Aktuelle Kamera

We interrupt our stimulating coverage of the third annual awards ceremony of the machine tool manufacturers' kombinat from Halle, to bring you this most distressing news:

"At dawn today our security services, the sword and shield of our party, noticed that Comrade Steeplejack was missing from his post in the planning directorate for the seventh quarter of the eleventh Five Year Plan. Comrades noticed that Steeplejack had been behaving oddly for some time and was less than committed as in previous times to the party's task.

Distressingly, it now seems that he has betrayed our workers' and farmers' republic. Our latest information from the people's satellite "Sigmund Jahn" has yielded the following photograph:



It seems that Comrade Steeplejack had fallen into the pay of renegade agents from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and was spirited over the border in a second hand Yugo 513."

Accordingly, our erstwhile comrade and now callously treacherous Titoist running dog, Hoxhaite deviationist and Bonapartist indivdualist has now been declared persona non grata in the DDR and has had his citizenship revoked. Until, that is, he buys another Trabant.

We now re-join proceedings in Halle where excitement is reaching fever pitch ahead of the announcement of the "Most Promising New Comrade in the VEB Kondomfabrik Frankfurt-an-der-Oder" award...


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Sadly, folks, I just couldn't get the BARKAS insured. The last straw came when my friend and co-driver, Comrade Taylor, who has had a clean license for many years, couldn't get insured on it. I'm afraid that at that point, rather than displaying the steely resolved demanded by the Montrose and Tayside SED, I simply gave up the ghost.

However a replacement has quickly been found in the form of my new Yugo 513. There really aren't many Yugos of any kind left, but this one has relatively few miles on the clock, and I snapped it up at the bargain-basement price of £150 on e-bay (I think I was rather fortunate that the ending of the auction coincided with England appearance in the rugby world cup final.)

Comrade Taylor and I drove it back from Avonmouth the other day and it went like an absolute bomb- for an Eastern bloc car it is very fast and handles very well, even if it does look like a slowly melting pat of butter. The gears are a bit sloppy, and the exhaust is somewhat cracked, so the motor is in KwikFit at the moment being fixed up. The crack in the exhaust saw the Yugo produced a noise that was somewhere in between a Jaguar E-Type and a distempered walrus bellowing in pain.

I'm not sure if I'll be blogging about it, though. This place will stay open and I will continue if there is enough interest. We shall see!