Bodywork on ebay.............

[jonclancy]

Tim'll pick it up for you while he's there...

[erictharg]

I can just see it strapped across the whole front row of seats of whatever you fly...

[biggles]

In response to Splat's request for an update, I can report that nothing has happened yet! I have a van booked for the morning off I have in Edinburgh and will sally forth and retrieve the clamshell, bubblewrap it, and throw it in the 737's boot for the journey south

Rest assured I will take pics, including one of me squashing it in to the crew bus. Luckily, I am flying with one of my favourite skippers, so no problems there. He already knows I am slightly eccentric, so is not in the least surprised I am trying this!!

[jonclancy]

Can't wait to see the pics.

It's not the Skipper you need to worry about. More an itate Number One with a crushed toe on the minibus!

[biggles]

Mission accomplished. The 'hard' bits were easy, the easy bits hard.

Pics to follow. I can confirm that a rear clam and scuttle panel will fit in the back of a peugeot 306 estate, and that it is perfectly possible to get air in a Peugeot Partner van when you find the sort of humpback bridge we don't really have down south anymore.....

[biggles]

So it goes like this:

Get up at first crack of sparrow fart (7am), which is still pitch black in the middle of a Scottish winter. Bolt breakfast, head down to rake out pushbike. Wrestle with very old masking tape, trying to fix lights on to said pushbike. Swear a lot. Chuck masking tape and resort to packing tape supposed to be used to bubblewrap the bodywork. Jump on bike and pedal off across Edinburgh through the gloom and freezing rain. Soon start sweating so much, not worried about the freezing temp any more. Arrive at van hire depot (20 mins away). Get free van upgrade (hurrah). Chuck bike in van and hare off south towards the border.

Drive like maniac for an hour and a bit, through hail, rain, fog, low cloud, you name it! The roads were great, virtually empty, great scenery when I could see it throught the fog, and no potholes. Just drives home what a crap deal we get down south where you sometimes need a dakar racer not an Eleven to get round the craters... Get some serious air over a humpback bridge just outside Kelso.

Meet the nice old chap selling the bodywork and feel intensely jealous of his great big barn full of Westy racer (lotus twin cam with all the bits my non runner race car has, although his is not road legal), Saabs and an MG, which probably costs less to rent than a parking space where I live! Drool over Westy, strike a bargain for the other bit of bodywork (the scuttle - sorry Techbod, I know you wanted it but I always had designs on it too otherwise I would have offered to pick it up for you...) and hightail it out of there via Coldstream back to the hotel in Edinburgh (no air on the way back, I had the bodywork on board!!!).

Dump the bodywork outside the very posh hotel - the concierges were mildly surprised! Hare across town, dump the van at the depot. Leg it out in to the main road by the depot to retrieve a nice looking spanner just sitting in the road (Halfords professional!). Sign off van, jump in taxi, back across town, end up following the minibus with the cabin crew who are coming to pick the skipper and I up to go to work. They go to one door, I leg it out of the taxi and up the steps in to the other. One quick change and I am back downstairs with a whole minute to spare before I am late for work.

No time to bubble wrap then, it's in to the van boot with the clam and the skipper just grabs the scuttle and dives on to the bus, despite the protestations of the driver!

Here we are checking it in and loading it, which were dead easy. Turns out the flight dispatcher is restoring a 911 and one of the loaders is a yank car freak...

[biggles]

Back at Gatters, after going to Italy and back with the forward hold occupied with a couple of 'unusual crew bags', it was merely a case of getting the loaders to pop them on to a trolley, drop me and them off at the crew exit, and wrestle the bits through the non return crew door. Set the alarms off 3 times but not pinched by the fuzz!

Then just had to sweet talk the driver of the bus in to letting me take them back to the car park - that was the hardest bit of the whole thing!! Total cost of van, fuel and taxi was 46 quid so I think I saved a bit and it was an adventure too.....

[Splat]

That sounds kind of fun. Kind of.........

Glad it went well. Sad to know (after less than two years with BA at LHR) that the experience at Heathrow would have been quite different!

Now get it built (says the man with his car half dismantled!).