T Break thread 2023

[Gerard C]

Originally Posted by delta

I had a 3 litre Rover . What a car leather seats .Happy Days

I started with a…Fiat 500! The most awarded here re this kind of "sport" was the Citroën DS. Hence its nickname, La Diva des Parkings! A lot of room, flat floor and Bob's your uncle!

[Gerard C]

Originally Posted by andy97

But were “they” pulled down at the time (and up afterwards)?!

Andy, must be my age for sure but at first glance I read "were they pulled up"…

[Mike Harte]

Originally Posted by andy97

But were “they” pulled down at the time (and up afterwards)?!

A gentleman never divulges such things!

[Gerard C]

Given the average age here, I guess there's prescription, yes? Buuut who wants to see old pictures now? Not me!

[Paul D]

I don't know what the hell you lot are talking about!

Rover SD1 for me. Mark 1 Granada had plenty of room too...

[Gerard C]

Originally Posted by Paul D

I don't know what the hell you lot are talking about! Rover SD1 for me. Mark 1 Granada had plenty of room too...

[S griffin]

So anyone got much planned for the weekend regarding Easter?

[Peter Mallett]

Gah! Got a reminder from the DVLA to tax my race MGB, the form says tax exempt so no fee as per previous years. I go online and they want me to pay £365.00! I then thought I'd see what they say about my road going MGB which is also 1965. It says no fee (I "taxed" it in March) so the rules havent changed but now they want me to pay 50p for the pleasure of checking!

[Gerard C]

May be you should look for any recent change in your DVLA management… Sounds like a french company, in other words Absurdistan!

[Peter Mallett]

Originally Posted by Gerard C

May be you should look for any recent change in your DVLA management… Sounds like a french company, in other words Absurdistan!

[midgetman]

Originally Posted by S griffin

So anyone got much planned for the weekend regarding Easter?

Working, but a day off Monday Will try to catch up on racing streams around family commitments.

Sent from my AC2003 using Tapatalk

[E.B]

Originally Posted by midgetman

Will try to catch up on racing streams around family commitments.

If anyone is interested the Bathurst 6 hour (for "Production" cars) is on this weekend. (starts 11:45 am local time so not the most social time in the UK (we are +9hrs atm).
The FT World Challenge (GT3 cars) is on before at 9:20am local)

Live stream for all weekend for International viewers. http://www.speedseries.com.au/TV

Entry list (c 60 cars). https://bathurst6hour.com.au/event-info/entry-list/

Spotter guides timetable and other stuff on the event info link on the website https://bathurst6hour.com.au/

[Gerard C]

Thanks for the links, EB, will have a go.
Never heard about this before, any thoughts?
https://www.liquidpiston.com/xts-210-engine

[GORDON STREETER]

Originally Posted by Peter Mallett

Gah! Got a reminder from the DVLA to tax my race MGB, the form says tax exempt so no fee as per previous years. I go online and they want me to pay £365.00! I then thought I'd see what they say about my road going MGB which is also 1965. It says no fee (I "taxed" it in March) so the rules havent changed but now they want me to pay 50p for the pleasure of checking!

Was it a reminder in the post or was it an email ? I had one that was obviously a scam. The same with TV licences

[Peter Mallett]

It was the post. Got the Jeep and the MG on the same day. The reminder says zero tax for the MG but go online to tax it and they want money.

[Gerard C]

If there's a French around, be prepared to be asked zero money, just a lot for paper and stamp!

[Peter Mallett]

I'll speak to them on Tuesday after the holiday.

[Mike Harte]

I know we all like to have a bit of a moan about all the bureaucracy that we encounter, but there are some countries that make an industry out of it. When I lived in Spain, I found it could be an absolute nightmare to do some of the simplest things - applying for something needed a form filled out to request another form, which when completed, had to be taken to a bank so that a fee could be paid. But you had to be wary of what day and time you went, because the bank would only perform this task on certain days and during specific times. Then, having completed that task, back to the office from whence you came but this time with the form stamped as paid by the bank. That then entitled you to complete another form with which you had to queue up yet again to hand over. Then, if you were lucky, they would send you a letter a few weeks later to come back to pick up what you had applied for. Oh, and the office one had to go to was at least an hour away by car, including trying to find a parking space.

