Rogue Male in Lockdown

        

The Royal Enfield Classic 500 I bought last October is sitting in the garage and I’m indoors fantasising about a bygone age.  I’ve just finished reading Rogue Male, a Boys Own adventure with an illustrated cover designed to spark the imagination, like the ones they had on motorcycle magazines back in the 1950s. The book’s protagonist is pursued by a deadly foreign agent across pre-war Europe before going to ground in Dorset, not too far from where I live. In the mother of all lockdowns, he digs in and hides in a burrow somewhere between Beaminster and Lyme Regis. And I intend, once this present situation is over, to take the Enfield and go look for him.

I’ll start by going East down the A3052 into Lyme Regis, where our hero risked leaving his hideaway to collect mail forwarded from London. It’s a beautiful town with views along the coast all the way in. It’s also a place to stop for coffee. Just pop into the carpark at the bottom of the main street by the little clock tower and slip through the barrier on the left - you’ll often see plenty of other bikes there. But I won’t stop, not today, I’ll continue east out of town, climbing through the long sweeping bends until I come to the A35. The Enfield likes something a bit more sedate, so I’ll go through Charmouth coming out on the A road further along. A quick right and first left will see me on the lanes towards Whitechurch Canonicorum. I use this route quite a bit and I know the bike will come into its own thumping along in 2nd or 3rd gear, the wonderful sound of its Hitchcocks exhaust ricocheting off stone buildings along the narrow lane.  There’s always grass and loose stuff up the middle, so I’ll stick to one side and take it easy through the blind turns.

From Whitechurch I’m following Sustrans cycle route 2, a road section that’s narrow and slow, ideal for the Enfield, which will need few gear changes and just chug down to bang bang and back up again. At Shave Cross I’ll go on to Broadoak. That’s where I’ll leave the cycle route and drop down to Symonsbury on Broadoak Road. It’s hereabouts that many people think the author described the hideaway's location but it’s down a hollow way track, so I’ll give it a miss and pop into West Bay for a cuppa. There’s plenty of places to choose from and ample bike parking, and a kiosk where tea is 50p a cup for bikers. From West Bay I often head out towards Weymouth on the B3157, and if you haven’t ridden it, it’s a must. The speed limit’s an ideal Royal Enfield Bullet 50 mph; the views before Abbotsbury down to The Fleet and Portland are breath-taking. 

Today though, I’d be heading north, bypassing Bridport towards Beaminster on the A3066. The Enfield will ride well on it, taking the bends at 50-55 mph in top, hitting its sweet spot and actually feeling quite smooth for a big single. Turning right onto North Street it all starts to get a bit tricky and the lanes become anonymous with few signs. The idea is to head for the Fox Inn near Corscombe to the east of the A356. In 1976, Peter O’Toole starred in a television film adaptation of Rogue Male (I got the DVD off Amazon as soon as I’d finished reading the book) and several scenes were filmed in the area, including one outside The Fox Inn. We’ve been there before, the Enfield and me, so hopefully I’ll find it again. Then it’s south and a short hop via the A356 to Rampisham, another location used in the film and one we’ve also been to on our runs through the lanes. Like at the Fox Inn, I’ll stop a while and try to work out if the place has changed much since the film was made.

There are other villages mentioned in the book within easy reach but by then, if I haven’t already stopped for a stretch, I’ll probably be getting to the stage where I’ve had enough of the Enfield’s single saddle for a bit and head back to Beaminster on the B3163. Rogue Male can wait for another day. Beaminster’s not the easiest place to find somewhere to park up in, so I’m going on to Axminster just over the border in Devon via Broadwindsor, the B3164 and then the B3165, eventually cutting across to the town on one or two of the maze of little lanes that run off the B road. Motorcycles are not charged in the South Street car park, so it’s here that I’ll stop for another cuppa at one of the many cafes - there’s even the River Cottage Kitchen, for the more discerning palette.

I’m nearly home now but I’ll make a short excursion to join up with one of Peter O’Toole’s other characters, T.E Lawrence, who he played in the 1962 film, Lawrence of Arabia.  Coming out of Axminster I’ll head west and after a short, unavoidable stint on the A35,  I’ll go south from Kilmington through Whitford to Colyton. Shortly, I’ll be back on the A3052 in Colyford not far from where I started. There’s an old garage near the tramway crossing that’s now a cycle shop and café with the most beautiful set of 1950s Avery Hardoll fuel pumps you’ll see anywhere. It’s said that Lawrence often filled up his Brough here and although these pumps are from a later decade. If you can get to them when there’s not too many cars about, they make for a great photo. 

At the end of Rogue Male our hero skinned a dead cat and made a catapult out of its pelt. When the nasty foreign agent tried to get to him, he let him have it, straight between the eyes. I’ll ride back up the hill towards home, lockdown a thing of the past.    

   

  

  

  

The Affair

My mate John's wife is a stunning beauty. Everywhere she goes men just stare. And a lot of men, including me, I have to accept, secretly want her. There's nothing you can do about it. You just have to control yourself and resist the inner pangs of desire. Although, to be honest, I'm not sure if I could, given the chance.

I was in the garage tinkering with my Triumphs when my wife came in and spoke those fateful words.

“B has been on the phone”, she said. (B is John's wife). “She wants a favour of you. It's a 'big ask'”.

“What is it”? I said.

“John's done his back in and is no good for anything. He can barely move in bed let alone manoeuvre on the sofa. He'll be useless for a while, apparently. B wants you for something. She'll tell you herself what it is”, my wife said. “But it's OK with me”, she added, “if you really want to do it”.

Excited, I phoned B. The big ask, it transpired, was to travel from our Devon postcode to Liverpool to buy a Harley Davidson soft tail custom for the incapacitated John. B had arranged it all: a flight from Exeter; enough cash for the bike, a taxi at the other end, fuel for the ride back, and my breakfast and lunch.

“A Harley”, my wife said. “what will you wear”?

“My Triumph jacket”. I said, “I do have some standards”.

The aircraft was a small, twin prop thing that pinned me to my seat on take off, took me just above cloud level and then thrust me forward into my seat belt before stopping in Manchester. The flight attendant barely had time to flog a croissant. The taxi out to the Liverpool took about the same time it took fly up there, and cost about as much.

