The Ledger.

Tom has sent the first pencil sketches for the lining. The idea is a journey through the seasons, told through a motorbike build: autumn for gathering parts, winter for assembly, spring for the final touches and summer for riding. Winter brings pine forests, Skye, castle ruins and whisky.

Every one of the size samples is an inch too small across the chest. An inch doesn't sound like much, but fixing it means redrawing the armhole, shoulders, sleeves, back and front. And having seen a photo of myself in one, I don't like the back either. Today I signed with a new pattern cutter to start again from scratch. October pre-orders aren't going to happen.

The samples are back. Small, Large and XL in black, and four Mediums in white, each with different buttons: black, tortoiseshell and brown wood. Next job, dyeing the white ones to see what colour this jacket wants to be. Pre-orders are pencilled in for October.

I've been wearing the moleskin prototypes for three months and I've learnt one thing. Moleskin is a fur magnet. Every photo has needed hours of editing to get rid of the dust and Charlie's hair. So it's back to the drawing board, and the new lead is a heavyweight organic cotton gabardine from a small mill just south of Paris. Gabardine is what officers' trench coats were made from in the First World War, so my great grandfather would have known it well.

The Lawrence is the first jacket I've brought to the production house here in Bahrain. Today I signed off the second prototype and the grading from Small to XL. They're also making four Mediums in white so I can test buttons and colour before I commit to anything.

Before Tom draws anything final, I need to know how his ink work survives being printed on cotton. So I've made a test sheet, 1 by 1.5 metres, divided into boxes with artwork at different sizes. Off to the printers.

I've sent Tom the first brief for the lining. A chapter called The Road from T.E. Lawrence's The Mint, about riding his Brough Superior, and a map of every place Lawrence mentions in it. It's a starting point, not a plan.

I want the inside of this jacket to tell a story about Britain. I sent a message to Thomas Moore at Last Maps after seeing one of his maps reposted on Instagram, and he replied the same day: "totally stoked… our brands hold so much common ground." We're talking properly next week.

I've walked past the same photograph my whole life. My great grandfather, William Warman, in his 1902 pattern service dress, just before he shipped out to France and, eventually, Gallipoli. Today my tailor here in Bahrain fitted the first version of a jacket inspired by it. No pattern, just my sketch and a tape measure. It's rough, but the bones are there.