It's that time of year again for Edd's birthday weekend get together and this time it's for a special birthday...the big 50! He has now joined Spot and Martin in the 50's, another year or two and I will be joining them! I noticed this year that Edd is beginning to look 50; his eyes have now gone, even worse than mine and Spot's, plus the grey hair now out numbers the dark.

We all arrived at the barn for 9 on the dot...well most of them did, it was just me who was 20 minutes late. For the morning session we had Edd, Spot, Paul and myself and were joined later by Martin. We got stuck into work after a cuppa and a chat. I had already made up a precision patch for Mr Rusty's offside chassis rail which was a work of art and even better than the original. You couldn't tell the difference! For your information Edd's cars are named after characters from the magic roundabout. Ermintrude is his V6 HB, Mr. Rusty is the white and rust GT, Florence is the Crayford convertible and Brian is the HB V8 shell. Edd started to work on Brian's bulkhead, but soon gave up and he and Paul then started work on Florence. I started work on Mr. Rusty's chassis rail with Spot. Edd, over the years, has been removing Crayford's special strengthening parts to enable him to repair the standard car and replace some of the Crayford parts with new metal. This has taken some years but she is now getting there. I cut the old rust out of Mr. Rusty only to find the chassis rail full of damp rusty metal. I cleaned out the rail and found the opposite side had also got some rust holes which meant that the bottom corner would all need replacing. Spot and I spent ages working out how best to do it. We needed to make sure the subframe locating hole was in exactly the right place. In the end we fabricated a new inner section and added a new tube and large washers both sides before welding it all back together. At some time before Edd's ownership someone had patched it in two further places down the rail. These were rotten so were also replaced. This took me through to Sunday morning and I had help from Spot and Tony. (Bigger job than we thought). Meanwhile the Crayford old frame and tub were separated and the frame cleaned up. The frame was in reasonably good condition and could be re-used; the tub would need to be re-made! Towards the end of Saturday Edd's family popped by the barn with presents and drinks which was our que to stop work as we were all going out for an Indian in Thame. I think there were 26 of us at the restaurant where Edd opened his presents and had his birthday cake. Shirley had made him an Ermintrude cake which he proceeded to turn into a convertible as you can see from the pictures below. He also had a present that I now want from Santa...a V8 pencil sharpener! I think we rolled back to the hotel at about 1:30. I was sharing a bed with Spot this year and Paul had the sofa bed. I slept right on the edge and didn't move all night, it was all very manly and above board. Paul and I were awaken by Spot trumpeting the revely without using a trumpet. This was very loud and didn't come from anywhere near his mouth. (You can guess where!). Needless to say we had to get up.

Sunday we were joined by Tony, who hadn't been to the barn before so that was an eye opener and Sharpy. Tony got to work adding strengthening to the boot area of the Crayford. We were putting more strengthening in than Crayford had done to help stop flexing in the boot area. Spot's convertible does flex a lot when you open and close the boot so we thought we could help while we had it in this condition. Spot also added some metal to the boot hinge which will allow Edd to remove the hinge if he ever needs to once the back end is put back into place. On the original Crayford's you couldn't get to the boot hinge nuts once it was all back together. Paul had to leave around lunchtime and Tony and Sharpy went about 5. We worked on until 9; rushed back to get something to eat but Thame was shut! We really did have a job to find anywhere that sold food open, so we went to the pub instead, then found a kebab van later.