... up my sleeve. I don't have many of them. It was Christmas 1984 when I last cooked a piece of fillet steak and, as it was Beef Wellington, it probably doesn't count. The steak I mentioned in my last post was cooked following the instructions of the Chef on the Nexans Skagerrak (see July 2017, There's Always Someone). Served with new potatoes, spinach, Chantenay carrots and a caper sauce, I couldn't have wished for a better result. Try it; if you start with a decent piece of meat, you can't go wrong.

A friend gave me a photograph the other night, one that I'd completely forgotten about. My passenger, Mike, had an encyclopaedic knowledge of some specific actions during the 1st World War. A couple of us went with him to tour some of the battlefields near Albert on the Western Front and despite the sombre subject matter, we had a rather jolly weekend doing something which I wouldn't ordinarily think to do. I remember the trip also because I bumped into a very glamorous cousin of mine in the duty-free section of the Channel ferry. Anyway, Mike was delighted to pop around the houses with me in the Avro one evening; the date on the back of the photo puts it 22 years ago. It seems like yesterday, now I'm reminded of it.

Friston, just off the road to Aldeburgh, hosts annually a come-and-go-as-you-please all-comers classic and vintage show on the village green. Traction engines to NSU Quickly's and everything in between turned up and it's one of those get-together's where you see cars that for the rest of the year, seem to vanish. The meeting at Ufford is similarly attractive. The weather was perfect and that brought everyone out. My favourite of the day was this very rakish Lagonda saloon.

A trip to a chum's workshop to collect some bits and bobs from his Sunbeam for nickel plating. It's the sort of job which I'll have to do quickly otherwise, like the Le Mans Jowett's engined-turned dash, I'll be shifting it from one end of the shop to the other for the foreseeable.

The body work has been removed from the Rover and these bits...

... plus a few others, have to go in this hole here...

I think we could be missing a gear from the front of the box, the one that engages with the dogs on the right hand cluster, otherwise I think it's largely complete.

Having failed miserably to bleed the new brake system on the Hillman when I changed the master cylinder, I've since learnt that it's standard practice to prime a new cylinder. It's very easy and I happened to have a modern plastic reservoir into which a tube is fed from the other hole (or two tubes if you have a dual system). Fill the reservoir and pump the plunger until all the air's out - that's it. I'm going one better and I've made up a pressure cap for the Autovac (which is employed as the brake reservoir on the Hillman) and I'll pressure bleed the system with a few lbs from a foot pump.

Always a plan to have a trick or two up your sleeve.