Happy Birthday Punch!

It's Punch's birthday; to be precise, it's his 48th 21st birthday (as the Americans would say, "Do the math!"). Birthday celebratory photographs and our work - click here!

There has been torrential rain overnight in this part of the world and the roads to Blunsdon are flooded. The water in the fields has filled all of the roadside ditched and there are sections of the road that are completely under water.

This does not bode well for the work at the track today. Having spent the best part of Thursday getting the first part of the fence in place on turn 3 we must now kick on and get the rest up today or we will run into real time problems as the season races towards us.

The first task is to inflate the section of fence that Dave and I put up. We use a petrol driven air pump to inflate and have to stand back and watch as the water floods off the sections of the fence.

Each panel collects a significant amount of water and as the fence rises this runs across the track in torrents.

The tyre packing of the last two weeks means that only the top half inch of track is slushy, and that should dry out and harden with a couple of hours of sunshine.

As the water rushes to the white line I go and inspect the drain on the first turn.

Despite the fact that a river of brown water is rushing down the start and finish straight the drain is coping with it all and no water is puddling in the problem area at the apex of turns one and two.

Punch, Gerald, Keith, Ernie and Adam are joined once again by Dave and Allen (the DaVinci boys) and while they start laying out the fences on turns one and two, Adam and I put the pits' gate air panel across the gate and then fix the first panel of turn 4 in place. This allows us to position all of the other panels accurately, without leaving any gaps.

When the panels are fully inflated we check the binding on each and make sure that they have been seated and correctly attached to the bottom of the safety fence.

The yellow additions to the bottom of the fence work well - they push the fronts of the panels upwards and keep them straighter.

Unfortunately, the new inserts are no replacement for proper thick rubber kickboards, so they will have to be attached all round the track next week.

The rubber kickboards fulfil a number of functions. Primarily they will stop a rider from sliding under the fence and injuring himself on any fence struts etc.

They also protect the fence panels themselves from tearing, when foot rests catch in them, and from burning, when hot exhaust pipes come into contact. The kickboards also help prevent build ups of shale from getting under the fence.

Satisfied, we make our way to turns 1 and 2.

We lay the panels out face down on the track and then link them up using the clasps and straps at the back. The air pipes are joined and then we inflate. At this stage we are looking for any straps that are either too loose or too tight. We also need to make sure that the panels fit together tightly. When we are satisfied that the spacing is right we deflate the fence and then begin to attach each panel to the safety fence. We use a minimum of two clips per panel and attach these to the bottom rungs of the safety fence. This will help to seat the panels squarely on the track when they are inflated. It's important to get this right - if we do then it's unlikely that we'll have to re do it this season.

We re inflate the fence and check that it is standing properly and that there are no gaps. We are more than happy. Keith sets too with a pair of blunt wire clippers and hacks his way through the safety fence to allow us to feed the air tubes through from the other side of the safety fence.

We'll use two air pumps on turns 1 and 2 - one pump just wont have enough power.

Turn 4 is relatively easy and we get it settled in less than an hour.

The escaping air bubbles up through the seams, but that OK. Many fans believe that the air fence is air tight. It's not. It lets out air along each seam, and it's meant to do that. If it didn't the fence would soon balloon up and riders would bounce off it like gymnasts on a trampoline. The air fence is supposed to absorb impact, and so it must be always allowing air to pass through it.

We end the day with birthday celebrations for the birthday boy.

A Victoria sponge is adorned with six candles (one for each successfully completed decade) and a special singing candle that serenades us with "Happy Birthday to you" over and over again.
The final joke is on us. As we stand around and watch, Punch makes a wish and blows out the candles. He's so happy that he has sufficient puff to blow them all out in one go that he sits back with a supremely smug look on his face. And then the candles relight themselves. The more he blows, the faster they relight.

It will be just Punch and me on Thursday - Gerald is unavailable. If the weather is reasonable we'll be working on the kickboards; if not we'll just have to get on with the green netting that we put up to prevent shale covering the greyhound track on the corners.