Saved from a skip: the lost Burt Munro Story interview 
There's nothing like an earthquake or two to encourage a man to declutter. Eventually.
So here was Neill Birss, hiffing great armloads of junk out of his life forever. The accumulation of years as a journalist, student, technology geek and - the evidence does suggest - packrat.
In his damaged Christchurch home the urgent roof repairs had earlier been made but now, at last, came the workmen tromping through the place to attend to internal issues. So stuff needed shifting.
This particular skip-bound load was university notes.
"I don't know why I kept them," Birss admits. "They're things you just accumulate over your life."
A folder fell open and caught his eye. It was the wrong colour, for starters. And inside, instead of his student scrawls, the pages were typed.
These were the interviews for which he'd hunted high and low, years and years ago.
The ones whose loss, damned shame that it was, he'd more or less come to terms with.
Read the rest and see the pics at
http://www.stuff.co.nz/motoring/81594219/Saved-from-a-skip-the-lost-Burt-Munro-interviews
