Ferry 'Cross The Meadow - The Movie!

Following my previous post, I now present Grumpy Git Production's latest film, based on the water borne adventures I wrote about at the weekend. So without further ado - lights, camera, action...

Mother nature pulled out all the stops as can be clearly seen in the course of the film; timings of 'fly-pasts' were perfect (try telling a swan that you want to do another take!)and the lighting conditions spot on. The fisherman was totally genuine, even though he looks as though I hired him from a casting agency! He was more than happy to star in the film and just act naturally - the dog helped too! More films for Poshboatz are in production, due September.

Ferry 'Cross The Meadow

For the third time in about as many weeks, I found myself spending a weekend down at Nene Park, and more specifically, Ferry Meadows. My previous visits have been to the Nene Valley Railway that runs through the park, and ironically, it was the railway that indirectly brought me here today. Shortly after I uploaded Grumpy Git Productions’ epic movie (tongue firmly in cheek, I hasten to add) Murder on the Ferry Meadows Express, I received an e-mail from Bob Currell at Poshboatz asking if I’d be interested in creating a promotional video for his cruises on Overton Lake and the River Nene. The trips are operated by a unique luxury Bennington Pontoon Boat, similar to the type of craft seen in the Florida Everglades, or starring in Miami Vice.

I spent a day mulling the idea over as I drove around at work. Being a truck driver makes you a bit of a philosopher; it’s an ideal job to do if you need some quality thinking time every so often. As I zipped up and down the A1 – sorry, I was in the Iveco that week; make it ‘lurched’ up and down the A1 – I ran various scenarios through my mind, regarding the possibilities of filming. Bob had told me that various elements could be incorporated into the film as he offered regular trips around the lake, some trips up and down sections of the River Nene and charter trips for private hire that also included a high-speed sprint up and down the lake. All of this opened up plenty of interesting possibilities for filming, and I was keen to try a completely new project.

A date was agreed, and then it was fingers crossed and pray for a nice day in this barbeque summer we’re sort of not having. By now I had various ideas about filming and had done my research – I watched Titanic. There would be at least two, and maybe three films in all. One would focus on the lake trips that Bob runs most weekends during the season. The longer charters and river excursions deserved a video of their own, and as both of these films would be destined for Bob’s website, they would need some royalty free music overlaid on them to avoid making anyone cross. I also wanted to do a film for myself to put in this blog; I have something of an overblown sense of drama (you don’t say) and have a vision of what I wanted to achieve running through my head, along with a grandiose soundtrack to accompany it, of course! I rather object to legal niceties getting in the way of my creativity, I have to say. I am more than happy to pay to download some tracks, as I do believe that whoever has composed and performed some music should receive a reward. Once paid for, however, I also wish to add that track to a video and stick it on YouTube – as long as I’m not making money out of it, then all I’m doing is bringing that music to a wider audience – the whole point of music in the first place, I think. M’lud.

Anyway, with the vision sorted, all that remained was to put it into practise. The forecast was promising, so I decided to start at dawn to film some scene-setting sequences. Daybreak is my favourite time of day, particularly on water, so it was too good a chance to miss. It also offered the benefit of getting a parking place. I got to Nene Park at around 05:30 just as the sun was gearing up for the day in a thankfully cloudless sky – somebody up there clearly likes Bob. Big style. I retrieved my transport for the day out of the car – my trusty bike was having another outing! This would be ideal for commuting around the lake and alongside the river, as Ferry Meadows is well served by cycle paths. I spent some time getting film and photos as the new day woke up; the reflections in the glass-calm of the lake and river were outstanding. The park that thrums with visitors during the day was serene and quiet, with only birds and rabbits up and about, and wondering why some nutter was also up so early on a Saturday.

With dawn sorted out photographically, I met Bob at the landing stage and we went through the day’s schedule over a mug of coffee. The morning would be taken up with filming from the boat as we cruised around the lake before a couple of high speed runs, and then venture up and downstream for more footage. Returning to shore, I would disembark so that all the previous runs could be re-run, but with passengers aboard, and I’d be filming from the lake and riverside. During the afternoon, Bob would run his normal lake cruises and that would give me plenty of opportunity for further filming and photos. It was a good schedule to work with, and made life so much easier.

