November 15th

Time for another trip out. So, I set off at a rather cold 7:45 to get up to Peterborough. For complicated family reasons I dropped Tom off at school on the way. (It is on the way, honest!) It was, however, a bit tricky getting Tom, school bag and trumpet case into the car! Luckily, the blanking off of the radiator had the beneficial effect of making the car run between 85° and 90°, which meant that the heater pushed out some warm air. It turns out that the heater is actually quite useful, when I originally thought that heaters in cars like this were really for wimps. I got to Peterborough rather early, surprise surprise, so I whiled away the time in MacDonalds with a coffee. Then, it was onto the VRO, where I parked up outside.

The VRO in Peterborough is a rather inauspicious looking building and I went inside and introduced myself, in the process jumping the queue of people getting tax discs. (They weren't happy.) Terry Hill came out to have a look at the car. This was a rather perfunctory investigation, although it was followed by a long petrolhead chat. He seems to be rather interested in cars and seemed to want to talk about them. Eventually, I tore myself away, with Terry promising to phone with a reg number later that morning. He was as good as his word and my mobile started chirruping on the way back. (No, I'm not stupid enough to use it while I've driving.) I went back by the scenic route, which was fun. Eventually, I stopped and listened to the message, which told me that I was Q449 MAV. So, stopped at Halfords on the way back and got some plates made up. Unfortunately, the Euro-style plates won't fit the gruesome reg plate mounting on the back of the car so that'll have to wait.

Later that evening I stuck the rear plate on with sticky fixers and attached the front one with some ally brackets and those plastic number plate bolts. So, assuming that the tax disc arrives tomorrow, I'm legally on the road. All I have to do now is to set the suspension up properly, set the engine up properly, get some more power, go to a track day or three, get a fire extinguisher, etc., etc. In fact, there seems to be just as much to do as usual.

November 16th

Well, the tax disc did arrive. What's more it had a rather pleasing number on it!

driving the car

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