Carpet bagger

‘In the corner of the workshop, Olli Ragbin sits watching events unfold before him’

One of the very first jobs I ever had was helping out my mate’s brother as a carpet fitter for the day. The very first ever job was packing potatoes into 5kg bags at Christmas time for the local greengrocer. This job however has no connections (not even remotely tenuous) to the world of cars, so a word or two on my budding career in 80/20 wool mixes, knee kickers and gripper rods.

As a 17 year old yoof, at the peak of my cognitive information processing and storage capability, the lessons I learned following an expert would I have thought, put me in good stead for situations requiring carpet fitting expertise long in the distant future.

The brother in question was a huge petrol head and used to tool about the place in a Cortina 2.8 Ghia. White. Velour. I was impressed by the boxiness and the plushness. It had electric windows ferchrisakes…. Electric! I had a Marina which had been hand-painted orange. You could still see the brush strokes, so a pristine white Cortina was the stuff of jealous coveting.

He also was the guy who first introduced me to motorbikes by taking me on the back of his Honda CB550 Four-K3 when I was still at school.

Anyway, fast-forward more than 30 years and in January of this year, the CCM workshop was a hove of activity as we prepare to open the doors onto the world of classics.

Instead of following my mate’s brother round a two up/two down in the backstreets of Liverpool, I’m following Dr Ray around waiting to be told what to do.

Eric called time on my ‘helping’ when he noticed that the Dr and I were trying to nail on the ceiling to the office, but instead of nailing it on as a ceiling, we were making it a roof. They sound similar to me and I shrugged a shoulder in a ‘to-may-toe tomato’ sort of way.

Eric sensed the level of supervision required by his future dispenser of workshop rags and suggested I ‘help’ him fit the office carpet.

I’d picked up a roll which we’d estimated as being ‘big enough’ to meet the needs of the square footage we were looking to cover.

This estimation proved to be the first of many mistakes. It wasn’t quite big enough. And so Eric and I set about butchering and cutting an origami patchwork of carpet and started the game of floor covering jenga.

It was by most measures a shocking job. If you looked really really closely, you could see the joins in the middle of the room. In fact, even if you didn’t look that closely you could see them. Actually, the only way not to see them involved being in the office at night with the lights out. Even then you could still sense them.

And so, whilst Eric had kept the carpet on the sentimental reasoning that it was one of my more useful moments of work (we’ll ignore the ceiling/roof shenanigans), he’s now had enough of it, waited till I wasn’t there and has now ripped it up and put some proper flooring down… properly.

In other news, shrimp eye Justin has been out in Rosie the recovery truck and returned to CCM towers with a Standard Flying Eight Drop Head Coupe. I don’t think I’ve heard of a car that sounds faster. Living up to its speedy name is a slightly different proposition. Should you wish to test its 0-62mph time first of all you’d have to pick a different 62mph, as this blue rascal can only just about get to 60 (nearly). The quoted 0-50 time is just over 25 seconds. In 1947 this car was not the first choice of your average bank robber. It does look good though, and gently driving this top-down blast from the past through England’s green and pleasant lands is where the real pleasure lies.

The techs have been building engines this week.

I think I know which car this came from, but I forgot to write it down and don’t have the level of experience our team have in being able to name the car from a quick visual reminder of the internal reciprocating parts.

Anyway, it’s an engine. It’s being rebuilt. It looks complicated. I’d hate to put it back together. The techs love this sort of thing. To them, it’s like a gently relaxing sudoku puzzle. I was mildly frightened by patching together carpet bits, but this sort of thing is so far out of my comfort zone I literally wouldn’t know where to start. I’d probably just stand there, hammer in one hand, contemplating my first strike. At which point Eric would come and gently lead me by the elbow and give me something a little less taxing (risky) to do. Like stick the kettle on, or maybe brush up a little bit.

‘Perhaps go and watch Young Chris work, you like that wouldn’t you’.

‘Yes’ I’d say quietly. ‘I’d like that’.

‘Why don’t you give me that hammer…?' Eric would say in his soothing 'get-this-idiot-away-from-the-expensive-bits' voice

Summer is here and it’s baking hot. The country opens up tomorrow and we can all get back to a bit of normality.

Enjoy your classics whilst the weather is great and if you do pop in to see us, make sure to say to Eric that you miss the homely welcoming nature that the old office carpet used to bring. Perfection sometimes comes in funny shapes, often glued together badly.

So from the CMM team, Eric, Siobhan, Dr Ray, Shrimp-eye Justin, Young Chris, Izzi, Ingrid, Jack and our new ‘boringly well-fitted’ floor covering, have a great week.

Olli