Sample

Chapter One

“Alan, Alan, where are you? We’ve got trouble now,” shouted David as he ran into the barn where I was servicing a truck.
“Why, what’s wrong?” I asked.
“Dan has just been on the phone from Thomsens in Denmark. He said he is very sorry and all that, but our trailer load of trees has been accidentally sent to Leipzig in Eastern Germany,” replied David.
“It’s what?” I said, trying to take the news in.
“Yes,” said David. “I’ll tell you what I think: since that bloody Berlin wall came down earlier this year, they have a bigger market now. I mean, I don’t think he’s lying about where the trees have gone, just that it was not a mistake. It’s an extra load for them, isn’t it? You know, more money.”
“So what do we do now?”
“Well, Dan said he has plenty of trees but no transport because it’s too late to organise any,” replied David.
“So?”
“So I thought you could go over and get ’em.” Said David
“Me?”
“Yea, nothing of a job to a man like you!” said David smiling
“What am I going to go in?” I asked.
“That!” said David, pointing towards the eleven-year-old ERF truck that I had been servicing.
“That old bastard!” I said.
“What do you mean?” said David. “It’ll get you to China and back, that. It’s good British-built engineering, not like that Swedish rubbish they are all buying nowadays.”
But I wished that I did have one of those rubbish Swedish things.
“We’ll have to hire one of those tilt-type trailers,” i said.
“No prob,” said David, “I’ll phone central trailers in Trafford park and book you one ’ and I’ll get Susan to try and book you on the ferry cos you will have to go Dover to Ostend and up through Germany because DFDS won’t take accompanied freight through Hull.” (Accompanied means with a tractor unit attached to the trailer).
“Take your Mick with you -- he’s doing bugger all anyway,” added David as he walked out of the barn. “I’ll send Paul to take over from him: he’s working in Hyde for Paul England.”
Sure enough, Mick was in his tractor carting soil for Paul England Landscapers to a landfill site in Oldham.
Which, incidentally, Mick liked doing because he had a fiddle going with Boilly Eric on the tip.
. Mick would charge Paul England

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