THE GOOD BUCK

I remember, many months ago, the first time someone hailed me with “Drive!” Which is short for ‘driver’, obviously, and how one addresses a lorry driver. I was at once pleased and terrified. I wanted to be that trucker, but felt I in no way earned the title. I had the licenses, and was doing the job, just about, but didn’t know what I was doing. There are so many things to pick up; little things like working the air suspension (so you can lower the cab to pull out from under a trailer and raising it when you reverse under one so you engage properly) and working the different onboard computers to check the oil level and such. Then there was the big things; knowing where your back end was when you were cornering in the dark and reversing. It’s only the last few weeks I’ve actually started to feel I can handle whatever is thrown at me. I’ve been doing easy trunking jobs with a few challenging bits per shift. The same company had me back after that Friday off, but on a different run. The first day my all-singing, all-dancing, £357 trucknav went tits up. I had been on the same run for weeks so hadn’t used it. That day I dropped my smartphone down the bog. It was still drying out and not working when I went to work. They gave me a new run, so I put the address in my Tomtom trucknav, which promptly died. I couldn’t get the navigation software on my ‘phone to work for ages and was going up and down the same road for about an hour looking for a road that was off the next motorway turn off. The Tomtom had got a leap-year ‘millennial bug’, ie, it hadn’t accounted for the leap day so couldn’t connect with all the satellites that had. It transpired that in messing with my ‘phone (before the screen had dried out and was working again) I’d turned off the data connection jobby, so it couldn’t connect to the network to guide me. When I eventually sussed that out it got me to the postcode but was guiding me into a housing estate. I resisted. Did about three laps of the one way system in Stoke on Trent, which let me tell you was designed for donkeys, not even horse and carriage. Getting an artic around there was a challenge in itself. I could see the building I was after, I did a complete lap of it without seeing a way in. In the end I tried the housing estate. I got funnelled down a little street, slaloming past parked cars, until I got to a corner with a van on one side and a car on the other, and no way for me to fit through. I was stuck. I tried knocking on the houses to get the vehicles moved, no answer. I was going to have to slalom, in reverse, right out […]

I was called a few weeks ago at 1600, and asked if I could cover a shift starting at 1700. I dropped everything and got there. I was desperate for work, one shift is better than none. Since then I’ve been in every available night (they only work from Monday to Friday). I’ve already done three weeks, and they’ve asked me to go back in again Monday to Thursday next week as well. ( I told them I can’t work Friday as it’s my mam and dad’s retirement ‘do’ before they bugger off to darkest Wales and thence to Bulgaria.) If they then ask me back the next week I think I may have landed this job.   It has a few negatives; it isn’t very long shifts (hence not massive wages), it’s an awkward shift 1700- 0130 to 0230, so you can’t do anything at night and all day is just waiting to go to work. The positives are considerable though; it’s the same job every night (pick up a unit and trailer in Irlam, run up to Aspatria –right at the top of the Lake District-, do a trailer swap and come back), weekends off, and it’s easy driving. I have a bit of a job on manoeuvring in the Irlam yard, but it’s not too serious and the Aspatria yard can be pretty damn awkward, but there is no-one else there and I have all the time in the world. I can take as long as I like to get it right without pressure or rushing into a mistake. (For ‘mistake’ read ‘crash’.) So I’m gaining lots of good experience in some quite tough situations, without freaking out or being forced into errors. Ideal in that respect. And, the job will continue to need doing. If they have me back after having Friday off (I’ve given them over a week’s notice, if they get funny over that, sod ‘em!) I can’t see why they won’t keep me.   There is an unnerving bay in the yard at Irlam, that even the shunters (people who do nothing but reverse trailers around the yard and put them on bays and such all day, every day) don’t like using. You have to reverse into it with a bend on your blind side, which runs next to a wall. In other words, you are leaning out of your window looking down the drivers side of the trailer whilst backing it in. The other side, which you can’t see, is next to a wall. Obviously, if you overcook it a little on that side harsh words will be exchanged and job offers withdrawn. The thing is, I don’t mind it. There are lines painted on floor to show where the trailer should end up when parked. I just stick tight to the drivers side one, which means you shouldn’t hit the wall. It’s the stupid tight gaps they leave between random trailers that scare me. There are no lines to follow, as […]

I need to enter some races or something. I had four nights work last week and I’m supposed to have another five next week. This left me with this weekend to get everything done. I’ve done nothing. The work thing is good, mind. Not the best money as it’s quite short shifts, starting at 1700 finish around 0200 hrs. Once you’ve taken off the 45 minute break that’s not a lot of hours. For a lorry driver. At Stobarts you were lucky to finish before 13 hours. However, it’s was the same run (to Aspitaria, in Cumbria) each time. Same company as before. Just run an empty trailer up there, drop it, pick up a full trailer and run back to Irlam (outskirts of Manchester.) Once I’d got over the trauma of the first night (blindly following the satnav off the motorway two junctions before the written notes, and consequently having to drive a 13 metre trailer-ed truck right across the Lake District on B roads!) I was OK. That first run was terrifying though. Pitch black B roads, twisty and hilly as buggery, so your headlights are not showing you where the road is going, no passing spaces, over a single track, right angled bridge… I was shaking by the time I got there. Anyway, my point was; I should have seized the weekend off and made hay. Tons of cycling, sort the garden, more cycling, get to the gym and cancel my membership now it’s warm enough to train outside… Done jack.   I went for one ride last week. Just a quick 28 miles, twice up Frodsham hill. I was thinking that that was somewhere I could really pick up the pace this year, maybe knock an hour off my time by putting some effort into it and not cruising. To this end I went out with my heart rate monitor on. For Winter training they recommend you keep your Beats Per Minute (BPM) at 60-75% of your maximum. As you move closer to the race you can up it to the peak band of 75-90% of maximum. (max for my age is 160 bpm.) As I say, I thought I could pick the pace up this year, so I thought I’d try and keep it at about 140 bpm. I set off up the gentle but insistent incline of Walton Drag and my bpm was in the 150’s. Oh. Going up Frodsham hill I peaked at 176 bpm. The only time I was not tempting a heart attack was when I was free-wheeling downhill, hanging off the brakes. So the heart rate monitor was a bit of a waste of money. It tells me I’m about to die when I run and now the same when I’m riding. I thought I could use it as a clinical motivator; ‘only at 60% max bpm, shake the lead out lard-arse’. Instead it just tells me I need to take up knitting. Bugger.   On the bright side I […]