The Harley was, at first glance, in pretty good nick. “It's mint”, the seller said. I looked closely at the pitting and corrosion on some of its chrome. “It's eight years old”, he said. I rubbed my fingers over some surface rust on the spokes of the front wheel. “I use it all year”, he muttered softly. I'd never really looked closely at Harleys before but there was something in the bike that got to me. I thought back to the Easy Rider poster on my childhood bedroom wall, showing those raked Harley choppers with their front wheels sticking way out in front. With its chrome, high bars, stepped seat and forward controls, this bike reminded me of long forgotten dreams: the illusion of something that can never really exist, and of how much I wanted it to.

I had my back turned when the seller started the engine and for a moment I thought someone was taking up his drive. “Long shots”, he said, followed by something about tuning. I phoned John, trying not to think of what it would be like if I had B to massage my aching back, and he told me to hand over the money and head home.

I tried to enter into the Harley spirit and envisage we were on some far flung interstate. I followed route 62 to the 6 (M62 and M6), crossed the Golden Gate Bridge (Manchester Ship canal) and pointed the chrome south-west. Once I got the Harley into sixth gear - a little green speck illuminating on the tank console - it seemed happy to just stay there. On and off slip roads, around sweeping bends marked by big black and white arrow boards, the bike just swooped and glided. The big capacity twin felt nice and 'torquey', like those engines do, and I liked it the better for it. Just before Birmingham, I stopped for fuel. Truckers, car drivers and just about everybody on foot watched as we passed by and then pulled up at the pumps. I got a thumbs up from one driver, 'beautiful', mouthed another.

From Birmingham I joined the M5 and started to feel the strain of high speed cruising on a... cruiser. I felt like I'd been sky diving for 200 miles. My chest was being pushed back, so that I was forced to pull myself forward on the bars. My shoulders and wrists started to ache. I longed for a screen and fairing, for cruise control.

I stopped again south of Bristol. This bike was no mile-eater, not in comfort or range, anyway. But a funny thing was happening: I was beginning to like being with the Harley, pleased to be part of its image. When I started the engine again, I smiled at the roar that came from from behind. I left the motorway in Somerset a short while later and headed due south, taking the long way home, enjoying this shining, elongated lump. We headed down to Chard on the A358, crossing the busy A303 and then onto the more twisting section to Axminster. It's a busy holiday route and pretty well maintained, so I was able to enjoy the Harley even more. At low speed it seemed to drop into corners more than I had expected but when we were shifting it was fine – not sports bike handling, I'm sure, but OK for some one like me who enjoys taking in the sights.

Axminster's a nice market town with plenty of cafes, but I was too near home to stop. I joined the A35 for a short distance and then turned onto Trinity Hill, passing Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's River Cottage before entering lovely Lyme Regis. If ever there is a town made to visit on a motorcycle, it's Lyme. The sea, views along the coast, old world charm, plenty of places to eat - and parking. And it was here the Harley Soft Tail Custom decided it was home, rumbling along the coast road, easy riding without being stretched over a fuel tank or having to change gear, well not often anyway.

When I finally got to John and Bs, B met me on the drive. John hobbled out almost immediately and I could see by the look on his face he had loved the bike long before this moment, when he was to set eyes on it for the first time. I also knew he'd be loading it up with some Harley bling as soon as he was fit enough. All that extra chrome and stuff. But I understood it now, feeling a bit Harley'd up myself. B thanked me as she drove me the few miles to my place. “I owe you one”, she said.

Platoon

The customer ensured its vehicles were capable of transmitting a unique number. And when one did, it wasn't assigned a slang term we all recognize like car, coach and truck, to those recieving them these numbers were given official designations where vehicles become units: personal autonomous unit (PAU), autonomous people unit (APU) and autonomous goods unit (AGU). Sometimes the identification number would relate to an AGU platoon. “It was like, wow”, Dolly tells me. “You'd have no idea what was coming up, then there it was, a platoon ID and you'd be controlling it”. There was no time to consider the magnitude of the task: taking control of all those vehicles, all travelling within centimetres of each other in one long autonomous procession, hundreds of tonnes of aerodynamic efficency that could only be operated with one-hundred-percent safety by sophisticated robotic systems. But despite all that, when their shift finished, it was home for tea, home to their partners and families, carrying on life as normal, as if nothing had happened.

We are sitting on a small sofa in the neat apartment that is now Dolly's home. Her toddler is playing at her feet. Dolly wears a dark pink long sleeved shirt, formal navy blue slacks and highly polished black leather loafers. Her make-up is subtle; her appearance, elegant. The former Department for Transport analyst worked on the Driver (remote intervention programme) at a secret location in the midlands. In converted, windowless containers her team would take manual control of vehicles whose systems had become corrupt. The customers she refers to were the organizations needing intervention by the Driver programme. It could be, she tells me, the police or maybe a company not wanting to incur a stoppage penalty on the highway network. With increasingly severe sanctions for anyone slowing or interrupting the closely timed flow of the country's logistics matrix, all vehicles are required by law to have fitted independent processors capable of notifying and requesting remote intervention from the DfT if a problem occurs.

Dolly remembers often traveling home in her car, enveloped in its entertainment system like everyone else, not looking at the vehicles around her. But she could not stop thinking about what was going on out there. “No PAUs, cars”, she says, “have forward facing windows any more, they haven't for decades, so no one really sees what's happening”. She's right, of course, few of us even look out of the car's windows now. There's seldom anything to see, except for other cars, trucks and coaches seemingly centimeters away, all traveling at the same speed. Apparently, Dolly tells me, forward facing windows were removed in the days when the occupants of a car could bring the vehicle to a stop by pressing an emergency button. Too many people were panicking, not appreciating the ability of computers to manage traffic and pressing the button when other vehicles got close.

Her training with the DfT was extensive and exhausting. “Can you imagine what it's like to control a unit”, she says, her posture becoming more upright, her body visibly tensing as each hand grips a knee. “You actually have to steer and brake, and alter the speed, manually. You really do. I know it sounds crazy, but you do. We did hours in the simulator, hours. And even then it seemed like ages before you got anything, just one little thing, right, even with the satnav guiding you and all the cameras and proximity alarms letting you know what's going on around the unit”. Vehicles had to be driven to a safe place where they could be rectified, somewhere out of the way so as not to impede the logistics matrix. When she finally joined her team, working in the artificial light of the container, Dolly sat waiting until a customer ID appeared. She would then monitor a number of projections of the target vehicle and its surroundings, varying between two and three dimensional, and control it with a simple hand wheel and foot pedals.

