Читать книгу The Silk Road and Beyond - Ivor Whitall - Страница 7

By now I was 19 and had left my youth behind. Although tall was never my thing, more like stocky, the attribute I was most proud of was my mane of dark, shoulder-length hair. It was 1965 and I’d moved back to the place I regarded as my spiritual home, Tean in Staffordshire. There I ‘renewed’ an acquaintance with Jenny, a girl I’d fancied when we’d both travelled on the same school bus five years earlier. Using the word ‘renewed’ is a bit of journalistic licence on my part, because when I first tried to engage her in conversation all those years ago, she totally ignored me and that, I’m afraid was the beginning and end of ‘our relationship’! This time, however, my endeavours were not to be denied. She was as beautiful as I remembered her; slim with long wavy blonde hair and blue eyes. She was perfect and agreed to meet me in the Gardeners Arms for a drink. I must have done something right because seven weeks later we were married!

Our lives were changing and not long after the wedding, Jenny’s mum bought a guest house, in, of all places, Blackpool. My new wife was going to help run the place, so it looked as if I was going to have to find yet another new job, this time a ‘proper’ one, not working the fun fair dodgems and chatting up the girls.

Casting about in the local Blackpool rag for driving jobs, I randomly selected an advert from the many on offer, John & C. Lowes, Builders Merchant and, rather than phone, I turned up at their yard asking if they had any driving vacancies.

‘Just a moment,’ smiled the receptionist. ‘I think we do, I’ll give Alf a call.’

Alf Pye was a real old-school character. Born during the First World War, he always wore a worsted blazer and tie, and judging by the grilling he gave me, was going to make sure I was the right man for the job. He quizzed me about anything and everything until finally;

‘Right young man, have you driven tipper lorries?’

Of course, I hadn’t.

‘Yes,’ I replied.

‘OK, Ivor isn’t it? The pay is 5s 7d (27p) an hour, with overtime at 7s (35p) an hour after 50 hours.’

Once again I was driving another old banger – I seemed to attract them – and the job was carting mostly sand and bricks around south and central Lancashire. As it was a tipper, of course, I didn’t have to do a huge amount of shovelling!

The one company artic was driven by a bloke called Derek, who was forever handing in his notice when his temper got the better of him but was back at work the following morning! It was a ten-year-old bonneted Leyland with vacuum brakes and air-operated windscreen wipers. You know, the ones that the faster you drive, the slower they swipe the screen clear, and conversely the slower you drive, the faster they operate. Then, when you’re nearly at a standstill, all you can see out of the screen is a blur of rubber screeching across the glass, setting your teeth on edge. Whose ridiculous idea was that? It was hooked up to a four in line flatbed with what’s called a Scammell coupling; the older guys will understand. It’s where you reverse under the trailer and the legs fold up automatically as you click onto the pin. There were no air lines to connect, just a bolt that when you depressed the foot brake it activated a mechanism that ‘applied’ the trailer’s brakes. For all the good they were you might as well have chucked a rubber anchor out of the window and hoped for the best. Fully loaded, driving this beast required a great deal of forward planning. Luckily they’ve been consigned to the annals of history now, as technology has moved on.

I’d often looked at it and wondered. Then one afternoon, when once again Derek had stormed past, having handed in his notice for the umpteenth time, Alf collared me and asked me to pop into the office before I went home.

‘Derek’s handed his notice in again, and we need a load collected from Ribble Cement in the morning, do you think you could drive the artic?’

‘I don’t see why not Alf,’ I responded tentatively. ‘It’s just another lorry,’ wondering if he realised I was actually too young.

I loved driving, so could this be a turning point in my fledgling career? I hardly slept with the worry and excitement, but at 5am next morning I was firing up the old Leyland, aiming to be in Clitheroe by six. All I had to do was make sure I reversed the trailer in a straight line, keeping the elevator roughly above the centre of the bed. It was all handball and the loading gang kept calling me to pull forward as they stacked the 14 tons of hot cement bags.

“Off you go, park over there and collect your paperwork from the office.”

‘Righto driver,’ called the foreman. ‘Off you go, park over there and collect your paperwork from the office.’

It was a beautiful sunny morning and I’d seen how Derek had roped his load, so with a couple of cross ropes holding the rear end in, I walked nonchalantly across to the office to collect my notes.

‘No Derek today then?’ came a female voice from the other side of the glass. ‘The miserable old git hasn’t jacked in again, has he?’