The boat itself is an amazing piece of kit. I’ve never seen anything like it in the UK, and indeed this one had been specially imported from America. The Bennington 2575 RFS has 12 luxury leather seats (with cupholders – I like that) and is known as a ‘Pontoon Boat’ as it essentially has two narrow hulls connected by a single deck across the top. This particular boat is top of the range, and the moment you step aboard, you feel like James Bond. It would be a wonderful way to spend an evening; cruising the river with a glass of Zinfandel or vodka martini; a bevy of bikini-clad beauties sunning themselves at the stern, with perhaps a string quartet playing Debussy while you nibbled on a sausage-on-a-stick (look, this is Peterborough, all right?)


Filming was a great experience, and the local bird life played to the camera on several occasions. For some of those occasions, I even had the camera switched on and pointing in the right direction. Boy, is filming wildlife tricky! I have more respect than ever for David Attenborough and his camera crews.


The high-speed runs were exhilarating, as the bow of the boat lifts up and planes at speed. Out on the Nene, we headed upstream first, through the beautiful woods in Nene Park as far the lovely stone arched bridge at Milton Ferry.



Downstream, we cruised through the extensive Peterborough Yacht Club moorings as far as Orton Lock, just in time to see a launch entering to negotiate the section of river that runs through Peterborough city centre.


After that, we returned past the golf club (yes, I got an action shot!) and back into the lake. Bob then took on real passengers, while I basically commuted from place to place for photos and filming. We kept in touch by two-way radio, so I felt more like than Spielberg than ever. I haven’t got round to calling everyone ‘luvvie’ yet, but that day cannot be far away. Let’s just hope I’m not at work when it does come, I say …

As always in filming, I got some magnificent shots that worked better than I could ever have hoped for, and others that just didn’t work – my voiceovers on these shots tend to be clear and succinct; you don’t notice you’re doing it until you play the clips back at home and hear a veritable feast of Gordon Ramsey expletives coming out of the computer! It's frustrating to be halfway through a fantastic panning shot and then knock the tripod over, though. “Oh dear, what a silly-billy I am,” is the correct phrase to use in this context. And that’s what I’ll say next time …..

By mid afternoon I had plenty of footage and filled two SD cards, so it was time to head for home and the long job of uploading everything. Editing will follow, and in due course I hope to have a film ready for release. It really was a great day out; thanks must go to Bob at Poshboatz for coming up with idea and being great to work with on the day, and I’m even grateful to whoever was doing the weather today, as it was rather nice.

I need a nice one-liner to bring this piece to a close, so I’ll let Ratty do the honours, “Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."

Black Diamonds

This weekend I’d planned to visit the magnificent North York Moors, but unfortunately the weather forecast wasn’t quite so magnificent. As I’d planned to spend almost all day in the great outdoors on walkabout (and filmabout), I decided to wait until a nicer day. I wasn’t abandoning Yorkshire altogether, however – nay, lad!

Whilst driving around during my working day, I often see signs pointing to places that seem worthy of interest. One of these is close to Wakefield – The National Coal Mining Museum. I was brought up in Sunderland, located in the former Durham coalfield, and my mother’s brother had been a Bevin Boy during WW2, before becoming a mining engineer and emigrating to Australia, where he would continue mining activities until retirement.

To digress briefly for a moment, the history of the Bevin Boys is mostly unknown and confined to footnotes about the war years. This description about their role is provided by the Wartime Memories website, from where the recollections and stories of Bevin Boys may be read in more detail. More information can be gleaned from the Bevin Boys Association.