As we continue to talk Dolly starts to laugh. “Do you know?” She says, ”that at one time AGU drivers, sitting in the unit, would have to change gears to maintain speed. It's true, apparently they had a lever to do it. First they would disengage power with a foot pedal, then use the lever to alter the wheel's rotational speed ratio with the power by way of gears and then reengage the power by releasing the foot pedal. All this while steering. And people in the surrounding units were doing the same. All they had was a screen to see through forward and mirrors to see behind. None of these units, absolutely none of them, and probably traveling at ninety, were under proper control except for a person on board called the driver”. I was astonished. We've all heard of these old vehicles but I had never been fully aware of the details, except that they were forever bumping into each other.

Dolly's laugh was, I noticed, a nervous one borne more out of incredulity than amusement. Her reference to how things were in that bygone age says a lot about the pressure she felt doing the job at the Driver programme. She tells me how, as the work progressed, she became more withdrawn. “I would spend hours in my Cube walking the hills or along a coastline somewhere. Any program it could offer that had nothing to do with roads, that was what I craved, anything that relieved my pent up stress and gave some sort of natural tranquility. I just about wore the treadmill out”.

But it was a platoon that was to end it all for Dolly. During what seemed like a quiet shift an ID number appeared in front of her followed by the projected hologram of a AGU platoon. The lead vehicle had broken communication with the vehicle immediately behind and was beginning to slow the entire platoon. If Dolly didn't act quickly the entire procession would bring itself to a halt. She took control intending to reassign the platoon lead to the first following unit and peel off the lead vehicle at the next available junction. She did this successfully but then disaster struck. Dolly takes up the story. “I took the lead unit off the main route and the platoon continued OK. In fact, soon after, it joined up with another one. I was pleased that I'd been able to see it on its way. But when I took the lead unit onto a minor route a terrible thing happened. A cyclist came from the right, or so I'm told because I just didn't see him. They say he went under the front of the unit. All sorts of alarms sounded and I stopped the unit, you have to in those circumstances even though, at the time, I had no idea what had happened. A police drone and android medic arrived. That was that, I was off the programme”.

Despite the cyclist being dangerously off the designated cycle way and the fact that all road markings or signs on routes that might have helped indicate rights of way disappeared long ago, Dolly was found to be enough at fault to be removed from her position. Is she disappointed? “No”, she says. “I'd rather be walking the hills”.

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.

Surly Long Haul Trucker

“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.

Beside the Seaside

The consensus of opinion was that the company wouldn't last the year out. They were being battered by the union, the sun was rising in the East and the shareholders, as shareholders did, expected a better return. Most of the management were present that day, seated around the boardroom table, and to a man they could see what was coming: the dark cloud looming. They had all lived through worse and understood the feeling of impending doom; the approaching storm and the hardships that would follow. Grimshaw still covered his mouth with a carefully placed hand when he spoke, in an effort to cover scars that resulted from his awful burns. The youngest there by far, he always wore garishly chequered suits with a bright handkerchief tucked in the jacket's top pocket; a deflection, everyone thought. And there was Allinson, a haggard looking and twitchy forty-something who always voiced approval with the words, 'I'll drink to that'. They were all in some way Allinsons and Grimshaws; live for the moment that's what they'd learnt, and they all bore the scars in one form or other. Allinson said the brass hats didn't understand what was going on at the front, and that was the problem. They'd have to dig in until support arrived or it all blew over. Grimshaw, speaking from behind a hand raised to his mouth, told them that if better kit wasn't made available and the men didn't play the game, they would be lost for sure. It was as simple as that, he said. There were nods all round. They would need to stand firm, he said, and got up from his seat and walked to a small table in the corner of the room, one that was always laid out with numerous bottles. All around the room hung the portraits of those who had 'commanded' before; a dusty display of heredity, position and place. “I'll drink to that”, Allinson said, and slumped in his chair, stretching his legs out under the table.

The factory floor was always swept clean; the chassis were lined up in neat rows, in time honoured fashion; and the men moved among them, in and out, following channels worn into the floor by generations of workers before. In the canteen the talk was of new motorcycles from BSA and Triumph, the latest music and all the newfangled gadgets coming across the sea from America. On the walls, posters advertised saving schemes and premium bonds. Everyone knew the price that had been paid and the debt they were owed. The war was still very fresh in everyone's memory. They believed they had prevailed against great odds and were undefeated; the country was the best; produced the best; deserved the best. They thought, as victors, they were owed a better life, and because the country had been saved by everyone fighting together the old establishment should be washed away, like castles made of sand on the beach. Wage demands and the threat of strikes were always present, even when it became obvious overseas competition was a serious threat. Talk of closure had started to filter down from above. Rumour, that's what they thought; it was all just rumour. But soon things got serious and a wave of panic started; and, of course, the questions. Who was responsible, and why? In the end there was speculation about mergers, Government interventions and co-operatives; all materialised to some extent or other, but non worked.

At home the women carried on as normal; very little had changed for them. Their work was the same as it always had been. Making ends meet, raising a family, keeping things afloat, looking after the home. Such as they were in those days. Terraced houses with outside toilets and fires you had to make each morning; no microwaves or fridges, or any of the things we have these days that make life easier. Except for the occasional holiday by the sea, if you were lucky, life for the women had changed little since the end of war. Rationing had continued for ages and they still had the worry; it was just a different worry, that was all. And when, in the end, when the factory closed, it was the women that had to keep things together. Trouble seemed to come in waves; some days rougher than others. If anyone deserved a holiday, they did.

It was all right for me, though. I was only young then and a secretary at the factory. I had to take minutes at management meetings but at the same time I was from the same streets the workers came from, so I knew the boardroom as well as I did the shopfloor. I lived at home with my parents in a little two up, two down and had no real responsibilities to speak of. For all my knowledge of the company, I didn't really appreciate the extent of the concerns people had about the future, and, I suppose, I was too young and naive to understand. I was a child in the war, you see. I couldn't fully appreciate what the grown-ups had endured; everyone had a story to tell that involved some sort of loss, no matter how small. I was always thinking about holidays and coming here. To me at that time there seemed little else to look forward to; what else did we have but the seaside?

