“It's you”, my wife said when we first set eyes on it. “It must be fate. Just what you want and your name's written all over it”. I had to agree to some extent: it was certainly my size, and the style I was looking for, but it was the name that really got me. A transfer identifying the American manufacturer, Surly, had been fixed to the front tube and one saying, Long Haul Trucker to the crossbar. “Surly Long Haul Trucker”, giggled my wife. “It's you”.
The LHT, according to the internet site we were looking at, was one of the most popular and capable touring cycles you could buy and that was apparently what I wanted, a bike to go touring on. You see, my wife was planning a cycling holiday, a change, I suppose, from the usual lying on a crowded beach watching oil soaked blubber eat its way through the day. She had decided on something that would allow us to travel about a bit and see a few things. No sitting down all day looking at the world through a screen. Slow, also, so the countryside could be appreciated instead of whizzing through it on motorways and A roads. We would go gliding down lanes and tracks away from other traffic, in quiet tranquillity; relaxed, avoiding all that confrontation while in complete harmony with all we would meet in the rural idyll.
I didn't like to disillusion her and tell her of the self-satisfying smiles and forced pleasantry you get from everyone you meet when venturing beyond the safety of the concrete landscape; that there would be animals everywhere, depositing goodness knows what all over the place, including the roads on which we would be cycling; and those pony club women stuffed into filthy jodhpurs; the smell. Friendly fresh air? Give me the stern-faced, sweet smoke of the city any day of the week.
“Me, Surly? I don't know what you mean”. I protested. “Long haul trucker I may be, but Surly...?”. I'd always considered myself pretty laid back, a listener, always reasonable and above all, considerate. She looked at me sideways. “What about the Ministry chap who was snooping round your cab looking for a speed detection equipment detector, thing”, my wife said. “You were pretty surly with him by all accounts. In fact, by your account, actually. Remember”?
Oh yes, I remember him, snooping around.
Surly Long Haul Trucker and a snooper from the Ministry.
It was just a normal road check, somewhere in West London, I think, on the North circular Road. I had just left a factory estate in Park Royal and was heading south for the channel when I got pounced on by a police motorcyclist and told to pull into the next slip road. When I stopped, I got out of the cab to speak to another driver who was standing next to his truck smoking, while a man from The Ministry tapped out a familiar tune on the underside of the chassis. We were exchanging a few pleasantries when said musician emerged from under the vehicle holding aloft the headless shaft of a small hammer.
“The tops come off”, he said, through a broad smile.
“Why were you using it, if it was defective”? I said, straight faced.
“Well, I didn't know it was going to break, did I”. The smile had disappeared now, replaced by the dismayed look of the victim.
“When did you last check it”? I asked.
He didn't answer and strutted off to a small group of officials that were gathered round a couple of cars, idly chatting and drinking take-away coffee.
It was then I noticed that the passenger door of my cab was open and someone was standing on the top step looking in, the top half of his body obscured by the open door. I walked back to the truck and stood behind him. I could see the reflective jacket and clipboard with its pen attached, the coat and claws of the fault-finder
“What are you doing”? I asked.
“Just looking, driver”. He didn't climb down, just swivelled his head and upper body to face me.
“You should ask first”, I told him.
“We have the power to enter”.
“Not uninvited you don't. You can't force me to let you into my cab”. I said, with false politeness. I pride myself on remaining calm in these situations.
“If you don't show me your records or the vehicle unit. 'The tachograph'”, he added, intending to show the teeth of his knowledge, but instead simply sounding smug. ''That's obstruction”. He wasn't budging, neither in his stance on looking in my cab, nor from the step.
“I can't. I said.
“Why not”? The clipboard began to shake in anticipation
“You're obstructing me. I can't get in the cab”. I said.
He fixed me with a stern look for a few seconds, then smiled and suggested I go round and get in the driver's seat so that we could discuss the matter in comfort. There's no point in crossing the line with officialdom, so I made my way round to the other side of the cab and climbed up.
The line in these matters being the stage where a government official can crawl back behind the cover of legislation. It's always easier to destroy than create, that's true in all aspects of life: my truck took a lot of effort to put together, but it'll eventually corrode away all on its own; my business took years to build, but it could be destroyed in a day by any incident serious enough. The right approach is to be in the right and not give anyone the chance to destroy. So, after he had inspected the tachograph and my records, and found nothing to report, and the wheel tappers had flattened a few more edges on the nuts and bolts that hold my truck together, I said that I wished to leave. He, though, seemed to have other ideas and his eyes began to wander around the cab.
“What are you looking for”? I said.
“We're clamping down on speed enforcement detection equipment”, he said. “Do you have any such devices”?
“What defines 'such devices'”? I said.
“Such things that allow you to tell if your speed is being checked”.
“Like the mirrors”, I said.
“What”?
“Well, if I look in the mirrors and there's a police car behind, I check the speedo to make sure I'm not speeding”.
“No, you know what I mean”. He was becoming a bit tetchy, I noticed. “Devices that detect police radar, and that sort of thing”.
“I've got a GPS, I think that gives camera positions. But that's perfectly legal”.
“Ah, but not in France”, he said, triumphantly.
“But we're not in France”, I said.
“Look, it's perfectly natural for the police to enforce the speed limit, and for them not to want to be detected”. He became a little more animated now, his hands jutting to and fro as he warmed to the theme. “Otherwise drivers would have an unfair advantage”.
“What's natural, as you come to mention it”, I said, doing my best to sound logical and not too mocking. “Is that predators have eyes in the front of their heads, so they have 3-D vision which enables them to judge speed and distance. That way they know when to pounce. Prey have eyes on the each side of the head, so they have all round vision and can see the predators coming from any angle. That way the prey stay ever vigilant, and respectful of the rules that govern their behaviour”.
“Erm, well … . I don't see...”.
‘‘If I'm driving along and I see a speed limit sign, I look at the speedo to ensure my speed's appropriate for that road. It's the same if I see a camera or police car. All the while I'm checking my speed to make sure I'm within the rules. It would be the same if I had any other type of detector, which, by the way, I don't. It's all good for safety, the more people check their speed, the better”.
We eventually went on our cycling holiday, me and the wife. It was a bum breaking, leg aching, damp affair spent dodging lunatic tractor drivers and oblivious country folk in their four wheel drives. On the last day, as we turned from a busy B road and into a lane close to our home, a truck driver, obviously frustrated by our presence, wound down his window and yelled, “Get off the f*****g road”. I, of course, gave him a thumbs up.
