.... came from the glass blowers' mural I found in Sweden the other week.

A quick sketch in my notebook saw the beginnings of a badge for 'The Special Builder's Breakfast Club'. I'd always wanted to do something to either paint or stick on the Hillman so, with a few hours to spare (my Mercedes was back in the garage with continuing electrical problems so I couldn't go anywhere) I pressed ahead with the design.

Et voila!

I'm going to print a couple on clear acetate first to see how they look.

I finished the barrel hoist for my local pub - it just squeezed in with millimetres to spare - and it's proved very successful. The green bit goes forward and backwards on rails and the hoist traverses left and right. I've just got to put the lower stills on runners so they can go in and out individually and I'm done.

I'm quite pleased with my barrel clamps - lifting the barrel locks the hooks under the rims and they're impossible to remove until the barrel is put down again. In an effort to get as much done as possible before I go magnetising again, I've faced up and tackled all the little jobs on the Hillman that have been niggling away at me.

A new handbrake cable - the last one was too short and the lever was always too low to grab. I got in a complete muddle splicing the rope around the thimble; I couldn't think how to do it - having done it for years on aircraft and so forth, this was a bit alarming. Anyway, I managed it in the end but it wasn't pretty.

A new battery in the clock....

I reshaped the left-hand bonnet panel so it fitted better - not perfectly but quite acceptable...

... bolted down the fronts of the wooden bits under the bonnet to stop them lifting and rattling all the time....

... neatened up the transition from the bonnet hinge line to the top of the cockpit - I originally got the levels wrong and it didn't dawn on me until the other day that this would be a good fix....

... and got rid of the step between the bonnet hinge and windscreen frame levels by adding a bit of aluminium bead I had floating about. I've also adjusted the steering box, taken a couple of millimetres off the flanges of the rear brake drums to stop them scraping on the backplates going round corners (it's a 'bitsa' axle and there's always been a slight problem with endfloat) and finally, touched up some rusty bits and given all the aluminium good polish.

Perhaps my next trip abroad will inspire me to design something for the radiator cap.