She was sitting on a bench on the seafront close to my truck and we had somehow just got talking. I was waiting for a machine that a construction company was using for some foundation work to be ready for loading and she seemed to be in no hurry to move on. She was old, probably in her mid to late seventies, and immaculate in every way, which made her look more like visiting gentry or a retired headteacher than a retired secretary. “More changes”? She said, looking at the works going on nearby. “Yes”, I said. “Everything changes, thankfully”. She looked at a loss for something to say. “More work for people like me”, I explained. She glanced at my truck and its low-loader trailer, and then screwed her lips into what I took to be a smile. But then someone caught her eye and she stood up. A smartly dressed man, probably a few years her senior, was approaching us. He was wearing a brightly coloured sports jacket and a pair of brogues that almost glowed burgundy. With a matching handkerchief flamboyantly draped from the jacket's top pocket, he looked a little over dressed among the more retiring of that seaside retirement stronghold. She said her goodbyes and took his arm as he nodded an acknowledgement to me, carefully holding, I noticed, a hand over his mouth. 

Dreamtime

“Perhaps he couldn't see the wood for the trees”, Bernard said, looking at the sergeant, a faint smile appearing on his lips. The sergeant bent forward and placed the palm of his right hand on the only part of the Nissan's roof that was still flat, steadying himself as he looked through the remains of the driver's door. There was warmth in the metal from the late afternoon sun. Bernard stood a few yards away and only had to stoop to see the driver's blood stained head wedged between the steering wheel and a windscreen crushed by the front of the roof during the impact. The torso seemed to be wrapped in deformed  plastic and metal that had once been a dashboard and engine bulkhead. They both focused on the driver’s eyes. Dead, young eyes; half closed, fixed, dull. “Any smell of booze in there”? Bernard said. “You know what they're like”. The sergeant looked past the driver's head and saw his own face reflected in the few remaining pieces of a twisted and broken mirror mounted on the outside of the passenger door opposite. His eyes went back at the driver before he stood up and faced Bernard. “Sorry”, Bernard said.

The Nissan, a small flat-bed truck, a 'tray', they called them, was trapped underneath the rear semi-trailer of a 'pocket' roadtrain. The Nissan had been travelling along the main route, the roadtrain, loaded with logs, was leaving a track from a forestry site, turning across the small truck's path. Paramedics had been and gone, there was nothing they could do, and the driver of the roadtrain was now talking to some local officers, as Bernard and the sergeant began their investigation. The enormous forest formed a backdrop that climbed a low escarpment in the distance; a mass of greens and browns set against the clear blue sky. The sergeant looked to the distant trees; there was a breeze up there making some of the branches sway. “Any sign of braking?” Bernard asked, walking slowly back down the road a short way, studying the dusty surface over which the Nissan would have travelled. It wasn't long before he sauntered  back. “There's no marks”, he said. “What about the tyres”? Bernard crawled under the trailer as he spoke, intent on getting a closer look. The Nissan had been dragged sideways after going  under the roadtrain and there were marks on the road to show this movement, but nothing else: no additional heat scarring on the tyres themselves that might have shown the Nissan's driver was braking before the collision. The sergeant followed Bernard's movements with an occasional glance but remained standing beside the dead driver, his hand still resting on the roof above the body.

“The brake light bulbs might tell us something”, Bernard said, pulling a multi-tool from a pouch attached to his trouser belt. He flipped out the Philips driver and began removing the rear light lenses. “If the filaments are stretched it may indicate the lights were on; their metal hot”, he said. But neither bulb showed any sign that they were on during a sudden deceleration. “Both broken but not stretched”, Bernard sounded disappointed. “The sun may have been low, maybe it was shining in his eyes, so he couldn't see”. Bernard seemed to be talking to himself. “Mind you", he said. "The locals say there were some clouds about, so the sun might not have been out when it happened”. The sergeant just looked past him, still gazing towards the distant hills. There would be kangaroos up there, you could imagine them foraging as dusk approached, now the real heat of the day had gone. “How long do you think it would have taken the prime-mover and the first semi to get to where they did before the collision”? Bernard asked. The sergeant thought for a moment, but wasn't able to answer before Bernard came up with his own assessment. “Could have been about five seconds”, he said. “Possibly”.

“Apparently, it's one of the biggest natural forests in the country”, Bernard was now saying. He didn't know the area well; he'd just read about it on their trip up. It wasn't a region anyone, as far as he could see, would wish to visit and he certainly would have no reason to go there himself, under normal circumstances. It was a long way from civilization. In fact, it had taken a couple of hours to fly from State Police headquarters, a journey they would have to retrace later when they headed home, leaving local officers to clear up and deal with the body.  "Pretty impressive, aye; trees as far as you can see”. The sergeant heard what was being said, he nodded occasionally, but his eyes were fixed on those hills. There would be snakes among the trees, the serpent, and frogs, probably, and, of course, birds. The butterfly too. “These rigs are in and out of here all day long, carting logs away, if he's local”. Bernard gestured towards the Nissan as he spoke. “He must have known that”. He paused for a moment. “If he was doing sixty kph, he would be about ...”. There was a further silence from Bernard; his face raised to the sky while he concentrated on the computation. “... Let's see, a kilometre a minute, so, that's … over sixteen metres per second. In five seconds, that is at least ... eighty metres. Eighty metres! He must have been asleep not to see the rig pulling out in front of him. He could have stopped, easily; he wouldn't even have had to brake hard”. The sergeant wasn't listening now. There were koalas too; before the machines came, anyway. “Or just taking time out”, Bernard said.

A Man`s MAN

It came as quite a shock, the information my good lady wife imparted to me from a certain women`s magazine she was reading.  Apparently, because of the nature of their work and the separation this entails, sea captains sometimes take their wives along on voyages.  My reaction, I have to admit, wasn`t too convincing - it was very sensible, I said, for these middle aged men, travelling to the flesh spots of the world, thousands of miles from any of their wives` friends who might recognize them, to be accompanied in such a way.  The inevitable result was that my wife immediately suggested she accompany me, in my lorry, on one of my `voyages`.

