I found turning 50 a sobering experience.

What [did] I want my funeral to be like? First thing is that my final trip has got to be in a tank.

The project chugged along steadily mostly between important jobs; better not to work myself to death, especially before the project is finished. Then suddenly I had a phone call telling me an older tank mad instructor was very ill in hospital.

I visited him that night and things looked so bad on return I walked straight in to the workshops and carried on till the early hours and up early the next morning cutting away.

Everything just came together. I found a very clean turret and the sand blaster finished it the very same day. An elusive polish friend who owed me money came out of the woodwork asking if he could work it off, and a clever Jimbo started sorting an electrical birds nest.

This guy isn’t taking the prospect of dying lying down. Well, okay, he’s still going to be lying down, but you get what I mean.

Via Tanks Alot.