So yes, that would be my bike...
Has been in our family since the early 90s, becoming mine around 1995 or so when I got tall enough to ride the thing. It then went all over Aberdeenshire over the following 10 years or so. It has spent pretty much its entire life outside, so was looking "well weathered" even when I got it. Given that I had until the last couple of years near zero resources available to me, it was run on a shoestring - hence a piece of wire coathanger and some cable-ties replacing the bust spring in the gear mechanism (I'm not even trying to spell the correct technical term), and the saddle being replaced with something I had laying around in the scrap pile when the original fell to bits.
It fell into disuse around 2006 or so when I moved in to Aberdeen as I just didn't have anywhere for it to live in the flat.
Here it is around 2012 when I wheeled it out of the shed to do a bit of a stock take and see what it needed.
Unfortunately what happened next was that my father decided to be "helpful." His vision of helpful being to take the thing entirely to pieces and give it one of the worst paint jobs in the history of the world. Given that he had serious memory problems I'm astonished that I didn't wind up missing anything critical. I count it a mercy that he couldn't get some bits apart.
I very hastily threw the majority of bits back on at that point so they wouldn't grow legs of their own and disappear and buried it sufficiently far at the back of the shed that he couldn't get at it to do any more damage.
Fast forward to 2018, and it's hopefully going to be restored to a properly functioning state now. Given the pounding the thing has taken in the past without bother (it was my only transport really between the mid 90s and when I first got access to a car in 2003) I've no real worries about it on the Redways, she's a tough old girl.
Once I've got a full mechanical assessment done I'll try to do something about the paintwork. I'm never going to get it spot on, but I'm hoping I'll be able to get to "looks reasonable from 10 paces" at least. Sadly I think stripping and going for the clearcoat approach for the mirror finish is out of the question (as that would both look the part and be pretty easy otherwise!) thanks to the damage my father did in attempting to remove the original surface corrosion etc. The top tube in particular is quite badly scratched unfortunately.
At the very least, it'll get a spray over with something that's slightly less drastically different to the original colours with a view to possibly get the paintwork sorted professionally later.
It's too good a bike to just sit rotting at the back of a shed.
I'm both looking forward to getting to ride the thing again, and likewise to seeing it being used by Jim for what it was designed to do, race.