When the morning of our trip came, I quickly packed my holdall: spare jeans and a few T- shirts; a handful of socks and pants; coffee and powdered milk; money for breakfast at a cafe each morning and a few sandwiches at night; laptop and my Bay Watch DVD collection - The Box Set, as I call it.  And when, at least an hour later, my wife appeared downstairs with a bag not much bigger than my own, my relief must have been obvious.  But my joy was short lived, as she announced this was simply hand luggage; her suitcase was too heavy for her to lift and I was to fetch it from the bedroom.

A brief explanation about bunks – roomy, happy, sleepy - and their arch enemy, luggage, was met with considerable incredulity as it became apparent that I had missed an essential point about our journey.  This was to be a pleasant break, not an ordeal; not some sort of macho, sweaty, unwashed smelly and most of all, cramped, expedition that only a man could enjoy. We, she explained, would be staying in hotels.  We, I said, don`t make money by staying in hotels.  There was no need to add the, `staying in hotels`, she told me, rather cruelly.  And that was that: if We were to make no money, she had decided, We would do it in comfort.  I loaded the lorry, vowing never to be unkind to a mule as long as I live, and We, my good lady wife, her wardrobe and I, headed East along the A roads of England.  

I was using a rented MAN tractor unit at that time, on a temporary contract with a curtain sided trailer.  It was easy work.  The journeys were short by my usual standards, just a few nights away at a time, and totally within the UK.  I was happily back in the land of transport cafes with English breakfasts of fried slices, black pudding, fried eggs, rashes of bacon, and mugs of tea.  “We`ll pull in at the next cafe”, I suggested to my perfumed passenger.  “Why”? She asked.  I glanced at her - and yes, she was serious. “For breakfast”, I told her.  “But you had toast this morning”, she said, “I`ve made us a cheese sandwich each for lunch, they`re in the cool box, we`ll wait until then”.  “We need to stop”, I informed her, “it`s the law”.  We`ve been going twenty-five minutes”, she said.  “I need a loo”, I tried.  “There`s bound to be a filling station before long", she said. "I`ll be able to browse the magazines while you`re in the toilet”.

The day rumbled on in sympathy with my stomach, which only received the cheese sandwich and a packet of crisps (salt & vinegar, family size) I had bought at the garage to keep me from fainting at the wheel.  “No wonder your seat in the Renault is so dirty”, she said, as I munched away at the crisps, “You`re dropping crumbs everywhere”.  The Renault was my usual tractor unit.  “I hadn`t noticed”, I said.  “I hope you don`t eat junk like this all the time you are away”, she persisted.  “They didn`t have any celery”, I assured her.

Sometime in the afternoon we joined a motorway and after clarification that my discerning driver`s mate was sure she wanted a hotel for the night, I told her that there was a motel at the next service station. “Take the A road at the next junction”, she instructed, turning to me from the GPS with her look of `non-negotiation`.   I did, as instructed, and we were lead onto a thirty mile an hour speed limit road that ran through a busy little village.  “There”, she said, pointing to a large country pub that advertised hotel accommodation.  “It`s a pub”, I protested. “There`s nowhere to park”.  “There`s a car park behind”, she said.  “Exactly, and I know this thing only has two-seats, but it ain`t no car”.  “Pull in”, she told me, “I`ll deal with this”.

I managed to get into the car park, squeezing past a couple of cars, and finally positioning the lorry along the entire length of a tree lined hedge that ran across the back of the property, covering who knows how many parking bays. A ruddy faced gent in a black suit came running from the front entrance.  “What are you doing”? He said, coming straight at me, as I climbed down from the cab. My wife appeared between us, as if gliding on a blanket of mist.  I don`t think either of us, me or the hotelier, saw her legs moving.  “We wish to stay the night”, my wife informed him.  “But this is a hotel”, he said.  “Then, mercifully", she said, "we have come to the right place”.  “But trucks are not permitted in here”, he came back, instantly.  She, though, was scanning the pub, as if not listening. We couldn`t help ourselves but follow her gaze.  First she looked at the large door at the rear of the kitchens, close to where the MAN was parked.  Then she fixed her eyes on the beer cellar`s enormous covers, which were nearby.  And then to the narrow, busy road out front.  “Where do the delivery trucks unload, then”? She asked.  “Well”, he faltered momentarily - you could literally see his shoulders drop.  “That`s different”, he said, gathering himself, manfully.  “The simple fact is you cannot stay here”.  “You said that trucks weren`t allowed in here, but they clearly are.  You lied”.  “Madam, please.”  She appeared to have him on the ropes again, but he still managed to rally. “I am the manager, please, you cannot stay”.  “We have had a long day, we are tired.  Are you saying that ...”, a long, red finger nail tapped the bronze name badge he wore on the lapel of his jacket that proudly displayed the logo and name of a chain of inns.  “... Are you saying these people will turn a forty-four tonne juggernaut loose on the road with a tired driver, during the school run”?  With that the battle was won and he turned towards the entrance of the pub and reluctantly beckoned us to follow.  As my wife made to tag along, I caught the sleeve of her blouse and said, in a low voice, “Tell him we want a room with a view, not overlooking the car park with that bloody great lorry in it”.  “Oh, shut up”, she giggled.

The room was far more luxurious than either of us expected –`bygone opulence` was their speciality, according to a leaflet displayed beside the courtesy kettle. “I don`t think I`ll join you on any more runs in the lorry”, she said later, after we had returned to the room from eating. “It`s too much aggravation. I don`t know how you do it”. I nodded and suppressed a smile. “Great, Total Recall is on later”, I said, flicking through the TV guide.  “Strictly”, she said.  “OK, if you like”, I said. She liked that stuff and anyway, I had had enough of arguing for one day.  “You know”, she said, bouncing lightly on the king-size duvet. “We needn`t watch anything, if you don`t want to”. 

The War Effort

Joey was small compared to the rest of them. Standing shoulder to shoulder or head to head was not an option for Joey; for him it was always head to shoulder.  It wasn`t as if they were Guards either; these were transport drivers, mechanics and the like, just ordinary blokes of what was considered, average height.    The fact was that Joey could only be described as being shorter than average, and then only if you were a friend of his, he was just plain short if you were not. To those that worked with him, Joey was short. REME the sign above the gate to the compound said, and to Joey, unlike most of his comrades, this meant everything: The 'Engineers' was his only true friend – Joey was neither average nor normal.

