My Dream Garage Top Ten

One night up at Castle Wolfenstein (Matt's House) I absent-mindedly asked Ben and Matt what would their top-ten garage be. With a squeal of glee Matt ran off and got pens and paper for himself, Ben, me and the Robojew (who wasn't really that interested) and we got scribbling... 

The first vehicle was a particular Rolls Royce Phantom Mk I with Tourer coachwork by Windovers which I saw on a US website for Blackhawk Collection. Built in 1925 it probably had its coachwork done in the newly completed Windovers workshop in Hendon and then promptly ended up going to the USA with its owner only to return to Britain with a new one a few years later only to return again to the USA and ending up in the Blackhawk Collection. I fell in love with it when I first set eyes on it...

I then decided I needed another iconic car to add to my garage and none are more iconic than the Type 57 SC Atlantic by Bugatti with its beautifully streamlined body work which summed up everything about the 1930s obsession with speed and streamlining...

From this steamlined beauty I lurched lustfully towards my next car whose designer was inspired by the Atlantic (amongst other cars) to design this for the Morgan Motor Company...

A Morgan Aeromax

From Bugatti inspired beauty to bluff British muscle which inspired great rage in Bugatti's founder Ettore Bugatti who claimed they were the world's fastest trucks. Of course I'm talking about the Bentley Blowers...

These machines were classic examples of British imperialistic dick waving by men known as the Bentley Boys who supercharged the 4.5 litre engine in an attempt to win Le Mans but it failed to win any major races, however W.O. Bentley did win Le Mans with a 6.5 litre monster in 1929 and 1930. It was also the real car of choice for James Bond in the original novels too.

After that little lot I decided I needed something a bit more useful for every day use and I plumped for the quick and rather good looking, shark nosed Mitsubishi Galant VR4 (thats the quick version) with an estate body for extra haulage space...

After being so sensible I had a burst of stupidity which greatly amused Ben and Matt as I choose a ploughing engine...

Behold the amazing behemoth! Two of these large machines would be at either end of a field with a cable attached to both of them on their drums slung underneath the boiler. A specially designed plough would be attached to the cable and slowly dragged back and forth across the field by these machines winding in or out the cable slowly shuffling along the field edge as they went. Now I have no interest in ploughing but ploughing engines were some of the biggest traction engines ever built and for that reason alone I wanted one. Neither Matt nor Ben can understand this love of steam but driving such a contraption is considerably more difficult than a car and its turn key technology and a great deal more fun (no really)! After some thought though I decided to drop the ploughing engine and opt instead for one of these!

MHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!! I can see myself now, with a pipe clenched between my teeth set in a manic grin with highly waxed whiskers and a top hat on at a jaunty angle, mowing down all you little people, oh yes it's all so steampunk. This folks is a Hornsby Chain Track Tractor and it was an utter failure but the idea of a tracked vehicle was brought back to life during the First World War with the tank.

After that lunacy I moved back to practicality with a Land Rover 110 Station Wagon with the 200 tdi engine (because of it's bullet proof reliability)...

I then opted for a piece of Gallic style and technology which is hideously expensive if it breaks (according to Ben "it will break") a Citroën DS23 Pallas (that's the top end model). It looks like a space ship and when the engine is switched on it rises up on its hydro-pneumatic suspension like a space ship. It is cool and that is a fact.

It even has lights that swivel in the same direction as the front wheels so the lights point in the direction of travel but this clever innovation was illegal in the UK and had to be disabled for UK roads.

Of course a muscle car should be included on this list because so many iconic films have these thirsty leviathans roaring around. I went for the bad guys' choice in Bullit; a Dodge Charger...

The last car is the German machine in my line up and until the new gullwing SLS came along it was without doubt the best looking modern Mercedes. It is of course the Mercedes CLS...

Of course some jerks beat me to it in writing up this dull episode in my life with their own angle on what went down that evening and what they choose. My list has the largest combined age and the highest combined cost and therefore is the best.

Let them eat cake!

Merry Christmas, seasonal greeting and all that Jazz readers. I'm back visiting the family and thought a nice cake recipe would be perfect for this time of excess and over indulgence.

Firstly take 1kg of dried fruit mix and chuck in a bowl with a sprinkling of glacé cherries and mixed peel and soak over night (up to 24 hours, the longer, the better) in either port, sherry or brandy or if you're some kind of weirdo you can just use orange juice.