As Britain was unable to import Coal during World War II, the production of coal from mines in Britain had to be increased. There was an extreme shortage of labour for the British Coal Mines, because most of the miners had been conscripted by the Government for active duty. The Government made a plea to Servicemen to volunteer for this vital service, but few did. The program, The Bevin Boys, was named after the Minister of Labour and National Defence, Ernest Bevin. In December 1943, due to the urgent need for coal for the War Effort, it was decided that a certain percentage of the conscripted men would have to be assigned to the mine. This caused a great deal of upset as the many of the young men wanted to join the fighting forces and many felt that they were not valued. In his speech to the conscripted miners, Bevin referred to them as his boys, hence the name, “Bevin Boys”. Many suffered taunts as they wore no uniform and were wrongly assumed to be avoiding serving in the armed forces. Many were not released from their work until several years after the war ended, long after their counterparts in the armed forces had returned to civilian life.

In a 1995 speech made by the Queen, some fifty years after the end of the war, the contribution of these men was finally recognized. In 2007, the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, announced that a special honour would be presented to all conscripts who served in the mines. The first badge was presented in March 2008. This was the sixtieth anniversary of the last Bevin Boy being demobbed.

The National Coal Mining Museum (NCM) is built around the site of the former Caphouse Colliery that closed in 1985, and so I found myself winging my way up the M1 on Sunday morning in order to pay it a visit.


I arrived good and early so that I could get some decent photos and videos without the McFamillies in size 28 Manchester United shirts spoiling the views. Some of the video footage is required for a film project I’m working on, and creating an image of a working pit is essential to the atmosphere of the piece. Ronald McDonald and kids on Heelies just don’t do that.

Seeing the pithead winding gear instantly brings back memories. All around the North East, literally within a couple miles of home, we had collieries. Ryhope, Silksworth, Herrington, Philadelphia and the last to go, Wearmouth – all dominated the skyline. One by one they closed down, but the staggering thing is that as I was growing up in the 1970’s and ‘80’s, it was just part of the normal process of life. I didn’t appreciate at the time that history was being made and the shape of the North East – and the country as a whole – was changing forever. As a young ‘un, I naturally had more important things on my mind, such as which pubs would serve you without having to produce forged ID, and how to get into Julia McCulloch’s knickers for a start.


Surprisingly, looking back, Sunderland was somewhat detached from the famous national miner’s strike of 1984 –5. By then almost all of the local pits had closed, and the survivors lay mostly north of the River Tyne – a foreign land as far as many Mackem’s were concerned. Events in Ashington might just as well take place in Aberystwyth or even Azerbaijan. During 1985 I departed from Sunderland to start work in Stratford-Upon-Avon, and with a whole new life beckoning, the pits seemed a long, long way away.

I’ve wandered away from the story again, as usual, so back to the present day. Having arrived at NCM, my first task was photos, followed by getting an underground tour booked. Tours fill up quickly on busy days, and should not be missed. Fifteen people go down at a time, assembling at the top of the lift shaft. We were greeted by our guide, Keith – a former career miner from Grimethorpe Colliery (“we didn’t get a lot of coal out, but by ‘eck, we ‘ad a good band.”) All ‘contraband’ was removed – that is anything electrical or battery operated to prevent ignition sparks underground – and in exchange we received a miner’s hard hat, and a 2 kilo battery pack with a light attached. Once we were kitted out, Keith led us to the lift that used to transport the workforce below ground. It was cosy, to say the least – and pitch black as we descended 140 metres underground. That’s a long way – the height of Blackpool Tower.

At the bottom, the informative and well-designed tour began. Using the original mine workings, various sections have been created as dioramas to represent the history of coal mining from 1800 up until the 1970’s. The earliest sequence was quite haunting. Each seam of coal belonged to one family; the man would hack away at the coalface with only a pickaxe. Once he’d hacked enough coal to fill a box, his wife would have to drag it down the corridor, known as ‘roads,’ for transporting to the surface. Children as young as six years old would be stationed outside the family seam, and their job was simply to sit there and open and close the wooden door that provided the access to the family’s area – an important task, because this provided the only ventilation in each seam. Many kids were tied to the door by rope, simply because, as Keith explained, they would get bored and wander off in a pitch black mine. Countless children died in this manner. Each working had only candlelight to work by – to demonstrate this, Keith asked us all to switch our lights off, and a representation of a candle was lit in the diorama. The light was pitiful – the seam was around 20 feet long at that stage – and to think that people had to spend 12 hour shifts like this, for six days a week, is incredible. The children on door duty had no light whatsoever – just sit in total darkness for 12 hours, waiting for a bang on the door to open and close it. Sobering thought. No wonder they wandered off.



