In sheds all over the district chaps with rolled-up sleeves have been working to get the dashed timing drive working properly on their grand old cars which have engines whose parts we can actually recognise.
Which reminds me ... I opened the bonnet of an almost new car last week to check the radiator fluid because it smelled as if it was running hot.
The engine looked like a polished suitcase with a dozen shiny pipes attached. And there were tubes and cables and hoses and little reservoirs all neatly attached to its extremities. It looked a picture ... a picture without a radiator cap.
I eventually located the said item but it was sort of tucked down to the left front. In my dear old Telstar (which actually has a carburettor for heaven's sake) it stands right out up front - like a huge barricade and with a screw cap the size of a large preserving jar lid. I eventually found it ... sort of down one side and attached to a long tube atop yet another reservoir.
So the vintage cars and motorcycles are being prepped and polished to look and sound their finest for this wonderfully peculiar long weekend of the year.
I've seen them out and about already.
And what is it about such grand old cars which prompts the occupants to, in almost all cases, unleash smiles?
As opposed to the grim expressions of those in their soul-less modern reservoir-stacked carriages stuck at traffic lights?
I guess it's because apart from the fact they can actually recognise the engine's parts, they can both hear and feel its pop-popping life, as well as feel the passing breeze.
At this time other chaps will not have their sleeves rolled up.
Theirs will be down and held in place with a most terrific set of cufflinks. And they will be trawling through stored boxes from February last where they are sure they folded and placed the pin-striped waistcoat they picked up in that jumble sale some years earlier.
"Have you seen my pin-stripe waistcoat, toots?" a chap will call to his wife.
"Oh yes, dearest," she will reply. "I've decided to wear it - I'm going to dress as a gangster's moll ... like that Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde."
Perplexed, he responds "well can I borrow your mauve frock and that little cream hat?"
After the police eventually leave they will come to their bally senses.
Which reminds me (gangsters and all that) the most intriguing costumed sight in my memory is that of a tiny boy, must have been aged just 6 or 7, dressed as Al Capone. Complete with little plastic machine gun.
Marvellous stuff.
At any other time of the year a child wandering the streets waving an imitation firearm will get collared by a constable and referred for community service.
It's also a time when a chap can wander the promenade in baggy old trousers, braces and an oddly striped blazer without someone remarking "oh, I see you've been to the op shop, then?"
And I enjoy seeing the wonderful and otherwise un-PC fur wraps - with those little fox heads with beady little eyes which fascinate children who are left to ask why that lady "has a doggy on her neck".
The great weekend anchored by the style of Art Deco has achieved international fame and adulation, and rightly so.
It is a terrific point of difference because it is based on style ... and having a jolly old time.
On this note, I am hoping that February (the month we all assured ourselves during the uncertain January would be THE summer month) will play ball and sun umbrellas will take precedence over the rain varieties, although the signs are not the most promising.
But one must be stoic.
Spirit of the blitz and all that, and I welcome all overseas visitors except for one ... La Nina ... the wicked witch of the east.
Roger Moroney is an award-winning journalist for Hawke's Bay Today and observer of the slightly off-centre.