The fruit mix after its soaking in Port for 24 hours plus some lime marmalade

Take 400g of unsalted butter out of the fridge and leave it out for half an hour so it's soft and then cut it into small junks in a bowl then add a mixture of fine brown sugar and caster sugar (400g in total) to the butter and mix together.

Left: Mix the sugar and butter together...

Right: ...to make a thick batter.

Whilst you have your glamourous assistant mixes the sugar and the butter weigh out 110g of ground almonds and then add 350g of plain flour. Then create a well in the butter sugar batter and crack the contents of a large egg into it (crack open the egg into a mug first so you can fish out any bits of shell which finds its way in there) and add a heaped spoonful of the flour and almond mix and then mix together. Do this process with four more large eggs and then tip in the remaining flour and almond mix and mix thoroughly.

The egg in a well in the middle of the sugar/butter mix with a heaped spoonful of the plain flour/ground almond mix.

Now add the soaked fruit and any of the booze it was soaked in that wasn't absorbed and mix thoroughly. If the batter is the right consistency your should be able to scoop up a spoonful and which when turned upside should fall back into the bowl in fat lumps. If the batter is too dry it will stick to the spoon (slowly add more booze mixing thoroughly until the consistency is correct) and if it's too wet it will dribble off the spoon (slowly add more flour mixing thoroughly until the consistency is just right).

The completed cake batter.

Then spoon the cake batter into two deep, 8 inch diameter cake tins (you know the ones, they have a separate bottom bit) and decorate with blanched almonds. Then place in a preheated oven at 150 degrees Celsius for approximately an hour and a half until golden brown and cooked through.

Left: Ready for the oven!

Right: Put the cakes into a preheated oven at 150 degrees Celsius.

You've probably noticed that I used two loaf tins instead of a second round cake tin and that's because my mother doesn't have a second round cake tin so we used a loaf tin instead. Here below are the finished articles...

Happy baking and I hope to see you back here in the new year!

Tory! Tory! Tory!

I was baking mince pies with Charlie Cat and, that incurable Frenchman, Dom and we'd just sat down in front of the TV whilst the pies baked. Kirstie Allsopp was on and I commented that I thought her attractive but that she was a terrible tory. Both Dom and Charlie looked at me with a look of confusion so I went on to explain that the national press had suggested she'd become one of Cameron's babes. These women are a thinly veiled attempt to make the Tory party look less like a party of sexist, adulterous bores. 

Kirstie Allsopp: a beautiful woman and a terrible Tory

Charlie then dropped the bomb shell when she said, "but I thought you were a Tory..." I reeled from that comment spluttering and stuttering before finally recovering and confirming to them that I'm not Tory.

I grew up under Thatcher and Major and my conditioning started young with seeing my father hurling abuse at the telly whenever Thatcher's smug face appeared on the screen before leaping up and turning the TV off entirely. Thatcher angered my father that much and it puts me in mind of a quote by the infamous Frankie Boyle who when asked to comment on whether Thatcher should get a state funeral said, "most of us aren't interested in what type of funeral she [Thatcher] should have, we're all debating whether she has to be dead before we can bury her!" It wasn't just my father either, local politicians also had a role to play in building my hatred of the Tories. The local council in my home town when I was growing up was Conservative, true blue through and through and as a result of that had changed from a vibrant market town into a dead dormitory town. They were inept, spineless and greedy, slashing services in the town until there was fuck all left. When I started working in the holidays whilst at University I saw Tory voters close up and it made me hate the Tories even more. Small business owners in my neck of the woods were overwhelmingly Tory and they treated their workforce like shit and temps, like me, were even lower on the food chain. After seeing how those bastards treated their workforce I vowed to join a union as soon as I got a proper job. The Conservative party made me the lefty voter I am today and it will be a cold day in hell before I vote blue. Really I find this all too difficult to put into words but I think this sketch from the early 1990s still runs true today... 

Up shit creek without a paddle (in a rapidly sinking canoe)

Well this could be the last post for a while whilst housemates play silly c*nts. Two of my housemates are a couple and decided to announce that they'd start looking for a love nest for themselves in a few months time. They're not looking now because one of them isn't working full time and so is looking for a new job. This still started the hideous homeless ball of misery rolling with the other two housemates looking for a new house with a mate of theirs. The problem is they've appeared to have found somewhere and could be moving out in early October leaving me and the love birds up shit creek. The love birds will be okay as they can still find a place, I, on the other hand, could be looking for another place to live with completely new housemates or trying to find new housemates to fill the current place. Either way I have little time to do it in and no  breathing space if things fall through. FUUUUUUCCCCKKK!