As you know, I love Twitter. You get to follow just the people who interest and entertain you. Facebook is a shite site for people you’ve actually met, in my opinion. Just because I once did a course with you doesn’t mean I want to hear you bang on about little Johnny’s bowel movements. Screw little Johnny, and screw you. You were a boring offensive fuckwit then and nothing’s changed. Unless your Facebook status update currently reads ‘Goodbye cruel world’ I have no interest.   Well, that was an unexpected diversion. I only started out to say that I love Twitter. Moving swiftly on; (which I think is a split infinitive, sorry) the joy of Twitter is you can follow really clever and witty people. This makes for fun conversations. However, occasionally you stray over to the dark side. The Sunday they launched the Sun On Sunday (SOS), was one such time. I won’t have anything to do with Murdoch or his evil empire. He embodies the corruption at the heart of politics to me. Vetting successive prime ministers (at his evil lair) before putting his media empire behind them. It was your Sun wot won it. Feck right off! Lying and distorting every news story to his own Machiavellian ends. More annoyingly, people believing the disgusting lies they are spoon fed. The EU demanding straight bananas was a Sun story that sank into the collective subconscious before the issued a tiny little apology saying ‘oops, that was totally groundless lies.’ Does anyone remember the apology? I don’t. I read about it elsewhere. Big lie, spun and spun, tiny, un-noticed retraction.   Again with the digression. I was just saying I don’t like Murdoch, therefore would never buy his vile products. Papers, Sky, none of it. So when a freelance journalist I follow said he was getting some stick for buying the SOS I replied; ‘For shame.’ That was it.’For shame.’  then I went out to start on my allotment.   I came back and he’d replied ‘Seriously? Get to fuck’. Ho ho. Challenge accepted.   Me ‘I think I touched a nerve there. Sun readers, huh?’ Him ‘I buy one copy to write about it and suddenly I’m a ‘Sun reader’? It touched a nerve because it’s culture war bollocks!’   There then followed about five hours of lively debate. By the end of which the lad was frothing at the mouth and apoplectic with rage. His followers got in on the act, a friend of mine jumped in and ripped him to shreds, he and his lot attacked her. I ended up summarising my position by saying ‘Apparently buying the Sun, like kiddie porn, is OK if it’s only for “research”’.’ And ‘He’s gone off to punch some kittens in the face, but don’t worry it’s for research so it’s OK’. By which I was showing by analogy that if something is too objectionable to own, calling it research doesn’t make owning it any less so. Given the […]

It’s been a milestone couple of weeks. As I said last time we were getting a tad worried about my lack of work and, in retrospect, I was freaking out over driving in general. The mighty Micra had kiffed it and really we had no money to replace it. I’d seen a Ford Ka for £790 with 12 months MOT, which I was quite excited about. The next day I went to view it and immediately became wary. The guy who was selling it to me was the boss of a hand car wash place. This was my first alarm, as I know of people who know people who set up a just such an operation to launder the profits of their drug dealing. Then the guy started giving me patter. That put my back up a bit, it’s like saying to someone “I’m going to talk shit at you now, but you’re so stupid you won’t understand anyway.” “We have loads of people just waiting to buy this…, I’m not here to sell this, I just valet them… tell you what why don’t I knock £50 off the price…” Yet still I liked the look of the car, it sounded a good engine. There was a disconcerting 2 inch circle missing out of the paint in the door frame. It had obviously rusted a few millimetres away, then been repainted. He reassured me that it was a touch up job, but by then he’d already convinced me he was a bullshitter. Still, it was the best one I’d seen. I was going to get it. 12 months MOT, at least I’d get a year out of it, and I needed a car for work. Then he said he couldn’t take my card as his machine was down. He tried to ring all of his mates to use theirs. The more desperate he got the more unsure I became. Finally he said I should draw it as cash, on a credit card, and he’s knock the 2% cash fee off the price! I rang the card people, they said it would be £22 handling fee, if the cash machine would dispense it, then something like 27% interest. I said I’d try him again when he got his card machine fixed. I got home and tried the interweb again, this time I widened my search to 60 miles. There was another Ford Ka, 12  months ticket, £550! It was way the other side of Manchester, past Leeds, I think. Anyway, I tried to get someone to give me a lift out to it and my dad came to my rescue. Dropped everything and ran me straight over. And lent me some cash as apparently I’m only allowed to draw £250 per day from hole-in-the-wall machines.  Cheers dad. I’m going to be screwed when they bugger off to Bulgaria. We tootled over there, it was a straight talking private seller, bloody spiffy little car, bish, bash, bosh, job’s a good ‘un.   […]