He`d enlisted as soon as he was old enough, without waiting for National Service to come calling, and was trained as a mechanic.   It was in the Far East that Joey saw active service, deployed as a recovery driver and mechanic in an area so different to home and so dense with jungle that the world he had once known disappeared.  The war, the climate – sometimes wet; always sweltering - meant that most men struggled to make sense of it, but to Joey it was a place to matter. And it was there, in his Scammell Explorer that he mattered: that giant of a lorry with all its winches, chains, pulleys, derrick and enormous towing bars dominated everything around it.  Like a man-made goliath it defied nature - engineered confidence commanding where everything else succumbed.  Joey had found the place he wanted to be - one where he towered, while the world below fought for attention. 

Joey walked as he acted, as if he were being continually measured.  He looked like he was on his toes all the time, although he wasn`t, or as if he was wearing heels, which he wasn`t either.  Joey just stretched his body to its full extent, implausibly squeezing out every last fraction of height.  Chest out, shoulders back; he used every method he knew of to appear taller.  He wrapped himself in the imaginary flags of attraction; those intended to create the illusion of `bigger`.  His Scammell was decorated with a motif copied from a fighter aircraft he`d once seen in a magazine, much to the chagrin of his superiors, and in it, with his arm resting on a half open window and exposed nearly to the shoulder by a tightly rolled shirt sleeve, Joey strutted.  To complete the image (one Joey imagined for himself) a side arm in a webbing holster hung from his hip.  But only when away from prying eyes of the compound - it was unofficial, he told all those he met.  He was glad of it, he would say, as it had got him out of many a scrape, out there alone, as he often was.  They usually nodded, rarely believed him, and without fail, sniggered behind his back.

*******************************************

From a recovery point of view, the job seemed straightforward enough.  A Bedford four-tonner, heading back from a combat zone close to an enemy held part of the country, had gone off the side of a track about 10 miles out and needed pulling from a ditch.  The trouble was the reason it was in there in the first place.  A sniper had hit the radiator and in the ensuing panic the driver had left the road.  His frantic efforts to get out of the ditch had cooked the engine and the vehicle, though, thankfully, not its occupants, was effectively dead.

Volunteers they called them, those that would brave sniper fire to rescue the four-tonner and its crew.  No one, of course, came forward from the ranks that morning. The major scanned their faces but no one so much as flinched, or met his eyes, as he looked along the line.  There was the company heavyweight boxing champion, at least six feet tall and built to destroy - the fit, the crafty, the lazy, the comedians and the new ones, they were all there, at eye level and staring blankly ahead.  “Where`s Big Joey?” the major said, with a grin that was straightaway matched by all those who stood before him.  Joey, in his usual place, under a lorry and covered in oil, was soon found and dispatched; his Scammell, trundling out of the compound, soon disappeared, enveloped in the green.

It didn`t take long for Joey to find the stricken lorry, and as he climbed from his cab, a weary looking and somewhat bedraggled figure ran towards him in a sort of half crouch, and with his head down.  In his right hand the figure carried a revolver which was attached to his belt by a lanyard.  Two pips were just about visible on the right shoulder of his sweat ridden battle dress.  Other figures, equally damp and dishevelled, huddled around the vehicle's wheels, some kneeling, some laying but all with their rifles at the ready.  Joey walked with the lieutenant back to his vehicle, their heads at the same height: Joey on his toes the other man virtually on his knees.  “Keep down, for God sake”, someone called out, “He`s still out there”.  Joey looked around him, the `he` referred to was nowhere to be seen, as far as he could see, anyway.

Joey tried to start the lorry but the information he had been given was right, it was completely unserviceable.  “You blokes seen some action?” Joey said, looking at the small group of men in admiration.  No one answered, they just looked at each other and then back at the surrounding jungle, warily, retaining their defensive positions. “Where were you going?” Joey tried again.  “The pub then home for dinner”, one said, and they all chuckled.  “Back to normality”, said another, “Away from this hell-hole”. “You wish”, the officer was smiling, “We`ve been pulled back for a bit of R `n` R, then it`s back up there, I`m afraid”, he said.  The men muttered.  “What I`d give to be back home, lovely safe job and a weekend away with the missus now and again, in a B `n` B by the sea”, someone said.  There were a few murmurs of agreement.

Joey went back to the Scammell and returned with some rope, shackles and the end of the heavy wire cable from the Scammell`s winch.  The others stayed put and looked on.  It would be no good trying to pull the Bedford directly, as it was at right angles to the track, so Joey rigged a pulley system from the back of the Scammell, via a tree opposite the Bedford, and onto the Bedford`s front axle.  To the wonder and considerable fascination of the small group hiding beside their lorry, he then proceeded to tie a number of the trees beside the track together, linking them to the one opposite the Bedford, the one to which he had previously attached a swivel block.  Then, with Joey back at the controls, the Scammell`s engine revved and the cable tightened.  The trees groaned and began to shift, straining on their feeble roots, but before long the Bedford was back up on the track; all be it still at ninety degrees to the required direction. After coaxing the Bedford`s driver back into his seat, and after instructing him to put his foot hard on the brake, Joey pulled the vehicle`s front round on its sliding, locked wheels and the Bedford was back in line.  While Joey hitched it to the rear of the Scammell, the other men ran from cover and with great relief, climbed aboard.

   *******************************************

The lorry was soon in the workshop and the unfortunate group of soldiers back on their onward journey to some well earned respite.  Joey, sweating in the humidity of a makeshift canvas cover, was getting stuck into removing the engine`s cylinder head to inspect the damage.  The other mechanics went about their business not wishing to catch Joey`s eye and be subjected, once again, to the story of how he had rescued a ditched lorry and fought his way out of the jungle, under the withering fire of a hidden sniper.

 

Trajectory

It seems strangely old now.  Not because of the fading, wrinkling paint but because it just looks all wrong.  The tyres are like something you would fit to a cart and the mechanism that tilts the barrel is too simple, too brassy yellow, too mechanical and outdated.  The whole thing is tired, feeble and irrelevant.  In its day it was considered a formidable weapon; new and interesting. Capable of launching a four-pound shell over a couple of miles, it could make itself known. Have this, it said, it`s something special. It was once proud, now it`s just there, and strangely old.