If you find talk of cars boring stop reading now

Up in Malvern Hills the girls and boys of the Morgan Motor Company have been scribbling away furtively on the back of their Maths books and have come up with these concept sketches...

They've decided to call it the Morgan Aero SuperSports (yes they did leave the space out between Super and Sports). Pleased with their design they dashed to the woodwork room and the metal shop and got to work making it a reality. The result I think it is quite beautiful BEHOLD!

I want one! Not only is it beautiful but a BMW 4.8 litre V8 nestles under the bonnet so it goes like shit off a shovel. Sadly it also has a BMW-like price tag too at £108,000 which sadly is out of my price range but at that price you'd have thought they could've sourced a better steering wheel! It looks like it was stolen out of a rusting Ford Escort and spruced up a bit which is a shame because the interior trim looks a bit steampunk.

In other news Ben lent me some Co-Exist who sound like caustic, white noise merchants from the ninth level of Hell (that's a good thing BTW) but I still think Raging Speedhorn are better. Co-Exist's vocals sound positively angelic in comparison to the bellowing roars from Raging Speedhorn's vocalists who tag team your ears into submission. Co-Exist have it on Album and Song titles though with their first album called surgical removal of the teeth, toenails and drilling of the kneecaps featuring such tracks as urge to mutilate, teeth meet fist and stress related killing. Charming. Both bands are excellent and worth checking out.

The Writing Thing

Apparently my last blog (The Jolly Buffoon) was witty and well written. I still haven't worked out how or why but a re-enacting chum who sees me perhaps six to seven times a year instantly recognised me through my writing style and said it was one of the best blogs he's come across. Mind you this character did the military parade sketch from Monty Python (see below) in his 1742 Grenadier Uniform to the French Artillery.

I also know that isn't much of compliment considering how much total and utter crap is written on these forums but perhaps I should try writing as sort of a proper hobby. I've been thinking about what to write and looking at my book shelves for inspiration and found most of my shelves were filled with factual books on anything from motorcycles to architecture and military uniforms to cookery. I'm no expert on any of those subjects so writing a book on them would be a bad idea so I looked to my sadly small fiction section. This is mainly composed of historical murder mysteries, a few Sharpe like novels by Allan Mallinson and fantasy type stuff by Philip Pullman and George Mann. I have been thinking about creating a murder mystery in a fantasy world with a series of smaller mysteries interwoven around the central mystery. This would allow me, the writer, to insert 'red herrings' to throw the reader off the scent as well as allowing the world I create to unfold. At the moment the world is in Regency-like age, on the verge of an industrial revolution which the old magical order is stuggling to adapt to or destroy and ever growing empires battling with one another whilst threatening to collapse under their own weight. I've started thinking about the first chapter but really I need to work out the entire plot out before I start writing the actual story. The main problem I've been having at the moment is writer's block, a stunted imagination and the worst grammar known to civilised man, seriously writing this blog article has taken all night as I um and ah over the wording and grammar. Dyslexia is a bitch.

I don't think I'm ready to write yet, I need to read more to help me pin down what I want to write and how I'm going to go about it and I need to travel more, see the world and expand my imagination to what is possible. One thing is certain however there will be NO RETARDED CHARACTER NAMES! What the fuck is up there with stupid names such as Azoth, Durzo and Tisamon? Tolkein's stories had systems for character names based on his knowledge of ancient languages and those he had created but it seems that fuck-nut fantasy writers now seem to think that stupid made-up names are par for the course as well as giving no anthroprological thought as to how their world's races and societies developed.

On that angry note I shall stop my rantings and retire to bed but before I do I will urge you to get out there and vote on the 4th June even if you protest by spoiling your ballet paper get out and vote. Tristan (a champagne socialist of the worst kind) seems to think I have simular views as the man below. I can assure you that I'm just a weak wristed liberal if however you hear someone shout "I say we give the man a chance" turn round and tell Matt 'Sturmbannführer' Smith to shut up. 

Hat Check

Ok here is a quicky for you guys. I spotted the hat below and thought I would look awesome in it. Its a Tyrolean hat from the Austrian Alps and I think the small brim and feathers make it rather dapper piece of millinery to place on my esteemed nut.