I am famous

[michael1703]

DSC_0014_7.JPG

My 2 page article in Retro Cars Magazine each month almost covers rent on this place...

Sent from my D6603 using Tapatalk

Right, that's it, I'm becoming a journalist!

 

I had a go at being a gynaecologist once and that was semi successful apart from loosing my watch every time I pulled my arm out

[richardmorris]

What is very apparent is that many readers think that classic motoring journalists are paid to write and paid to indulge a passion for cars and have facilities paid for by the magazines. If this is not the case, which seems obvious from the responses perhaps it may be an idea for said magazine to say so. From subscribing to PC for the last ten years ( since some idiot bought a smelly cx 22trs), even I assumed that the workshop space was paid for by the magazine, if not the cars themselves.

 

I compile the 2cv section of the Citroen car club mag- don't be envious, no one else offered! voluntary obviously but then I'm not doing it for a living. But I have been published in private eye ( I'm so proud, it was in pedant's corner).

[dugong]

What is very apparent is that many readers think that classic motoring journalists are paid to write and paid to indulge a passion for cars and have facilities paid for by the magazines. If this is not the case, which seems obvious from the responses perhaps it may be an idea for said magazine to say so. From subscribing to PC for the last ten years ( since some idiot bought a smelly cx 22trs), even I assumed that the workshop space was paid for by the magazine, if not the cars themselves.

 

I compile the 2cv section of the Citroen car club mag- don't be envious, no one else offered! voluntary obviously but then I'm not doing it for a living. But I have been published in private eye ( I'm so proud, it was in pedant's corner).

Or you could stop making assumptions based on Evo (two of your three pictures), which has never made any secret of it being a rich man's mag run by rich men. Nothing wrong with that (hey, snobbery runs both ways), but it's emphatically not the case for the rest of the industry.

 

Other publications vary. Neither is true for the title I work for. I got a set of mats for my MGF once, that's been about as far as the kickbacks have gone.

[Bear]

You don't want to know what the rent is here. I chose this place well before writing for any car mags, though. I grew up in neighbour-free, stupidly rambling houses and that's where I feel comfortable and safe. Flipside, I don't do holidays, eating out, cinemas, gigs, clothes, pension and have had to move house 4 times in as many years because the insane places I like are almost always owned by mortgaged to the hilt, renting through desperation landlords. This one is different.

 

You should've seen the place I was haggling over before this one - didn't quite manage it, and I'm glad really. Carrington House, near Boston in Lincolnshire. 2.25 acres, Grade II listed Georgian with heated 4-car garage, indoor swimming pool, gun room, trophy room, big circular drive and imposing frontage,

 

Ignore the rent figure here. They were asking HALF that when I looked

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/property-41595584.html

[richardmorris]

You don't want to know what the rent is here. I chose this place well before writing for any car mags, though. I grew up in neighbour-free, stupidly rambling houses and that's where I feel comfortable and safe. Flipside, I don't do holidays, eating out, cinemas, gigs, clothes, pension and have had to move house 4 times in as many years because the insane places I like are almost always owned by mortgaged to the hilt, renting through desperation landlords. This one is different.

 

You should've seen the place I was haggling over before this one - didn't quite manage it, and I'm glad really. Carrington House, near Boston in Lincolnshire. 2.25 acres, Grade II listed Georgian with heated 4-car garage, indoor swimming pool, gun room, trophy room, big circular drive and imposing frontage,

 

Ignore the rent figure here. They were asking HALF that when I looked

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/property-41595584.html

First look I thought that's a bargain, only £50 more than my place. Then I saw that was per week!

 

This is me. Or at least the main place.

[warren t claim]

Is that the group test? It's a bloody lovely car.

 

Horrible journalism though, why do they always resort to hackneyed stereotypes of the original owners? I'd rather read about what the cars are like to drive.

I blame the Martin Buckley school of journalism. Did he make any references to On The Buses or Tony Anholt from Space 1999?

