Heritage

Porsche should hang it's head in shame. At this year's Le Mans 24hours race, scene of many race victories since 1970, Porsche were beaten by Ferrari (who were placed 1-2-3-4) in the GT2 category, and only won the 'small' prototype class (LMP2) against fragile garagistes and essentially amateur teams. The best LMP2 Porsche, run by a customer team, just made it into the top 10.

Its probably their worst Le Mans since the 50's; I wonder how many of their new customers in the East realise Porsche once had a glorious racing heritage?

Meanwhile, in city news, Porsche's CEO, Wendy Weidekind, is having to scape by on a total 2007 package of $89m.

SS7

"But Father's day is different..."

Last Sunday morning dawned. After the previous evening's festivities I was betwixt hangover and headache, but I dragged myself up to make the drinks, get the boys dressed and fed, get an update from the Le Mans 24hr race on the PC, feed the cat, and sort out four lots of two wheeled transport for Kirk.

At this point (10.15am) a voice piped up; “Isn’t it father’s day?”, at which point a card was hurriedly produced along with a small slab of chocolate.

Compare and contrast with Mother’s day, which involved, for Mrs SS7, multiple cards, breakfast in bed, flowers, expensive handmade choccy’s and lunch provided. When challenged on this point Mrs SS7 made the comment above.

Bloody Hallmark.

Funny Girl

I got dragged along to a production of Funny Girl at the CFT on Saturday. Generally musicals are all rather too metrosexual for this old petrolhead, but this was captivating, largely due to a simply magnetic performance from Samantha Spiro (even though one kept expecting La Streisand to appear at any moment).

http://www.cft.org.uk/cft-productions_details.asp?pid=173

SS7
PS The Telepgraph loved it too: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/05/10/btfunnygirl110.xml

Decked

After a long weekend the deck is mostly finish, and we celebrated (that and the arrival of decent weather) by having the first barby of the year!

Black & White II

Some pics taken at the Bay Estate after washing the car. The dias on the beach in the back-ground is the estate's millenium memorial> Its a sun-dial, with distances to various cities - Le Havre is 88 miles to the south west. The house is one of the few modernist houses in the area. Unhappily, the current owners have ruined it when they 'restored' it, the curved Crittal windows have been replaced by God-awful cheap UVPC rubbish.

An hour later, at low water, we picked up two WW2 era bullets, probably Lee Enfield .303 rounds left by the Canadians who trained in the area in 1944.

SS7

Black and White

Had the wheels powder coated black last week, now just needed to figure out what to do about the centres; keep them silver or paint them black?

SS7
PS Another photo here

Deck Part Deux

After another weekend of toil, I've finally finished the joists (simple once I'd figured out the best way to do it), fixed fascia boards (which will probably be stained later) and have started laying the decking (in between showers of rain).

The latter task is taking a while, I estimate I will have used near 600 screws once it is complete.

SS7