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"JunkMonkey"UNTITLED We were stuck in a service station on the M4 with no money. It was 3 a.m. and no bugger was stopping for us. Most of the trucks that pulled in were staying; the drivers fuelling up their wagons, getting a meal, and then bedding down in their cabs for the night. The few that were leaving were too tired and too busy getting their huge vehicles up to speed to stop, to give a lift to two dejected, eshausted hitchers. There was no point in even trying to get a lift from a private car; not at that time of night. Eventually, cold, and more that a little fed-up, Linda and I broke one of our unwritten hitching rules and walked into the truck park to ask a driver for a lift, trying to get our word in before inertia and the though of a warm bed made them hurtle past us at the side of the road. It seemed amateur, somehow, having to ask for a lift; I felt I should be able to make people want to give me a lift with just a smile and an upraised thumb - or, failing that, my attractive blonde girlfriend’s smile and upraised thumb. ...it was suddenly very dark. "What the hell are you doing?"... Surprisingly though, the first driver I asked said yes and we climbed into his cab, relieved to be moving at last, relieved to be warm again, even in the fusty diesel fug of an HGV’s cab. The driver was chatty. Self-employed, he had been driving a load of oranges all over Europe for the last week. He’d set out from Spain with them, got to Rotterdam - where he was due to drop them - but, as he had arrived, was handed a note. The oranges had been sold while he was on the road and he was now to take them to Ostend. Which he did. And was frustrated to find that the load had been sold again - and so it went on. I lost track of the ins and outs but I seem to remember that the truckload had crossed the channel at least twice before he had finally got it delivered. In the days before mobile phones I guess this sort of thing happened all the time. So here he was, finally going home after being on the road a week longer than he had expected. I guess he just felt sorry for us stuck out in the cold and dark. And it was dark. The motorway was empty and unlit. Vague orangey glows on the horizon let us know there were towns out there somewhere but before us - only blackness.Linda fell asleep on my shoulder lulled by the warmth. The driver and I had one of those stop, start, what-shall-we-talk-about-now? conversations. Then in the distance the tail lights of a car. And then, not so distant. And then, right in front of us, toddling along at 45 miles an hour, in the centre lane of the M4, an Austin Maxi was slowly ploughing its way toward Wales. Our driver shook his head in annoyance. “Move over you stupid bugger.” He looked over at me. “I can’t go in the outside lane, that’s illegal. And I can’t overtake him on the left, that’s illegal too. Come on move over!” We slowed down to a crawl behind the car. The Maxi ploughed on. Our driver flashed his lights, pulled back, pulled forward, and moved in and out of the lane, tried to communicate as best he could through the medium of driving that he wanted the Maxi to pull over. After about ten minutes of this and a lot of frustrated swearing in the cab, the Maxi eventually got the message and did move over into the left-hand lane. And as soon as it was out of our way, our driver switched all the truck’s lights off. Headlights, sidelights, the cab light - everything. It was suddenly very dark. All that I could see was the lights of the Maxi on the road to our left and the dashboard lights behind the steering wheel to my right. “What the hell are you doing?” I asked. “He’s worried now,” the driver said, “the bugger’s got a forty ton truck behind him and has got absolutely no idea where the **** it is.” He slowly crept his truck forward. I had visions of the Maxi’s driver blindly panicking as he tried to work out what was going on. As the truck’s front came alongside the driver’s door, the headlamps were flicked on full beam and the accelerator peddle was pushed to the floor. We shot away, leaving the Maxi far behind. A half-blinded, terrified driver at its wheel futilely threatening our vanishing tail lights ”That was evil!” I said. “No,” said the driver,” sneaking up on them on the hard shoulder and then doing it. That’s evil!” "JunkMonkey" is a 47-year-old house-husband looking after two pre-school age children. He lives in the Highlands of Scotland, is addicted to bad movies, and is occasionally paid to act. Photo by Patrick Taylor.3:49 PM - 31/5/2006 - post comment
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