I thoroughly enjoy cooking and though never following a recipe, manage more often than not to produce a tasty meal from whatever is to hand - I had good teacher in Cook.

Not all of my neighbours are happy with my culinary pursuits, but their washing-day woes are now at an end with the introduction to my kitchen of an air fryer.

It's absolutely whizzo, and I've permanently disabled the electric oven and hob (I have a handy camping gas stove in its place) and what's more, my electricity bill has plummeted - well, it's more or less what it was in the Olden Days.

This setup is my over-winter plan. I managed to not have the oil-fired central heating on last winter - it was relatively mild with only a few scattered spells of minus temperatures - but I must confess that I couldn't do without my electric blanket.

Whilst ferreting about under the bench for I can't remember what, I turned up this Amstrad e-Mailer Plus. It's still in its box, still in its plastic bags on the inside, and has never been used. I remember we had one at the print works when they first came out. We didn't really understand it and the service charges were exorbitant. The fax machine remained the dominant comms tool.

A visit to a local paint shop is always interesting. I'm wondering whether I should avoid painting the Special altogether and go for 'wrapping'. I'm told it's less than half the cost; damage to the wrap is easy to repair, and if you fancy changing the scheme, it's not such a big deal. Of course, I've still some way to go before needing to make a decision in this regard.

With the crankshaft sensor set up in a tool post on the lathe...

... and Awkward's new wiring loom for the Megajolt Lite Jr ignition system in place, we were relieved to see that the basic system works very well. I was concerned that with the trigger wheel not running quite as true as I might wish, the varying gap between the wheel's teeth and the sensor might cause problems. Not so. I wound the toolpost out at least 6mm and the signal was still prompting sparks.

Buoyed with this success, we plugged in my laptop to find that there was a comms error between the MJLJ control box and the computer. It's an older kit - version 3 - and has an RS232 to USB output to the computer. We discovered that the cable I was sold had drivers incompatible with the system. Fortunately, young Albie turned up and had with him a more obliging conduit. We still couldn't get it to work. It was a very frustrating few hours - I hadn't a clue about any of it - and everything Albie and Awkward tried was to no avail; until the following morning when Awkward decided he'd re-read the installation instructions. We had comms! Trebles and stem ginger biscuits all round.

Coinciding with the installation in my house of a 'smart' electricity meter, for the last six months I've been keeping in Excel, a daily record of my consumption. Visual confirmation that utility prices have gone through the roof.