I haven`t seen the rest of the crew for years, not since just after the war ended when we got together for a few pints before being demobilized. I suspect they`re all dead now.  I`m in my late eighties and that`s unusual for our generation – the wartime smokers and drinkers, half starved but still managing to chase around, staying out all night if the chance arose.  We dispersed to different parts, the three of us, the other two going up North and me back to London.  Charlie had plans for his father`s building firm and Johnny was set on emigrating to Canada, to farm and raise a family in the Big Country, as he put it. We all talked a lot about what we would do after the war; it was what kept us going, our plans.

It`s partly the memory of those days that takes me on these outings.  But it`s also an opportunity to get out from behind those dreary old curtains, hemmed in by four walls with only my stale old photographs and the occasional visit by the Home Help for company.  The rest of them that goes along are alright and we have a bit of a natter, you know.  And the coaches these days are very comfortable, not like they used to be, and there`s every convenience – mind you, at our age you need them.  At one time I`d take off without a second thought, travel all over, as far and as fast as possible, slowing down only for my wife and kids, their wellbeing, their comfort the only things holding us back. But now, even though there`s only me, I stay put more.  It`s an effort to just get up in the mornings, sometimes.

+++++++++++

The gun, we were told back then, was a considerable feat of engineering.  We would learn how to load it, aim it and fire it.  I was in charge you see, I had the stripes, and it was my job to work out what angle to raise the barrel to.  Well, that`s not quite true, we were often given that information but I had to understand a little of the theory, that was part of my job.  The shell would reach its maximum velocity, or as we said, speed, as it left the barrel. Muzzle velocity they called it.  From then on it would slow and fall towards the earth.  The trick was to know at what angle you launch the shell for the distance you wanted it to travel.  It was called, by those blokes from HQ who taught us, a trajectory problem.

+++++++++++

The trip was out to an old airfield, now disused, where old tanks and guns from our time had been collected over the years and now formed part of a display.  A historic theme park, they said.  I sat next to a lady I hadn`t met before, although she was a regular, apparently, having lost her husband several years ago.  Marjorie, that was her name, born and raised in Derbyshire, had three children, five grandchildren and a long career in teaching behind her.  A bright young thing she must have been, and I bet she was once pretty, you could tell, and there was something in the way she spoke of her life that made you think she hadn`t stood still for long.  Her and the late `Mr Marjorie` had been keen travellers, they`d lived abroad teaching English and ran something like a small holding in one of the countries they`d lived; the only way, she said, to ensure a regular supply of food.  I watched the loose skin on her throat as she spoke and her wrinkled hands, as they made constant adjustments to her knitted cardigan, trying to imagine a young woman conquering the classrooms of Africa, or Asia, or wherever it was.  To be honest, it wasn`t easy.

+++++++++++

The path of a shell, I remember from the classroom sessions all those years ago, in terms of trajectory (we`d yet to consider actual direction) could be divided into two coordinates: the vertical and the horizontal.  Horizontally, it was being slowed by air resistance but we would ignore this because as it was airborne for such a short period of time there shouldn`t be a significant effect. So, as far as the horizontal was concerned the speed was constant.  Vertically, it was a different story: gravity was forever trying to bring it down to earth.  This meant that the distance the shell would travel was given by its horizontal speed and the time it took before it hit the ground.  But, of course, it didn`t fall straight away, unless the gun was fired with the gun barrel horizontal.  First it would climb.

+++++++++++

I told Marjorie a bit about my life, and although she was probably at least 15 years younger than me she recognized the heart of it, the fundamental nature of those earlier years: getting on with things, mending, making stuff work and not wasting time complaining. I left the army and trained as a mechanic before chucking that in and going on the road with my own lorry. I had a mate who managed a local factory and I got a lot of work from them.  Soon, through the network of their customers, ones I was already delivering to, I got more work.  I put in the hours but didn`t mind.  I was my own boss and when our children came along, we, my wife and I, borrowed money to build the business and secure their futures.  It was risky, if we failed it would have meant years of debt and poverty, but we didn`t and soon there was a small fleet of lorries, our own yard and our own house.  I worked all hours, driving, managing, fixing, I did whatever was needed.  Crisis came and went; good times and bad.  We even did some continental work, when it was rare and far more of an adventure than it is now. I once spent weeks stuck in Greece because of some dispute or other, virtually living under the trailer.  I was even arrested in Germany and spent a few days in a police cell before being released, a few quid lighter and all over some stupid traffic law of theirs.  But I took it in my stride, shrugged it off, moved on.  It didn`t seem five minutes before my own son came of age and came on board.  He became the driving force, carrying on when things seemed to be changing so fast and I could no longer keep up.  He still runs the business but it`s nothing like it was; I wouldn`t recognize it now, it`s not even in the same yard.  They have all the modern technology, all the computers and things.  He uses words I don`t understand.  Telematics, I thought, was a kids program on the telly but apparently it`s all to do with being able to see what the lorry`s doing without involving the driver. It beats me, I can tell you.

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The instructor drew a large arc in chalk across the board, representing the path of the shell, and then vertical and horizontal arrows that originated at the point the arc started. It looked something like this; although, as you can see, I`ve used a bit of colour.

He wasn`t, we were mightily relieved to find out, going to go into the maths but this was not, he said, a big issue as it was all essentially intuitive.  Launched at an angle to the horizontal the round would have part its velocity travelling in the horizontal, as already explained, and part in the vertical.  The proportion of which dictated by the angle itself: the steeper the launch angle the greater the vertical element of its velocity. Gravity is a constant force, so the acceleration pulling the round down will be constant. From the muzzle velocity we could establish the vertical speed and then calculate the time it would take for the round to reach its maximum height and fall to earth, all the while, we were told not to forget, it would be describing an arc.  Even as the round climbed, its vertical acceleration would be negative (as would its horizontal one if we were not ignoring air resistance) slowing it, dragging on it until it finally started coming down.  While it was doing all this the shell was being carried along by its horizontal speed until, of course, its time ran out and it hit the ground.

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We walked around the exhibits, for want of a better word, had a cup of tea and a sandwich in the cafeteria (too much noise: people can`t eat these days without constant chatter and background music) and then headed home.  In the coach a film was playing on the television screen at the front.  I could hardly see it let alone hear what was being said, but because it was on I couldn`t hear Marjorie properly either, so I closed my eyes. I was tired after travelling so far. Slowly, I sank further into the seat.

