Blowing the dust off

Hello readers!

It's been two months since I lasted posted on here, and readers expecting a joyously lengthy jamboree of prolix piffle about the trip up from London will have been sorely disappointed.

No, I haven't died, nor, worse that that, was I denounced by a member of the Montrose, Angus & Tayside branch of the SED to the Stasi and subsequently "disappeared" or "left for voluntary exile and renounced citizenship of the DDR".

Simply, I haven't been able to pick the BARKAS up, just yet.

Tediously, in August, the entire German motor registration department went on holiday at the same time, causing a delay in the delivery of a registration plate. Even more tediously, now the two stroke motorised greenhouse has got a registration plate, no bugger will insure it. The reason? It has a foreign registration plate. ordinarily this wouldn't have caused a problem, but apparently, now, the DVLA are having a crackdown on foreign licensed cars. Unless you can prove that you are resident abroad (I'm not, yet) they now insist that the car is registered on a UK license plate even if, as is the case with me, you intend to disappear and not come back in the near future. Add that to the fact that i still only have a provisional license (thereby ruling me out of specialist classic car insurance schemes which all seem to demand a 19 year full driving license and unsullied no claims bonus) and you have a problem.

I am currently working around this and chatting to the seller who, thankfully, is relaxed enough about it. The latest pick up date is in the last week of October so, we shall see. Sadly, trying to get this old bucket insured makes insuring the Trabant seem like a walk in the park. In the longer term, I think i will have to register it in the UK simply to have it insured properly. the problems of insuring old and rare vehicles in an increasingly paranoid country is the only time when I look with envy at the owners of modern character free windtunnel fertislised electronic cigar tubes. I have also been looking back rather enviously at the ease of having a Trabi to hand.

So, bear with me, I hope to be back soon. I need this bus anyway; I have a scholarship to go to Estonia for half of next year, and who knows if i will ever be back. I am hoping to be over there at the beginning of next June with the bulk of my stuff, and the other half's stuff, in tow, so a BARKAS is necessary to that enterprise.

Fingers crossed, i will update with a more interesting post at the end of this month. In the meantime, any insurance advice or insurers willing to insure me out there, get in touch.