[Bear]

When I looked at Carrington (sorry, ain't Georgian - Georgian style, I'd forgotten) they were asking £2000pcm, including grounds maintenance. Because it's a PITA of a place to get to and needed either satellite or WiMax broadband (or a leased line), I wanted to be nearer £1600/month but was prepared to do maintenance myself.

 

Pool was powered by a ground source heat pump - the place we checked out before that was in Louth, was £1Kpcm, and had a pool that was heated with an oil fired furnace costing almost £12,000/year in heating for the whole place.

 

£1K/month on OIL. Before anything else. And it had the weirdest architecture ever, including a master bedroom on two levels with a bath behind the headboard of the fitted bed.

 

I think the poshest one would have been in the grounds of somewhere near Warwick, a 10 acre park, but no parking.

[derskine]

I'm slightly famous too

 

[richardmorris]

This is the kitchen of my my next door neighbours- mine isn't nearly so grand, although the same style. Their heating bill is astronomical- 30 ft high ceiling in the lounge! So much for barn conversions.

[richardmorris]

I blame the Martin Buckley school of journalism. Did he make any references to On The Buses or Tony Anholt from Space 1999?

I have a theory that Martin Buckley is actually The Doctor.

[Bear]

This is the kitchen of my my next door neighbours- mine isn't nearly so grand, although the same style. Their heating bill is astronomical- 30 ft high ceiling in the lounge! So much for barn conversions.

 

No Aga? No thank you. (Okay, comedy snobbery, but I genuinely cannot cook on anything other than an Aga because that's what I grew up with. I once nearly poisoned some friends with badly cooked chicken as the idea of 'pre-heating' didn't even cross my mind. The one here is grubby, as old as me and I maintain it myself).

 

I'm always suspicious of clean kitchens. Ours is... scruffy. Mostly due to the cat-hair covered tartan blanket in front of the Aga (or more recently the cat-hair covered giant red beanbag, because spoiled cats) with a demanding spotty cat waiting for anything being made that involves some sort of dairy product, and the kitchen table which serves as a kitchen table - so usually it's under piles of post, old computers, broken things, laundry, cats sleeping on the laundry (only clean), the screwdriver I can't find in the garage and so forth.

 

Actually for anything mentioned in the house, just assume cat-hair-covered applies. I have no idea where it all comes from, there's no way they can be making it all.

[garbaldy]

Aga's are shit, proper autoshite cooker

Expensive to run crap at cakes and if you forget you have something in the oven you don't get the smell in the house, you end up with little black surprises occasionally.

They are good at expensively heating the kitchen though.

[AnthonyG]

More or less the first copy of Practical Classics I bought, in 1986, had the letter pages aflame about whether a Morris Marina (earliest 15 years old then) could/should feature in the magazine.

 

The copy I flipped through at Sainsburys at the weekend had the letter pages aflame about whether a Ford Focus (earliest 16 years old now*) could/should feature in the magazine.

 

Plus la change, plus la meme chose or however that French phrase goes!

 

*Yes, really. I feel old.

 

I buy Classic and Sportcar but not every month like I used to. Classic American is another occasional buy. Some of the CS & C writers do seem a little minted (albeit not via journalism!!)

[Richard]

I can remember that debate, that's around the time I first bought it too. One of the first issues I bought had a feature on the P6, which could be as little as 10 years old at the time.

[Lacquer Peel]

More or less the first copy of Practical Classics I bought, in 1986, had the letter pages aflame about whether a Morris Marina (earliest 15 years old then) could/should feature in the magazine.

 

I'd love a Rover 45 article in PC, maybe focussing on the near-pointless V6 model. They do need to move with the times.

[dollywobbler]

It is an odd one isn't it? I mean, the Triumph Stag and MGB were featuring in classic mags in the 1980s, when they'd been out of production for about five minutes. But comparing with a Ford Focus? I don't think any of the mags were even featuring BMC Farinas back then. Boring saloons were just boring saloons. The Focus is in the same pot. Classic interest is rising in the Puma though. People (ha!) seem to like sporty, fun things. 