‘Dunno,’ I replied, not wanting to get involved.

“Yeehaa, I thought, I’ve done it. Mind you, the sweat was pouring off me, so worried was I that I’d cock it up.”

Yeehaa, I thought, I’ve done it. Mind you, the sweat was pouring off me, so worried was I that I’d cock it up. I stayed with Alf and J&C Lowes for the next 18 months, until I reached my 21st birthday and I could finally drive articulated lorries legally!

It was time to broaden my horizons and move on. For the last few months I’d been keeping my eyes open, looking for a better driving job, and near at hand was a company called Titchener & Brown. I knew they did ICI stuff to Liverpool Docks and they’d also got a reasonably new fleet of vehicles. So, organising an interview with the transport manager Frank and his assistant, the boss’s adopted son Martin, I turned up in my best bib and tucker ready to sell myself. It was all very weird and vaguely off-putting, in that after nearly every comment Frank would add, ‘on the other side,’ or, ‘on that one,’ even when it made no sense! It was almost like a verbal impediment!

‘Well my boy, on that one, you’ve got the job starting a week Monday.’

‘What time do you want me in?’ I asked.

‘On the other side, it’s normally a five o’clock start and that should get you to Liverpool Docks for around six.’

The money was about the same but with more hours my wage packet should look a little plumper.

Monday week, at five o’clock on the dot, I was drawing out of the yard and heading for the infamous Liverpool Docks. I’d heard all the horror stories about being delayed for weeks, starving to death, growing a beard and whiskers, all while waiting to load or unload, and now I was about to find out the truth of it. Strange that I hadn’t seen the other lads in the yard; they must have left a little earlier. A little earlier! Huh, turns out they’d left at four o’clock and were at least 200 yards ahead of me, right at the front of the queue! Dammit, this wasn’t going to go down too well with Frank.

The boat I wanted was the MV Mystic and, as I watched, a docker walked down the line of trucks chalking MVM on their tyre walls. That must be my boat and I decided to take a chance on jumping the queue, a lifetime ban if caught and it could mean the end of my fledgling career before it even started. Pulling out of the dock, I drove around the perimeter until I was out of sight, and then got out to look for an old stub end of chalk. Fortunately, I didn’t have to look long and scribbled MVM on the sidewall of my tyre. Drawing into the next gate, which luckily was empty, I pointed to my front wheel and shouted the name of the boat.

‘That’s two gates along,’ came back a broad Liverpool accent. ‘Why aren’t you in the queue?’

‘I was feeling a bit queasy and had to find a bog mate. If I go back I’ll have lost my place, there were five of us together.’

‘Go on then and don’t make a habit of it,’ he said, giving me a quizzical look.

Turning right, I drove along the inside of the dock wall hoping I’d be able to get into the queue further forward. Then, the lorry god smiled on me, as the queue shunted forward and in through the gate rolled the other four Titchener wagons! I just tagged on the back as we made our way to the shed where the chemicals discharged from the ship were stored.

There’s always a catch, and being the new boy normally meant learning the hard way. The reason they’d all left at four and not five was that pallets were handed out on a first come, first served basis and we got paid threepence for each empty pallet we collected. More importantly, if there weren’t any pallets in the yard it meant handballing the bags on at ICI, and off again at the docks, all by yourself!

Occasionally we’d reload from the docks with groundnuts, 15 tons in 100 kg sacks; that’s nearly 225 lb! That was 150 massive hessian bags dropped down in a sling, which you then had to manoeuvre into position on the bed of your trailer. I can tell you, nobody volunteered for that little number.

“I gave them a call, wondering if I could blag this one . . .”

On the way home after work, I’d often see a Leyland Beaver artic with a makeshift sleeper welded to the back. Sign-written on the door was the company name, and under it, UK–Italy. Intrigued and deciding nothing ventured nothing gained, I gave them a call, wondering if I could blag this one . . . Being put through to the manager, his first question was, ‘Buongiorno, parliamo Italiano?’

‘What?’ I spluttered. ‘Pardon?’

‘I said, “good morning, do you speak Italian?” To which you replied, “what,” then, “pardon.” From that response, I can only deduce that you don’t.’ And then the phone went dead.

My renowned blagging skills weren’t going to work there then.

‘Si’ was about my limit, so with the best will in the world I wasn’t fluent.

Interestingly I got to know the driver of that truck ten years later.