Up betimes and thence to Romney Marsh.

Every two years I have to renew my GWO (Global Wind Organisation) offshore certificates. First Aid, Manual Handling, Working at Heights, Fire Awareness and Sea Survival are the five modules required to work in the GWO environment. Working at Heights involves also rescue at heights - something I found physically demanding the last time I did the course and wasn't looking forward to two years on. However, the most challenging part of the course was trying to get into a life raft with an immersion suit and life jacket on.

The Marshes are not unlike Cape Cod though the connection is literary rather than artistic. Both, despite having bleak outlooks, paradoxically kindling the extraordinarily colourful prose of Dickens and the vibrant palette of Hopper.

Particularly convenient is the proximity of Big Sister; the fashion designer and influencer who is known only to a select few.

Her client list over the last 40 years reads like a Who's Who of the Great and Good. Miss Whizzlong was married in one of Big Sister's creations.....

... the attention to detail clearly in a class of its own....

... and the inescapable extravagance, Big Sister's hallmark. I also come home with a big bag of deliciousness, she being a master chef to boot!

As I intend to fit a dual-circuit braking system to the Riley Special, I was pleased to obtain from Learned Counsel an ex-Cortina master cylinder and servo. Unspeakable, thick black oggin oozed from all the orifices as I was dismantling the cylinder and unsurprisingly, the bore was corroded. I believe it can be reinstated with one of stainless steel.

The servo appears to be in working order though I can't seem to find a way of extracting the pushrod. The internet will provide.

In order to establish the position of the master cylinder and servo and generally the pedal box, seats and steering column - I've added another couple of pieces of the buck. It's quite likely that I'll continue to build up the buck on the chassis as this seems to be the best way of making sure everything is going to end up in the right place. It's a lot of extra cutting and measuring - not in that order of course - and I'll still not be able to get a look at the overall shape until I can get the wheels and tyres sorted out. The scuttle is probably the most important part of the structure and for stiffness I'm going to follow the Jowett Jupiter example and construct it from steel, while the rest of the body and wings will be aluminium.

An interesting piece of research I'm undertaking is the reproduction of the Derrington twin carb conversion for the Morris Oxford. With the advent of scanning and 3-D printing, I'm hoping that the cost of the exercise, notably the pattern traditionally created by a toolmaker, will be substantially reduced.

Meanwhile, I shall be working on a new seat for a Pitts S1, a machine not for the faint-hearted.