Jackdaw 56

July 11th 2008 Friday
**** Monday the 4th of July 2008 ****
A momentous day in the life of Jackdaw as van and creator meet again after so many years.
Yes, we have had a visit from, “The Man Himself” - Peter Fairhurst!
A couple of weeks ago I had an email from Peter saying he was on a whistle stop tour of Great Britain visiting family and as some of these were in our neck of the woods he would stop off, over night, in Darlington on his rounds.
Everything was arranged and after a little hiccup (his car broke down) he arrived at my front door about 6pm.
Peter with his wife, daughter and son in law hadn’t even booked into their hotel yet so after a quick chat over a cup of tea we decided to meet up later for a meal and they could call in at our house again next day to see Jackdaw proper.
We met around 8 and over a relaxed meal talked about all sorts, you would have thought we had all known each other for years we got on so well.
What a fascinating person, school teacher, car builder, model book producer, (I have just bought one off EBay), the best children’s story writer in the world (according to peter), a District Councillor, a former Mayor of Bexhill and Chief Executive of the Town Museum just to name a few. But I think his best claim to fame is that a car he built, the “VOLTA”, holds the British land speed record for an electric car at 106 mph when it ran at Greenham Common airbase.
We could have talked all night but it was getting late and they had had such a long day so we agreed to meet next morning after I had taken the Transit van in for its mot test.
We all arrived at our house together at about 10.30am, the van had failed miserably but I was not going to let it bother me. Peter had brought me a few light fittings and other bits in a box plus a couple of original stainless steel bumpers that he had found covered in dust. He also designs and builds models and brought a prototype with him of Jackdaw made from cardboard (see photo) but he needed some sizes from the original to get the proportions right so we measured everything from all angles. We talked all about Jackdaw and some of things that I’d done and hoped to get done then took a few photos but it was such a short visit.
They all had to go on to Penrith
We had to go on to a show
We just had to say our good byes.