Not me, the Jolly Jowetteer.

I've got the carpet for the floor of the Special so I'm almost on the grid but the Jolly-boat's still got the bonnet up and there's some big holes in it that want filling.

Still, it all looks very industrious so there must be something going on.

I had a go at the wired edge on the scuttle panel for the Special and, to get me started on the straight bit, I looked out the Jenny that I'd picked up in a junk shop a couple of years ago. In theory, they're a very good tool and to put a crease in a relatively soft piece of aluminium should have been child's play. However, the scuttle panel is quite big and wrestling it into line and turning the handle at the same time demands patience and a bit of practice. I got there in the end (the wheel wandered off course with ease) but the corners I had to crease by hand.

Which was fine until I realised that I'd managed to get one corner in the wrong place. I remarked the panel, unfolded the wired edge to the middle, trimmed the surplus and re-folded. There's now an extra curve in the scuttle which, in fact, doesn't look out-of-place and makes the whole area a bit more interesting.

With the bottom edges of the scuttle panel trimmed to size and the side panels extended, the majority of the bodywork will be complete. But before the panels go on, the interior wood has to be protected. At work, I added some concentrate pigment to a pot of undercoat I was saving for the kitchen windows but, as I'd forgotten to take a sample of the leather cloth along, I was a bit out on the colour and shade.

The Ambassador's Daughter applied the first coat and the following evening, after a quick re-mix, I added the second. Having spent a lot of years matching colours for textile and wallpaper printing, I was a bit too accurate in the match and was thinking that a 50% shade would have been a nicer contrast.

Still, it's not as though a lot of the paintwork is going to be seen - just the odd corner here and there and a bit of the doorpost; it's really a protective coating for the wood rather than an aesthetic contribution to the interior. I stopped at a carpet warehouse on the way back from Norfolk and bought an off-cut of a couple of metres of carpet. It's a semi-industrial quality of the type used in offices and so forth; quite a dark shade and has a bit more blue in it than the green of the leather cloth so, in the end, I think that the seats and the interior panels will be a lighter shade than the carpet - exactly the opposite of my original intention (and probably the better way round). But at only £20 in the sale (that never seems to end), who am I to be choosy.

I must remember, when closing off the body structure with the interior panels, they'll want some lagging behind.