The long and winding road

My last post was somewhat serious. So to provide a little light hearted diversion as the weekend approaches, and to also deliver an important road safety message as you all take to the highways of our wonderful country, here is a story about seat belts, courtesy on the road, and gravity, and how, when mixed together, it can all suddenly go very very wrong.

 

 

I was on the Western Isles doing some work, and had gone from Castlebay, a small village on the beautiful southern hebridean Isle of Barra, to photograph Traigh Mhor (gaelic for the ‘big beach’) where the expansive cockle strand is also the airport, but only when the tide is out of course. Getting there involves driving up and over a substantial hill. On a fine summer afternoon it was no problem and I enjoyed a balmy session of photographing the arrival and departure of the regular flight.

Returning to Castlebay later in the day I started up the hill, a single track road with passing places, quiet and warm. Coming down the hill towards me was a small builders lorry, of the cab-at-front-and-flat-bed-behind type.

Now let me digress for a moment, single track road driving in the highlands is an acquired skill, involving several counter-intuitive techniques. For example, speeding up in the face of oncoming vehicles, having first judged the distance to the approaching vehicle relative to your nearest passing place. This involves several skills, including taking into account factors such as loose sheep proximity, gravel slippage potential, snow slitheriness distance, manure dampness quotient (wet manure is slippier) etc. The trick being to judge velocity and distance sufficiently accurately to pass each other perfectly, one bending their trajectory into the passing place, then back out again, with a fluid elegant grace, whilst waving casually at the other driver. Without slowing down.

The other key courtesy, and the factor that has the biggest influence in this tale (apart from gravity) is hill etiquette. Simply, unless other factors forbid it, uphill cars have right of way, and downhill travelling cars will pull over to let them by.

 

So the downwards approaching lorry flashed his lights, indicated, slowed and pulled over to allow me passage, gently braking to slow his gravity-assisted progress.

However even although not travelling very fast the driver misjudged the available length of passing place and was forced to apply a little extra braking. And that was his undoing. Or rather the cab’s undoing. Unfortunately the cab had not been properly fastened down, and as he applied the brakes with a bit more bite, the abrupt halt immediately tipped it, lobbing the entire contents of the cab forwards.

Now to help you more accurately picture the scene, a builders lorry in the Highlands generally contains within the cab the following items:

a tape measure,

several blunt pencils,

an old waterproof jacket,

the empty foam box for a hamburger,

half a Mars bar,

an empty sandwich packet,

a tabloid newspaper,

two empty Coke tins,

a bag of mint sweets,

several loose cigarettes,

a toilet roll,

and an open bag of cement (usually stored inside on the middle seat to keep it from getting wet).

And of course a driver……

…and this one unfortunately not wearing a seatbelt, whose face was the last thing I saw amdist the flying debris, nose pressed hard against the windscreen and cracking it with the force, before the cement bag joined him, exploding with a giant silent slow-motion PUFFFFFFFFFFTTTTTTT………..enveloping the interior in a giant buff-coloured cloud and sending cement dust billowing out of the open windows!

Aghast I pulled over and ran up to offer assistance, but the driver had already wisely decided getting out was a good idea, and had opened the door to step out…..but of course as the cab was still tipped forwards the door opened downwards, and when he stepped out he managed to put his leg straight through the open window getting himself into an even more precarious situation, with one leg through the hole and the other trapped somewhere inside under the steering wheel.

As I reached to help him down….covered head to foot in cement dust and looking like some demented clown, his ‘mask’ punctuated only by a pair of rather befuddled eyes and a thin trickle of blood which was working its way slowly from his nose through the dust to his top lip……another vehicle appeared.

And the horrible realisation dawned on me that this vehicle had the same colours as the one now stalled in front of me. Obviously his workmate.

The other driver strode angrily towards me fist clenched, having quickly sized up the situation – his mate, accident, strange vehicle, driver he doesn’t know, so it’s obviously my fault. And so it began:

Him: “What the f**k happened here?”
Me: “He braked to let me pass and his cab tipped over”
Him: “Bloody idiot”
Me: “What, me?”
Him: “No not you, him. Bloody fool, he’s just topped up the oil in Castlebay and must have forgotten to clip it back down properly”

And then the fun began as he puzzled over my accent. And when I told him where I was from he laughed and asked what I did for work and I said I used to be in the building trade, a carpenter….and it turned out I’d actually worked for years with his cousin, a lad I still knew very well in Fort William, whom he’d not seen for a few years so I was happy to fill him on on family doings.

 

 

This very jolly distraction however had a consequence…

Having foolishly taken our attention off his mate, we had left him free to ‘tinker’ and he had decided to try to rectify his cab problem and forcefully pushed it back to its ‘proper’ position.

We heard the crash as it whacked back into place, followed by the unmistakable sound of something metallic hitting the ground and rolling. Looking down we saw the gear lever which had previously been poking through a hole in the cab floor……but unfortunately the vehicle had stalled in a forward gear when it stopped.

Now that the cab had been pushed back, the gear lever, and crucially the hole it goes through, were not aligned, and the weight of the cab had simply snapped the gear lever off.  Rendering the vehicle useless. It was going nowhere until it was repaired.

Holding his hand to his forehead the exasperated builder barked at his mate to leave it alone, and refusing my offer of assistance, cheerily said he’d take his mate to the doctor, get him cleaned up, get a new gear lever and come back for the lorry the next day, or the day after. But not necessarily in that order!

You couldn’t make it up could you. Life in the Highlands.

Take care out there folks.