 

C&SC has a bigger budget. Which is probably why I still find it a very good read. As most of the tinkering seems to happen in the car park at lunchtime, I guess they don't have a workshop. I know PC does, but I also know the staffers don't get much time to play in it. The Automobile is good too though. It's like how I remember classic car magazines being in the 1980s. Half of Autoshite seems to write for Classic Car Buyer these days. Mr Ramrod has a regular column!

[Bear]

Aga's are shit, proper autoshite cooker

Expensive to run crap at cakes and if you forget you have something in the oven you don't get the smell in the house, you end up with little black surprises occasionally.

They are good at expensively heating the kitchen though.

 

Costs £40/month to run on oil pretty much no matter what (mains gas ones are more expensive, electric storage heat ones are insane, solid fuel are a real bore to keep running - that's what I grew up with. Up at 6am, raddle the grate, take a scoop of ash outside still with little glowing embers, get a hod full of those little coke eggs, pour it in, sit down with Sugar Puffs to watch Roland Rat then bugger off to school), keeps the kitchen at 17° and the bedroom above it too, and I can bake, cook and make sweets & jam on it. Trick is to remember things like "if it says 200°, leave the top open door open" and using heavy sheets or baking trays with water to regulate for baking.

 

Flipside of that fixed oil consumption - the central heating really only kicks in when the outside temperature is 8° or less. Joke is that Scots genes mean I find 22° 'room temperature' unbearably hot; t-shirts until single-digits but sweaters are wonderful things and a lot cheaper to run than the boiler! Plus toast & kettle - smart meter tells me every time I want tea or toast the electric gadgets will take us out of the solar panel's capability to run the house, and they chew 3Kw or so for the few minutes they're running. Four massive PVs on one of the barns means that through summer we generally run zero consumption during the day, despite both working from home.

 

4 ovens are better for bakers, but take up a lot of space and are a bit posh.

 

Do cheat a bit, mostly when making candy - I have an IR thermometer so I can check what it's up to.

[garbaldy]

Ours is mains gas and we have to turn it off in summer as the heat in the kitchen is unbearable, can't turn it down or you have to wait for a day to heat back up,

I call it the white elephant and if it wasn't a tied cottage I would rip it out and sell it.

I bet they where invented for farmers wife's to cook all day to feed the farm workers, they are only cost effective if you cook loads with them,

[Bear]

Pretty much, yes. Mains gas ones are brutal to run, though, my parents do the same with their gas one.

[dugong]

Peugeot 604s, ovens and personal finance. WOAH

[Mr_Bo11ox]

You mean 'zzzz'

[dugong]

You mean 'zzzz'

It's better than a 'what I had for breakfast cheese day', though.

 

I was starting to enjoy AS again after a bit of a slump following a lot of tedious guff I couldn't be mugged flicking through. Seemed to be doing it for a lot of people though - who am I to be the arbiter of shite?

[Bear]

I thought the whole point of AS was the amazing variation of threads, people and stuff without any "if you can't say anything nice" bollocks that essentially keeps a forum from being a community.

[garbaldy]

You mean 'zzzz'

Sorry we are boring you I forgot I was on the blue forum so as penance here is a car PIC for my sins.

 

[Bear]

Damnit, as I scrolled my first thought was AMC Pacer.

 

That needs hitting with the stick, btw.

[dugong]

What? I can't hear you from my pool full of gold coins (like in Duck Tales).

[Bear]

[dugong]

I wish for Lacquer Peel to like this post.

[fotorabia]

Im famous..ive had oodles of pages and Star Finds in CC and PC..in the form of rusty photos...Discovered-Lost and Found are the pages that got me obsessed with photographing rotten shite.Ive earnt the odd £50 here n there...id do a magazine based purely on scrapyards...but i dont think it would last...

[Bear]

Not a magazine, but a couple of books have been done. If you have a good archive of images, and some stories to go with finding the cars, you could talk to Crowood or Veloce about putting something together. If you've got any stories of cars found like this that have made it back onto the road, that's even better.

 

50 Shades of Rust and Barn Finds You Wish You'd Found have been done. What I'd go with would be cars lost in the wild and restored, titled something like "Out of the Forest", with lots of pictures of nature reclaiming machines.