TALES FROM THE SHED
Writing these stories of chaos, disaster and derring-don’t is always an entertaining process. Not least because I write the words, and then write them again until I’m at least vaguely happy with them, and then I sit down with the photos and choose which to use, depending largely on how the story worked out. This time is different. I’m wondering which pics to use first, because it could dictate how I write the rest. And you will never know whether that is what I did, or not. Which doesn’t matter at all, because I want to share with you my own offering in that unknown secret competition; the quest to find The Greatest Displacement Activity ever.
What do you mean, you don’t know what displacement activity is? Of course you do. It’s putting off the job which really does need doing by doing something else. Then getting bogged down in that displacement activity until it’s finished, and then deciding to tackle the actual important job. And then staring horrified at the realities of life and finding another displacement activity to protect a chap from the important job. It is possibly possible that a chap could prevaricate and procrastinate forever, and never actually complete the important task. Or indeed start it.
About what am I talking? Fitting the revived – miraculously revived – magneto to the CSR. I’ve fitted loads of magnetos. It is not difficult. Three big fasteners, a drive pinion and then sliding the timing cover back on. That’s all there is to it. Apart from setting the ignition timing. At which I was quite proficient for some time, because I ran a Matchless G9 for a while in the late 1970s (27 HPB, where are you now?) and every so often its advance / retard mechanism would slip, reducing the ignition timing to a profoundly random
