THE BIG MOVE

FOR The third time in ten years I find myself getting ready to move to a new premises. The lease on my existing workshop ends in October, and I have been hunting round for somewhere else. My current workshop is too big and the overheads too high. The problem with having more space than I need is that it brings out the worst of my tendency to hoard bits, so about half the workshop is full of old junk, which doesn’t really help with paying the bills. I spent a lot of time looking round the local commercial estate agents, asked a few of my farming friends whether they had any suitable buildings available, and was starting to think I might have to ask my landlord to extend the lease by a few months... when I struck lucky.

One of my regular customers dropped in to see me. I fitted a 200Di engine into his Series IIA trialler last year, and he was after a couple of bits for it. I mentioned my workshop problem to him, and his eyes lit up. he had bought a couple of workshop units in Banham, about ten miles up the road, and was on the lookout for tenants. Was I interested? Silly question. I drove over one evening to have a look round. nice solid modern unit, roller shutter door, room inside for four One Tens and space to work round them, four side rooms with mezzanine floor above them, and all for about a third of what I am currently paying.

The only problem was that I was hoping to find somewhere a little closer to home. My current workshop is about 20 miles from my house, and Banham is another ten miles in the wrong direction. So I asked Dave to give me a couple of days to think about it, drove home and told my wife what I had found. She is a shining beacon of common sense. “Ring him back now and tell him you’ll take it,” she ordered. So I did, and on October 1 the norfolk Garage will be in its new home. Still very much norfolk: there is a road sign in the next village, on the approach to a sharp bend, which says “Slow yew down boy”.

So, now I just have about two tonnes of old Land Rover bits, surplus tools, racking, etc., to get rid of. Once I have the current crop of long-term projects out of the way I’ll probably dump all the unwanted stuff in the middle of the workshop floor one Sunday in mid-september and invite people to come along and grab a bargain. Watch this space...