On Saturday I bought two more machines – a 99K handcrank from a lady in a bungalow in Kent, and a 99K handcrank from a lady in a bungalow in Surrey.

Both machines turned out to be from the same production run of 35,000 Model 99’s, which was commissioned at the Kilbowie factory in Scotland in June 1938.

I wonder what the odds are on me picking up two machines from that one batch on the same day 73 years later,  and then finding that out of 35,000 identical machines numbered from 854677 to 889676, we have two here with serial numbers which are only 197 apart …