There were a few surprises in the unsold lots at The Great Collector's auction.

The Straker Squire, Armstrong Siddeley Hurricane, the AC Acedes, and the MG VA amongst a few others, either failed to come close to the lower estimate, or didn't get any bids at all. I think a few deals have been struck since, though my information isn't up to date.

It was the first time that I'd seen the Donnet in daylight.

A rare car - even in France - and it was snapped up for not much at all.

I was happy to meet up with Jano at the auction. He'd sent me a video of a rally in which he'd recently taken part driving his Vauxhall and winning his class.

The link to the video produced by the organisers is https://youtu.be/4qVJC21iWYc?si=3BojB2vXsLOHcSle I must visit at some point; the countryside looks wonderful.

Immediately after the auction, I had to leave to do an emergency welding job, and the next day I was flying to Finland to load a cable layer, thus removing me from the clearing up process.

We didn't get off to a tremendous start on our magnetising job. In their wisdom, the factory management had decided a garden gazebo was all that was needed for our electrical equipment, desk, computers etc.

Happily, a small gust of wind put paid to their plans, and the maintenance crew had to go and find something both bigger and more substantial. I don't need to enlarge on the moral of this all too familiar story. The next day dawned bright and with our equipment set-up and tested...

... we had time to appreciate the wildlife in the bay. The male of this breeding pair is reputed to be very aggressive. I have a stout stick to hand should he launch a surprise attack.