A Dirty Weekend Away - Part 4

At the house, an icy haired woman with a smiling face is unloading the last trimmings from a horse trailer, though the reins she carries are slender, I expect to see a horse but there is none.

“Good morning,” she says, “Are you with this?” gesturing at the toad. I step around something that wasn’t there before on our way into the house, as I admit that I am with the car and there is a husband somewhere. The house is now warmed, not just with a female presence but with a kins-female presence. The toilet bowl in the washroom is lime stained and a dirty bra hangs from the towel rail but it’s a rural and friendly home. It’s a home full of people who don’t care much for the mundanity and unnecessary burdens of cleaning but more for enjoying life and filling their days with excitement and achievement. Back in the dining room the horse trailer and unidentified cart in the garage are explained by two beautiful huskies leaving nose smears all over the French doors. They want to come in and are allowed to do so, to meet the new people.
Cindy

(c) Andy
Biscuit

(c) Andy
Go play, what?

(c) Andy
I notice, now, the beautiful solid wood furtniture that you can’t seem to buy these days and borrow the ornothologists reference book to look up a duck I saw last week. I admire the family dog and horse show photos. I am happy to smell of husky and the huskies are happy that I smell of cat, and faintly of lama. We go out and look at the car parts in question and finally I find “the stash”.



(c) Andy

An innocent looking barn is a workshop. Outside is a Rover 900 and an old rallye-sport Peugeot. A Jaguar Series I sits in the grass looking better on the outside than its WIP inside.
Old cat

(c) Andy
Check out the insurance sticker

(c) Andy

There’s a dishevelled mini backed into a hedge,
pretending it's not here

(c) Andy

4 old lady landrovers in this field and more that I can see in the field behind.
Older ladies

(c) Andy

One has an impressive, fancy, modified garden gate for a bull-bar. Do landrovers NEED bullbars?

Fender-bender

(c) Andy

Squeezing into the barn, past the Aston Martin on ramps and the Westfield under tarps, and the chaos of gearboxes, tools, and trash that lies around, we head upstairs to a room full of shop shelves packed with parts – pistons, tents, racks, seats, exhaust parts, alternators, bearings. Art climbs over boxes and wades through packing material and begins to root through each gearbox, asking the first, “What are you my dear?”

I leave them to it to photograph some more outside but not without noticing large land rover posters, billboards and a few photos obviously taken in the UK. There’s a genuine-looking arctic crossing sign on the wall downstairs and some NorthWest Territories plates hanging on the wall.
Landy sign

(c) Andy
Signs

(c) Andy

Another customer arrives with his SeriesII to collect 2 new wing mirrors and a relay. He leaves with them and borrows tools and as Art works with us, he tries to give advice to the man working outside on whether the wing mirrors are handed or universal. We step outside and mutually admire eachothers’ vehicles.

Art is interested in my friends who work at Jaguar and we talk about Dan applying for a job with Land Rover. Art mentions that he doesn’t do so much work with the factory anymore , but they used to take them out on secret test runs in the back country of Langley for undercover testing so no-one in the UK could find out what they were up to. Yep, Langley would sure make for good Land Rover testing country.

We were paying cash and promised to part-ex our existing box so Art throws in a Disco transfer box complete with cushty quiet helical gearing. We load everything into the back of the toad, fetch our stuff from the house and shake hands. We joke about cursing him in 6 months time when this project is under way. We try hard to resist the temptation to commit to the founders day meet next week (it is a long way).
Oldest lady

(c) Andy