Changing long haul for local work has opened up a myriad of issues, most notably coping with amateur drivers who only nip to the shops and back. The iron railway bridge was an eyesore long before the steel rods that had once carried people and freight from the town into the countryside had been ripped up. Vegetation reclaimed the manmade valley in the years that followed. Next to the bridge was a farm track that led to a barn and a small field. At some point in the 1990s the landowner sold the barn and field to developers and renowned local builders Bildem & Cheepleigh put up several houses. I say houses but if I’d said shed it would have been an insult to sheds. Subsequently, the old farm track became an access road with the resident’s unfortunate enough to have bought one of the shacks asked to try and get out of a blind T-junction next to the bridge. With six-foot-high sides the bridge obscured oncoming traffic from the right. Drivers inched their cars forward for a better view hoping, praying, that those behind the wheel of the oncoming traffic favoured safety over t-boning. A friend of mine, who doesn’t drive wagons, was poised to leave this very side road on his newly acquired motorbike and head back to the village. Leonard, an infamous kitchen fitter, had been to visit a potential customer who disliked his ‘new’ kitchen in his ‘new’ two-up-two-down hovel so much he was willing to replace it with anything. For Leonard it was a chance to try out his new motorbike, which he described as a jet engine on wheels. Even though he was too young to be a member of BABS, born-again-bikers, it had been several years since he’d last owned and ridden a motorbike. “It’s a beast,” he told me not long after buying the two-wheeled behemoth, “where ever I go the bike is there a half hour before I am.” He inched forward from the junction and tried to peer around the sidewalls of the bridge. Confident it was clear he squeezed the accelerator just as a red hatchback appeared travelling at some pace. Leonard hesitated; unable to pull the bike back out of the way he took instinctive action and gunned the accelerator even harder. The car missed him by millimetres. The relief at having avoided the car felt like a high, similar to what he thought an out of body experience might feel like. He was brought back to reality by several rotten fence slats hitting his chest. By the time he’d turned his head back around the bike was already through the hedgerow opposite the junction and was now going down the bramble-covered embankment. He let the bike go. The crash helmet saved his good looks and braincells. His trainers, jeans, t-shirt and lightweight shower-resistant jacket proved ineffective at repelling stiff branches, long thorns and ripe blackberries. He plunged 30 feet and came to rest in a bed of stinging nettles halfway down the embankment. While many injuries were superficial two splinters, one in his knee and the other in his right hand, would later be removed by a doctor at the local Accident and Emergency. As he sat there, a single rhetorical question ran through his mind; ‘Who do I know drives a red hatchback.’ He pushed the bike down to the footpath that had replaced the railway track and walked back to the village past several startled dog walkers. Instead of going home he popped round to see his Aunt Audrey. She wasn’t in, but his Uncle Geoff was. He popped the kettle on an they both waited for her to return from the shops…in her red hatchback. Leonard’s point was that locals, himself included, drive the local roads without due care and attention because they are so familiar with it. Audrey had driven over the bridge and past the junction so many times that she barely registered it anymore let alone considered the blind-exit drivers had to negotiate. It was just part of a journey to town, or the shops. She had no recollection of a near miss with a motorbike even though it had been within the previous hour. And so it goes for me. After the majority of my working life on the trunking networks of Great Britain and Europe, I am now delivering building equipment and products to local building sites, houses and other retail outlets. And it has caused no end of headaches. Headaches I’d not really experienced before. Things like drivers queuing in traffic and blocking T-junctions so you cannot get out. Then, they just stare ahead like their lives depend on it for up to three minutes before traffic moves on again. Getting carved up like a Sunday roast by taxi drivers. This has to be a sport, where they all congregate at the railway station and compare stats on who has pissed off the most people in the town. Cyclists: ‘insert general offensive comment here’. If I had a pound for every time my truck gets surrounded at traffic lights like flies on shit I’d be considering retirement. Then there are the steamboat captains sailing the camper vans up and down the choppy back waters looking for a safe harbour to park up for the night. No ideal of where their nearside is, and I’ve witnessed more 23-point turns than I care to remember. If I ever find the person who limited these sardine tins with an outboard motor to 35mph some plaster would come off the ceiling. And then there are the locals who fall into two categories; those driving everywhere like they’re late for their own funeral and those who drive like they are part of a funeral procession. They all brake in the last 10 yards, tackle blind corners as if gifted with x-ray vision, tailgate like Sebastien Vettel, and only use an indicator if it’s been mistaken for a windscreen wiper. Finally parking; both sides of a narrow street, corners, entrances, exits, you name it, it’s been done. If crap parking can hold you up, then, yes, I’ve been held up at least once every day. Can you find the owner? Unlikely, but usually they show up just as you try to squeeze past within a fag paper of their pride and joy. Don’t get me wrong, I like the job, I enjoy the work, and I am having to learn to be tolerant but every time I see a red hatchback, I realise that familiarity breeds contempt among the locals. Confront them and they are quick to anger, and as such need to be treated with kid gloves. Right now, I am enjoying the work. And, if anything, it’s made me realise just how diverse the world of the truck driver can be. I wouldn’t change that for anything.
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AuthorAging proletariat with face, teeth and body to prove it. Archives
August 2021
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