By: Ken Edgar

  Everyone has seen and heard the ideas to stay sane in this “new normal” plastered on all phases of media in the past few months. For me, however, it has been business as usual. My job is considered essential so I’ve had no furlough; I’m interacting with machines rather than people at work so distancing is not a problem. So what to do in the off-time? Interactions with more machines of course.

   Staying at home has enabled me to make some progress on the voluminous (my wife would say unrealistic) list of projects I’ve set forth for myself. My old Spitfire has finally had a thorough refitting, including an overdrive upgrade, a decade late. I won’t use the term “restoration” as it implies an attempt to make everything better than factory new. The door gaps on this car never have been right – and that appears to have been standard equipment from the factory. Thanks to a recalcitrant air compressor the paint job did not turn out as nice as hoped but it doesn’t seem to affect the drivability one bit.

   The TR7 has also been repainted to correct some defects in the original job and it has resumed work commute duties. The car adds some color to the sea of monochromatic sadness of the other cars in the lot at work.  Speaking of paint the time is nigh to finally paint my Dad’s old English Ford – I’ve been trying to get around to doing this since the early 2000s. My intent is to respray the body now and get the car back on the road. The engine is sound; the gearbox is rebuilt; and the ornery Borg Warner overdrive seems to be behaving itself - I’ll deal with redoing the interior as I go. The prevailing logic is that one will stay more motivated if the car is alive and one can interact with it on the road. This has worked for me in the past; however, procrastination can rear its unkempt head if one is not vigilant.

  In addition to this my MG Midget is being slowly transformed into a bumperless car and the factory-installed bodges to raise the car height to meet US safety regulations at the time have been excised. We replaced the whole front clip with the one from the ’66 body as well as using the ’66 springs when rebuilding the suspension. The car looks crazy, being half green and half white with paintwork running from ho hum to weather bleached. It’s like the automotive equivalent of a somewhat disheveled person walking along the road muttering to himself but that’s alright – I can still drive it in the meantime. Paint can wait until ragtop weather ends in late autumn.

  Now my Series III XJ6 needs an A/C evaporator; my old boat needs a new floor; and my truck needs its front suspension rebuilt. To top it all off, a friend has dangled a mid Nineties Jaguar XJ6 in front of me for a good price. I need another saloon car like another hole in the head but I have discovered I’m suffering from withdrawal as we traded our XJ8 for a more modern appliance that was “more practical” last year. I picture the XJ8 in my sleep, languishing on a wholesaler’s lot with the reality of being sent to the knacker’s yard (aka Pick a Part) looming ever larger. It screams at me “Look what you did to me!” in a smarmy midlands accent tinged with hysteria. Thus, it is because of a reluctance to let one die that I pile this responsibility on myself.

  My wife claims she wants me committed but she knows this is where I prefer to be. Let the present pandemic run its course – it will regardless of what we want. They might not be flesh and blood, but I’m among old friends.