The collective noun for true chums is 'a kindness'...

Well.....

Thanks so much, Amy, for getting me Jaqueline's address. (Hold fire on the whisk, though, as Pippin has at least two, and more are available from Emmaus if ours don't suit!)

Jaqueline, thank you for trusting us, strange band of Muppet/Hobbit/River Gypsies that we are......

Chris and Simone, how lovely to hear from you again!! As soon as my computer blogging expert (one James Duck....) shows me how, I shall add your blog to the list that I follow. This will add at least two readers to your audience......... Hope all is well with you both down in Bristol and that the winter hasn't been too much of a trial by absence of fire.......

(Okay, for those of you who are new to the wacky world of Pippin, allow me to explain: all the above are replies to recent blogs or comments on blogs made by 'The Chums of Pippin'. This group has no membership rules other than reading this rubbish and engaging with it. You are welcome to join in provided you aren't rude.....)

Anyway, that bit over, what have we been up to?

Yesterday was a blessed day-off from the ever increasing pressure of work at The Hole Making Shop.

I trooped up to Emmaus at about 10.00 to scout out any likely tools to reserve for restoration. I didn't find any, but a snoop around the barn did turn up a rather unprepossessing box with a little handle poking out of the side. I opened it to discover, oh joy of joys, a fully working, if rather damp and mildew smelling, hand-cranked phonograph!

Excited, I took it into the main building where I saw my friends Alex and John. What did they think??!

Well, actually, not much, until I popped into the records section, got a 78, put it on, wound up the phonograph, put the needle on the record and........

Flooded the room with Frank Sinatra singing 'September Song'......!!!!!!!!!!!

Gorgeous!

They immediately put £50-00 on it!

HURRAH!!!!

Now, some of you may consider me a bit of a mug for not offering them a fiver for the 'old box' and laughing all the way to the bank having flogged it on ebay for a fat profit. Yeah, well, I suppose I could have done that, but actually, I enjoy the idea of the charity benefiting from it's discovery much more.

If this writes me off in your book as a sanctimonious git, then I'm sorry. All I have to say in my defence is that Margaret Thatcher didn't do for us all.......

Next stop was the tip at Milton to drop off the re-cycling.....

Jackie was with me as we were en-route to Cambridge on a rare mutual week-day-off spree.

She knows, only too well, that 'a quick trip to the tip at Milton to "drop off the re-cycling"'..... is little more than a thinly veiled excuse for me to go foraging for more tat to restore.

You may remember from a couple of posts back how some mis-begotten snot-gobbler did me out of my rightful ownership of a wrecked Raleigh Superbe bike which had all the bits and then some that I need to restore the one in the shed?

Well, as it happens, there was the ruin of another rod-braked bike there, about to be shoved into the death grip of the JCB.

Precis of long story: saved it with seconds to spare! It has period dynamo lights, a front mudguard I can repair, and possibly the parts to replace the front brakes on the Raleigh project.

For a fiver!!!!!

R-E-S-U-L-T!!!

All I now have to say to my bike-project-thieving-nemesis is an echo of the immortal words of Monty Python's 'Knights of Ni':

"I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a 'amster and your father smelt of elderberries!"

HAH!

Oh, come on....little victories.....little minds..... give me a break here.

Anyway, my long-suffering wife helped me load the stricken remains of a very dead Pashley bike into the car before driving round the corner to park up at the Park and Ride.

If ever a woman deserved a medal, it is Jackie.......

We got the bus into town, did various bank related tasks, bought me some new shoes then went for lunch at Cambridge's branch of 'Cote' restaurant. A proper-job place, this, we had steak frites and a couple of glasses of red wine. Service was impeccable, ambience very pleasant and bill not extortionate. One could not ask for more if looking for a treat.....

We then walked from Cambridge centre to the cineplex near the railway station ( a fair old peg, but justified by the lunch....), there to see "The King's Speech".

Colin, you absolute bastard. I had nearly forgiven you for shooting Mr D'Arcy from under me. Now we are middle-aged, you have to compound the felony by usurping the role of King George VI, the role I was clearly born to play!!

You sod!

This is unsupportable!

In an alternative universe, it is me who's doing the red-carpet Oscar-ceremony stuff, and you who is in Cambridge, working your arse off for no thanks and a paltry recompense making holes in things.......

Oooh, Hang on....that would mean I'm not married to Jackie and YOU are!

Keep your bloody Oscar, matey, and your fame and riches.

I know when I'm truly well off......