Adrian Hollister

Quite a busy day today with lots of people around and an evening party, but the highlight was an afternoon face painting. This time of year I spend quite a bit of time face painting for charity. I have wondered if I should turn this into a business, but I much prefer doing it for fun whilst earning money for local charities. Lekhampstead fate is one of those great old style fates, wonderful people, loads of small stalls, and a great lack of serious commercialisation. The local people here in the Downlands are just great when you get to know them and there is nothing better than seeing the smiling faces (or scary faces) of kids freshly face painted. All the face painting at this event was by donation only and I made a nice £25 for charity - not bad for a couple of hours fun painting kids faces!

The location for the fate was in the grounds of the big house in Lekhampstead and organised by the owners, the Carr's family. Is there a more idyllic location up here on the Berkshire downs? I'm not sure, but I do know that it's a shame that this appears to be the last Lekhampstead fate. I do hope that can revive it for 2010, I would certainly be happy to come along again.


Foot note: If you would like Adrian Hollister to face paint for a local charity event please use the Contact Me button on the left.

Woohoo! The landy with all my repairs has passed it's MoT.

What an utterly messy job - undersealing the landy. So good prep was needed, first a plastic sheet on the ground (an old dust sheet) and reverse the landy over it. This keeps it in place and helps to cover off any over spray of the gunk. Next step was to cover everything that I didn't want coated - exhaust, wheels, brakes etc. I did this with a whole bunch of old packaging paper and a bit of paper tape to keep it in place. The underseal can go anywhere, so make sure you have a good wrap of paper with no gaps.

For the underbody seal we used some stuff from Machine Mart - Tetraschutz. It's only 5 quid or so for a litre and you can use a standard compressor and underseal gun for it. With only the rear boot section to do I used a couple of litres and put two coats on the boot area and a single coat on anything else I could see. The only (and quite a big) down side is that I didn't have the time or kit to jack the landy up and take the fuel tank off. So there is a whole area above the fuel tank that has not been covered. This should not be too much of a problem though as most of that area I have coated with zinc primer and a layer or two of hammerite black. I also took the opportunity to spray some in the chassis and wheel arches and well just about anywhere that looked like the original underseal was starting to crack or fall off.

I've got to say though that the Tetraschutz went on very well and has clung to just about everything it was aimed at. It took a day or so to dry into what feels (and looks) like fresh bitumen. Only time will tell how well it stays on there and how good it is at repelling dirt and water.

One note though this stuff sticks - it seems to especially like any exposed skin and it mostly likes to clump together a group of hairs for fun. So wrap up well, then wrap up again over the top of it

Well the Green’s have not done badly in West Berkshire - 77% more votes in 2009 this despite a very low turn out of just 37%.

We secured 4619 votes, which is close to the UKIP 6126 and Lib Dem 7167 votes. Tory old boys took 18336 votes. Labour were of course in fifth place behind us again.

Top five in order were:

Tory Old Boys Party 18336 (up 20%)
Lid Dem wannabe like you Tory’s Party 7167 (down 17%)
The only got one policy UKIP Party 6126 (up 3%)
Pro communities Green Party 4619 (up 77%)
Spent and wanting New Labour Party 2011 (down 37%)

I've spent the best part of the afternoon at Newbury train station. An odd choice perhaps for an election day, but I have been chatting and leafleting people on the way back from their daily commute. A good deal of the people who stopped to talk were just not going to vote - "it's a waste of time all politicians are corrupt" is the message they relay. When they hear that I'm Adrian Hollister and I'm from the Green Party and I'm going to contest the General Election here and the council elections - they stop and smile. The grumpy face that greets most politicians at the moment (especially the poor ole Lib Dem chap I saw the other day taking a good verbal beating from anyone the came close to him) was not present. People like conviction politicians, especially ones who have put other peoples interests in front of their own; and Green Party politicians are seen as the most ethical and the least corruptible of any political group. They are right - we do what we do for the betterment of our society, not for personal gain and not for glory or fame. Tory's and Lib Dem's should note this - it is their biggest liability (as their leaders have recognised).

I went to my local polling station at just before 10pm to cast my vote. It was clear that very few people had been there, with the polling clerks estimating less than 10%. Whilst this does not include postal votes (something that is usually quite high in very rural areas) it is perhaps an indication on the numbers of people put off by the corrupt Tory, Lib Dem and Labour members of parliament. I can only hope that by the next election faith has been restored in the political system and that people vote to take down the old Gentleman's clubs in Whitehall and remove the cheers and jeers politics that goes with it.

One of our new ex-battery chickens Bernard, or General Nicey as the girls had named her has died. Not quite sure if it was natural causes or if the dog's had something to do with it (generally they leave the chickens alone). At least she had a few weeks of good life following her internment in a battery cage.

The rusty boot in my old Discovery 300TDI is not unexpected. Just about any Disco of this age seems to suffer. Anyway, old boot floor was taken out (see previous post) and a nice new one welded in by the father in law. To do this I drilled what seemed like a million holes in the new boot floor and he welded through them. This should give something akin to the spot welds originally used - they may actually be stronger as there are more weld points.



As you can see in this picture, there weld holes are a bit rough, but no one is going to see them so I don't need to grind them off. Everywhere has had two coating's of high zinc primer (80% zinc) and on the inside of the landy there is bit too generous coating of Hammerite.



You can see in the picture above the nice coat of zinc primer and the first coat of Hammerite black. Each of the weld points has this treatment as have areas that are likely to rust (gullies around the boot floor etc).



Areas not exposed have also had a coat of galv repair zinc spray (95%+ zinc) then a good spray of Waxoyl. This should help keep these areas rust free for many more years. None of it looks elegant though, but you never get to see it so who cares!

Now time to put the internal trim back together and replace most of the rusty screws, washers, nuts and bolts with stainless versions.