Shed

It was starting to get to me by then. For the fifth time in as many weeks the air brakes on my tractor unit had blown a pipe, the feed pipe from the compressor to be exact, and it was the same one every time. I'd been looking for a replacement for ages but as hard as I tried I just couldn't find one, not of the right gauge anyway, and I ended up, each time, having to bodge a repair. 

What I did was get a length of armoured fuel pipe, you know, the clear one with the metal mesh in the material, and use that with a jubilee clip at each end. Trouble was it just couldn't take the pressure and eventually a loud bang would signal another split pipe, followed by the inevitable hissing sound of escaping air. Then it was simply a matter of time before the brakes would begin to bind on, as they were doing now.

Shortly after the first one or two times it happened I started to collect the spare lengths of pipe and the clips needed for the next repair, storing them in a box in my cab's passenger well. I had sort of organised the box so each part was in its own place, which wasn't bad for a box of such a small size. I liked the order of it, knowing where everything was. I was like that with the rest of the cab, and what with all the other bits in there - the essentials for nights out, my tea making and cooking kit, and all the tools and other bits needed to keep the lorry going and looking OK - the inside of that Leyland was definitely my space. It reminded me of my old man and his shed; a man's retreat, as mum called it. I couldn't imagine why he needed one at the time, but I can see it now: it's where his stuff was, the bits and pieces he needed in order to do the things he wanted to do or just tinker away time the way he wanted. Whenever me and my brother quarrelled, played our noisy games of war, or he had had a row with mum, off he'd go to the bottom of the garden where no one, not my brother and me, or mum, dared follow.

We often peered through the window, my brother and me, when he was at work. We would look at the neatly arranged tools and the shelves stacked with cans, pots and a variety of oddments, none of which we recognised or knew the purpose of, but we never thought to enter his special space. His man's place. Although he didn't spend all of his spare time out there, far from it really, just a few hours on Saturday afternoons and then again on Sunday mornings - the days my brother and I were at our most annoying - he seemed to achieve a lot. He rebuilt a Gardner pump engine one year, a two cylinder, and in the summer on its completion he proudly displayed the little motor on our lawn, in all its glory among the garden furniture. The engine was mounted in a frame of one-inch angle iron and plumbed into a makeshift fuel tank and a tub containing water. It had started life in a South African gold mine, pumping water, a task it was still very capable of, proving itself right there in front of our eyes, in our back garden.

The block and cylinder heads were painted a deep green and all the pipework shone the golden glow of brass. Being young and living in a world that afforded adult males the luxury of idling away time in a shed, I assumed South African mine workers had a similar existence and had once sat on garden chairs mesmerised by the beauty of that little engine, as my father did then. I wondered if they too would every so often wipe it with a clean cloth before sitting back, arms folded, head to one side, their faces fixed with a distant smile. The old Gardner was eventually sold to a canal boat owner and apparently continued life idly chugging up and down the Grand Union. My dad said the boat had an engine room not dissimilar to his shed.

But back to my blown air line. My lorry wasn't always obliging in its choice of places to blow the pipe. It went on one occasion in queuing traffic in a busy town. The streets were narrow and there was nowhere to go, so I trundled on, stop start, hoping to find a place to pull over. Soon the unavoidable happened and we ground to a halt. I got out and tried to see if there was anything I could do just to get going. There was nothing: my hands, feeling, twisting and prodding had found the pipe split again. It wasn't long before there was the almost continual sound of a horn from the car immediately behind. The driver wound down his window with his right hand as I approached, I saw his other hand impatiently tapping away at the steering wheel. Before he had a chance to say anything, I suggested that I stay and sound his horn while he went to my lorry and got it moving again. He took one look at my manic expression and sank back in his seat.

But this time my lorry was much more considerate. We were on a long country A road littered with lay-bys and as soon as I heard the bang I pulled into one of these, just as the brakes started to bind on. It was a lovely summer day and the temperature was already over 20 degrees centigrade, so out came my collapsible garden chair and tools. I spread all the things I needed, neatly on a large rag placed over the grass between me and the open passenger door. I arranged them in order, piping, tools, clips etc. There was no rush, essentially I'd finished for the day and had by then decided to stay. Later I'd get out my bed board, the one I laid across the seats to sleep on, and that would be me till the following morning. And so I thought for a while, pondering each of the items in front of me, and those other items I knew were in my box, in the cab. I came up with the idea of using duct tape to wrap the new pipe once I'd fitted it. It seemed worth a go. It was probably the sort of thing my dad would have done in his shed, utilizing what he had, but above all trying.

Dad's shed wasn't a common wooded job, it was actually block built and whitewashed on the outside. He had a great fondness for it, we knew that, but also for the idea of sheds in general, their purpose and, in his view, necessity. I can remember him sitting in front of the telly once, watching a news item about the police searching for some bloke who'd done I can't remember what, although something pretty nasty, I recall that much. Anyway, dad said the police should have a 'men without a shed' register and at times like this go out and round them up. Everyman should have a shed or its equivalent, he said, there's something wrong with those that don't. Dad was a bit extreme at times. He even carpeted the floor of his shed, with the cast off when he and mum renewed the carpet in our living room. At the time our neighbour was throwing out a 4 stroke hover mower: it wouldn't start, he said. Dad took it into his shed and sure enough in less than an hour he had it going, mowing a perfect circle in his carpet, exposing the concrete base below. My tape idea didn't work. I kept at it, though, and the following time I sleeved the pipe with a larger hose. In the end it held; just long enough for me to sell the lorry.