Not long after returning from Norway, a slight tickle in the throat heralded the onset of an extremely painful cough. I hadn't been to the Doc's for years but thought it best to trundle on down to the surgery and see about some antibiotics.

Then all I had to do was look out of the window and sit it out. Thank goodness I was clever enough to invest in a subscription to Netflix. I finally got to the end of 'Breaking Bad', sat through days of 'Designated Survivor', 'Homeland', Person of Interest' and, as the course of antibiotics came to an end, so too did 'The Crown'. The alternative - regular daytime television - would have been purgatory. I promised myself I would do this and that; catch up with bits of reading, do some drawings for bits of machinery but, I didn't.

Unlike Leon who busied himself making a new catch tank for the breather on the Climax engine...

... and continued his experiments with the Special's brakes.

Mr Summer's looked in to give me his Morris Minor windscreen to assemble...

And I bought a new tool bag for the Hillman - idle hands often turn to Amazon! The last canvas bag had been in service in several different cars going back 30 years and tools were beginning to escape through holes and rattle around in the back.

And while I'm upgrading the front brakes, I wondered about putting a twin carb manifold on the Morris Six. I've got all the bits but as I'm only getting about 22mpg at the moment, do I want to spend more money on fuel for not very much more performance? I might just rebuild one of the spare engines with a twin manifold and hold it in reserve. As I was in recovery mode, Counsel and I popped up to Redditch to see about having the discs and bells made for the Hillman. We had half an hour with the chaps at the engineers and decided they'd be made in two pieces - the bell and the disc being held together with bolts threaded into the disc. They'll be a little bit more expensive than I'd anticipated but still a lot cheaper than not being able to stop in a real emergency. We elected to come home a different way as the traffic on the A1 and A14 was at a stand still on the way up. We came back via Warwick and looking in the car mirror, I thought I recognised the scene. I parked and dashed back up the road to get the snap.

100 years ago, I bought for £10 in a junk shop, a small coloured etching of the West Gate at Warwick. It's absolutely charming and I've even reproduced it in miniature in one of my paintings - I like putting pictures on walls in paintings. I couldn't remember the artist's view-point in the etching - I discovered that it was across the road when I got home but, very little else had changed.

When I say I 'dashed' back up the road, that's not entirely accurate - I think I'll be off games for a while yet.