mile, with a terminal speed of over 100mph. There is a tendency to think "Yeah right!" when you hear about some mechanical marvels but this one sounded stranger than fiction. I wanted to believe it, too, and Peter Batty is a gentleman of the MCC, for heaven's sake! Then he sent me some pictures. With those people in the background, my eyes go funny. Is this a model of a full size dragster? Or are they giants? (Photo : Peter Batty) The Imp dragster looks much bigger than it was. Those rear wheels are actually 10" Mini alloys. Measure them up against the Imp engine that sits between them if you don't be...