    

Horse

It wasn`t my first truck, and it certainly wasn`t one I would have naturally chosen – it just sort of came along. I had been running an ERF up until then but things between us were getting a bit tense to say the least. Basically the old girl was under powered - not a crime in itself, especially when refuelling, but annoying in the long term - and she had let me down on more than a couple of occasions, which was, I forced myself to admit, unforgivable.  I have always accepted the diesel ingrained in my skin (a situation dating back long before barrier cream and then latex gloves became compulsory), in fact, at one time, I wore those black, ingrained fingernails with a certain amount of pride.  However, that particular ERF tested my apathy towards dermatitis to the limit.  We had spent a lot of time together: all those sunny days and open roads; misty mornings and muddy lorry parks.  I loved the feel of her.  I loved sensing her engine power as the revs climbed and fell every time we accelerated away from traffic lights or when we climbed a hill.  I loved the touch of the non-syncronised gearbox, the way each ratio fell into place at end of that long lever - and the satisfaction of getting gearchanges right.  There`s nothing like driving a loaded artic, especially one you feel connected to in such a way.  Every vibration, every change in road surface and engine note, sent a sensation of raw oneness between me and my machine.  What she felt, I felt and it was great to have such attachment and control.  And every night I would check her over, making sure nothing needed tending to before the following day – bedding her down, I used to call it. Over the years, and like this, we`d wound our way North and South, East and West.  Then, as if it had crept up on me without warning, I came to realize she`d become tired and was no longer up to the job.  

So there it was that remarkable new truck.  Air assisted throttle, gear change, clutch – everything.  Synchromesh gearbox with 16 ratios, power assisted steering and, unusually for that time, a big and comfortable sleeper cab.  I had never seen anything like it, and had certainly never even considered one before.  It was my first Volvo, bought after a chance encounter, and it became the first of many.  The trucks were quite simply the right tool for job.  Driving became less tiring, less painful and, I suppose, less challenging.  It was easier and in a world of increasing legislation and traffic, it helped.

After that I`d almost completely given up on British machinery.  Although I ran a Ford van there was little else British built to choose from, both on four wheels or two. Triumph and Norton motorcycles were all but dead with only a few diehards buying what was left coming from the factories.  By the mid eighties I was riding a BMW, a flying brick; unbreakable, solid reliability that carried me for miles.  The bike was equipped with factory built luggage, a smooth, four cylinder engine, and controls so brightly coloured they looked like something out of a sweet jar. But it worked. It was easy to use and I loaded it, rode it, serviced it occasionally and hardly ever checked anything, apart from the tyres (on any motorcycle, you`re a fool if you don`t).  Shaft driven and bullet proof, it offered soulless reliability.

In 1987 I took it to Spain, crossing on the ferry from Plymouth to Santander, and then rode back across France to Cherbourg. Through the Pyrenees the BMW performed faultlessly.  Nothing phased it.  Rain one day covered the whole lot, me included, with a pasty yellow mulch thrown up from the road.  I jet washed the BMW off at a B&B that night and never gave it a second thought, or a dose of WD40.  In the intense heat of the lower levels, I suffered; the motorcycle didn`t. For me, that motorcycle and my Volvo truck heralded a new age of disconnected technology – they did their thing, I did mine.

In the Pyrenees I stopped one night in a small village I came across nestling in the rock and scrub of the mountains.  Cottages, shops and bars ran down each side of the road and I could see huts jotted about in the hills above.  A small stream ran along one side of the road.  I booked into a B&B and went into an adjoining restaurant for a meal.  No one spoke English and to my shame I spoke little Spanish, so everything was done with the universal sign language of hunger and thirst.  The food was apparently locally sourced, so it was meat and no vegetables - and a beer. When I had finished and I went to the counter to pay, a hairy individual, probably of similar age to myself, and not dissimilar in appearance, turned to me and in the recognizable accent of an Englishman said, “Is that your machine out there?”  And it was those few words that started a bar crawl.

He had gone out there in the 60s, when free love and flower power were `in` and the cool thing to do was to `drop-out` in sunnier climes like San Francisco – and Spain.  Post Second World War Britain was captivated by the memory of war, which became associated by the next generation with the establishment, restriction, discipline and duty.  Traditional values were rejected and a contrasting ideology emerged of colour, love and personal freedom; a revolt was almost inevitable. We walked from bar to bar as he told me how he lived in a hut in the hills with no electricity or running water.  Everywhere we went he was greeted like the old eccentric he probably was, and at each bar we drank a thick red wine, because, he said, it was cheap.

In one place the elderly matriarch of an owner took a special, and on first appearance, disapproving interest in him.  When I asked about what she was saying, he told me it was just fuss about his drinking and concern that he should look after himself better.  She had known him since he first arrived, all those years before, in that small village, the place he`d not moved from since. His lifestyle obviously hadn`t changed despite his age, although the ideology, I felt, was long forgotten: drink, odd jobs and his little shack on the hill seemed to be a cruel destiny for one who must have had such a clear dream.  The rest of the village had moved on with the world.  The villagers dressed fashionably, casually; they travelled outside the area to work. I looked closely and saw that almost every one of those road side cottages had a satellite dish on the roof. When I left him to return to my accommodation, my new friend staggered off alone; the rats in the sewers couldn`t have looked more dishevelled – or less miserable.

My current motorcycle was not one I had thought I wanted.  I`d been looking for something a bit different, and then found it.  Touring motorcycles had become cumbersome, over stacked with delicate looking fairings and luggage. I wanted something capable of racking up the miles but also one that could cope with the rough and unexpected tracks of Spain and beyond.  And one I could ride on those days I wasn't out working the Volvo.  I looked, inevitably, at BMW GS adventure motorcycles but they were bulky and dated.  Then I came across a Triumph dealership and went in to browse.  I walked out with a receipt for a Triumph Explorer.

I love the way she pulls instantly, something to do with the ride-by-wire technology, as well as the torque developed by her 3-cylinder, 1215cc engine. Switchable ABS, traction control and cruise control make her a joy to ride, while giving me a certain amount of control – and a feeling of security.  Virtually maintenance free shaft drive, a higher performing generator for those electronics, and off road capability; she`s a beauty. I wash her and get the polish and WD40 out, not always because I have to but because I want to. It beds her down for the night.