When my partner and I went to Goa on holiday about twenty years ago, I couldn't believe what a palaver it was just to get through immigration and customs, which took about three hours just for a single narrow body aircraft. From memory, we all had to go to three different desks in turn, where passports and visas (and those took a half day to obtain in London; I got there at about 7.30 in the morning to queue for a ticket to get into the building, and I was the last person in) were checked before being passed to a second person sitting at the desk who checked what his colleague had done was correct. At the last desk they gave you three slips of paper, one to say that everything had been checked, another to state the amount of money you were bring in to the country, and a third that was to be kept and handed back when you left the country. Then you had to go through questioning by customs when you had picked up your luggage, before having your passport checked again at the exit of the customs hall, at which they retrieved two of the three forms mentioned before.

Japan, in both my experience and also my son's who currently lives there, loves form filling. Very, very sadly, my daughter in law passed away on Thursday and my son cannot believe the amount he has had to do so that he could arrange the funeral. Luckily he does speak Japanese pretty fluently, but he is sure that the powers that be love to make it difficult for him because he's a foreigner. Amazingly, even a waiter looks down on him because he's a foreigner, and they would often be downright rude to my D-in-L (she was Japanese) just because she married someone who wasn't one of them!

[Lancsbreaker]

Sorry for your son's loss, Mike - I can't imagine how stressful it must be dealing with that situation in a foreign country.


I know when we had a property in Tenerife the bureaucracy was somewhat tedious, although an attempt to converse in broken Spanish did earn some Brownie points....


But I also remember a visit to Russia back in the late 80s when Perestroika was just surfacing, and they wanted UK tourists as a source of "hard currency". I made the mistake of trying to buy some 35mm film in a store, and it was like Argos on steroids....fill in a form to present to make your request, which when approved sent you to another individual to check if it was in stock, then to another to issue an invoice, then to another to take the payment, then another to validate the invoice and request supply, and finally some poor soul who actually had to supply the film.......it was no surprise that unemployment was low

[S griffin]

Sending my condolences Mike. Hope everything gets sorted out

Yes, there can be quite a lot of paperwork when you've got a place overseas, glad you got it sorted Lancs

That sounds about right about Russia in those days, they've always been slow to get with the times. I'm surprised you could buy that kind of film back then! Argos on steroids sounds fun though. It's always annoying the amount of paperback some foreign countries make you go through. Now it all makes sense

[E.B]

So sorry for your families loss Mike. Thoughts and condolences to you all at this difficult time.

[Peter Mallett]

Originally Posted by S griffin

Sending my condolences Mike. Hope everything gets sorted out

Yes, there can be quite a lot of paperwork when you've got a place overseas, glad you got it sorted Lancs

That sounds about right about Russia in those days, they've always been slow to get with the times. I'm surprised you could buy that kind of film back then! Argos on steroids sounds fun though. It's always annoying the amount of paperback some foreign countries make you go through. Now it all makes sense

Don't forget, the Zenit camera was the Russian version of the Pentax.

Sorry to hear of your loss Mike. Terribly sad.

[E.B]

Originally Posted by Peter Mallett

Don't forget, the Zenit camera was the Russian version of the Pentax.

My first 35mm camera was a Zenit-E. I thought it was great.... added a Pentax 200 zoom to it (and eventually a Tamron). It served me well, but then after a few years hard use the shutter mechanism /curtain started sticking and the result was a quarter. of the frame being very over exposed. Cost of the repair would have been double the original cost so I bit the bullet and replaced it with a Canon

[Peter Mallett]

Similar to me, I bought a Canon AE1.

[Mike Harte]

Thank you, everybody, for your kind words.

Although it is not something anyone wants to have happen, we have known that this was likely to happen at any time and so sort of prepare for it, whilst we and she have enjoyed our lives together for the last 10 years after she was first diagnosed with stage 4 cancer of the liver with a prognosis of maybe only 6 months if she was lucky.

However, due entirely to her fortitude and a will to live and enjoy life, she responded so well to a really powerful cocktail of chemotherapy that then allowed the liver specialist surgeon the opportunity to operate (which he never expected to be able to perform), and over two operations about 95% of her liver was removed. Unfortunately, it had already spread to other parts, some of which they took out, and 9 years of on and off chemo kept it manageable. Unfortunately, in the last year it spread further, with lesions on the brain, and 10 days ago they discovered that it was in her bones all over. Being in considerable pain the last few months, in some ways she has now had a peaceful release.

My only regret was that I was not able to give her a hug, say a final goodbye and wish her well on her journey.