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W e’ve fallen off the cake wagon again. Last year Mrs P got really into baking, as you may recall and the natural outlet for the resulting sweet treats was the garage. What with lockdowns and all that, we soon started to see the results, feel the results, and sometimes experience some discomfort around our waists as a consequence. Some of the lower vehicles that come in started to be a bit of a squeeze to get under, and that includes when they were over the pit. As a result, we cut back on that sort of thing. Nothing lasts forever though, and with the darker evening looming, it seems to have re-started, and the worst thing is that it is me doing the baking. I seem to have caught the bug from she-who-must-be-obeyed. My most recent creation was a red velvet cake. It was not my first attempt though, as I kept trying to do it, but they kept coming out as mere chocolate, not that the gannets in the garage minded, indeed they gobbled it all up in five minutes. It turns out that I had the ingredients wrong. I was trying to avoid using colouring to get the red effect, but traditional recipes didn’t any colouring – how could they? In fact, the colour came from the use of what I learned was something called non-Dutched cocoa. Now, I thought going Dutch meant splitting the bill 50/50. No one told me it also provided this lovely shade inside your cake. I must be showing my age again. So anyway, we are all enjoying the consequences of my curiosity in the kitchen, and it is making us a little more well-padded. Getting back to the lower cars, one of those we see is a 2001 Mini Cooper, one of the very early BMW cars. It’s in cracking condition, and its owner pays us very well to keep it well-fettled. I think you could equip at least one other car with the parts we have removed and replaced from it over the years. It’s like that 30-year-old broom we have, which is on its seventh head and fourth handle. Anyway, the latest bit to need replacing was, unfortunately given our more rotund condition around here, the brake pipes. We had flagged them up on the MOT for a few years, and with its 20th birthday upon us, its owner thought it would be good for the car to enter its third decade with a clean MOT certificate. Somehow, I ended up drawing the short straw on this one, so under I went. It’s fiddly rather than difficult, what with the petrol tank coming off and all the metal-bending and then putting it all back on again, feeding through. It was front and rear, mind you. It’s this kind of thing that makes me miss drum brakes, but I digress. I did it all, and after that I think we will need to think about getting back on that cake-free diet again, although with Christmas just a couple of months away, is that really that realistic? TALKING DOUBLE-DUTCH 66 AFTERMARKET NOVEMBER 2021 TEABREAK: MEMOIRS OF A MOTOR MECHANIC www.aftermarketonline.net