Fantastic pictures there, O-N!

Great to have you back, BTW.

Gee, 'missed seeing you car, Old Nail

(And reading your comments!)

That same low winter sun you mention is currently hitting my computer screen sideways at virtually zero degrees and is lighting up every speck of dust that's on there just like the air-borne frost you mention. I'm effectively looking at your stunning pics in 3-D

(In case you don't post again for a wee while, a wonderful Christmas to you and yours.)

How he keeps it so bloody clean is a mystery to me, my car is never that immaculate on a glorious summers day, let alone on a miserable, cold, snowy winters day

my car is covered in shite, how you keep it so clean???

glad your back on board old nail, if i may speak like this but we all missed you

and merry christmas too!!

Time to get the polish out, I think. This is what I see...

I like that. In fact that's what it did look like just half an hour before I took the pictures. As for keeping the car clean, believe it or not it hasn't been washed at all since I put it back on the road. Just one time I had to soak off some spattered flies and road crap, but that was back in August or around there.

The secret to keeping it clean is to use a proper wax on it. A hard wax containing carnuba is on there, and any dirt that settles just slides back off again. I've never had to wash it yet even during all this bad weather.

A complete stranger came rushing up to me the other day just as I was leaving Aldi with a trolley load of shopping. No sooner had I come out of the shop and through the automatic doors a woman of around late 50's dashed across the car park just to tell me that she absolutely loved my car. What surprised me the most was that she knew which was my car, as it was parked quite a distance from me.

She went on to tell me that they had owned two 2cv's, and that when they finally sold the last one "the kids cried". As I said she was in her late 50's so these must have been fond memories from the 80's perhaps, sparked off by the sight of my car. She knew the car was mine she said, because she saw it a lot on the roads around the area that I live, and it always brought a smile. It's nice when a car brings out the warmer side in complete strangers.

Now on another subject, It may be because I'm a contrary old bugger, but during summer I often paint pictures containing lots of snow, and then during winter I think of nothing else but those lazy summer days gone by, or those hopefully yet to come. But now that it's winter proper, and approaching the end of another year I took some time to look back over the last one.

I realised that one of the things that I never did when finishing this rebuild is to do one of those 'before and after' type photo groups. In my case it was much more a case of 'Right- job done, now let's get driving it'. While fishing around on my hard drive looking for stuff to delete to make more room I found some old before pic's of the old 'BluBamboo', so in order to put things right I've also found some equivalent 'after' pic's.

It seems hard to think of all the hard work that was involved in this now, it must be like when women have a baby. At the time it's 'never again', but before long the pain has melted into a distant memory, while the pride in the finished item remains. Working on those warm summer afternoons and evenings, while listening to golden oldies on the radio made the experience much more pleasant, and the times I spent working outside in sub zero temperatures, flecks of snow landing on my eyelashes and obscuring my view now just make me smile and shake my head.

The many previous pages of this blog contain the journey of course, but here are the missing silk purse from sows ear photo's. Notice that even the houses I've lived in have changed during the rebuild.

Cor Blimey

nuff said.

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