The tour continues in this manner for well over an hour – Keith knows his stuff, and a knowledgeable and informed guide makes a tour so much more interesting. The trip works around the mine chronologically until the 1970’s are reached, by which time huge boring machines had taken the place of manual hacking away with a pickaxe. Nevertheless, it was always a tough and extremely dangerous job, because with each new technological advance, the pit owners always wanted an increase in productivity. The more kit that went down the mine meant more coal had to come back up, so it was always a case of drive harder and deeper.


Departing the mine is by the same lift that took us down, and by then it was almost as if we’d done a shift ourselves! The atmosphere is very realistic, and the history and stories that I learnt about were extremely interesting. Back at the surface, we handed in our gold tokens – every visitor who goes in the pit is given a token that is handed back when they emerge, a safety system to ensure that nobody gets left underground. These are the same tokens used by real miners going on and off shift. Hard hats and lights are handed in, and contraband is returned. Then you’re free to tour the rest of the site, from visiting the pit ponies to inspecting the showers (no, I didn’t try them out!) to riding on the Paddy train – the narrow gauge railway that would ferry miners to and from their place of work.


I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed my visit, and stayed for a good five hours looking round. I would recommend it as a day out to anyone with an interest in British Heritage or engineering. Entry to the site is free, which includes the underground tour, and I think that’s just amazing for everything that is on offer.

It Fell Off the Back of a Lorry, Guv

God, what a day. On paper, ever so easy. Deliver five cars to Leicester; return with four; tip and reload with five for another Leicester customer. Return empty – oh, nice steady number. Plenty of time to park up and plan my forthcoming photoshoot up at the North York Moors.

Of course, it was not to be. I reached Leicester quickly and easily in the Iveco and even managed to park, which is something of a rarity in Leicester. It was chucking it down, so I was in for a soaking. Fortunately the area was marked by double-yellow lines, and a quick perusal of the Highway Code shows that these mean ‘Parking for Car Transporters only.’ Thoughtful touch.

This unloading location is extremely tight, and turning the cars around to get them to the dealer is tricky. Forewarned is forearmed, so I’d reversed all the cars onto the lorry to enable me to simply drive them off and into the yard. Why make more work for yourself?

First car off was a VW Passat. Well, I don’t know what happened even now, but it seemed to creep forwards, then suddenly lurch to the nearside and come to a stand. It would not go forwards or backwards. What the hell …? I got out, and saw to my horror that it had managed to jump off the ramps altogether so that both wheels were hanging in the air, and the floorpan of the car was sitting firmly and immovably on the body of the truck. It was like the final scene in The Italian Job, except that Charlie Croker had a brilliant idea at that juncture, whereas I was rather bereft of inspiration.

Still, think logically. All I had to do in essence was jack the car up enough so that I could release the trapped unloading ramps, and jury-rig them to a point where the car could be moved. Well, nothing worked. I keep plenty of bits of wood on the truck for small problems like this, but I couldn’t build anything big enough. I almost had it at one point, and freed up the offside ramp, but the nearside was firmly jammed as that side of the lorry was parked on the pavement (yes, well, it’s a very narrow road). I went to scrounge some construction materials from the car dealer. I was looking for bulky items to put under the wood to create height. He had a couple of old car batteries lying around, so I took one. As it was raining heavily and my mind was on other things, I didn’t notice that all the little caps were missing until I hefted the first battery up, and the contents sloshed all down my shirt and trousers. Consequently, my shirt and trousers began to turn several shades lighter; whilst my mood turned several shades darker. It was not my finest moment.

Another unwelcome issue was that whereas the street had been devoid of people and life when I had arrived, to the point that I wondered if Leicester had been taken over by zombies, (the jury is still out on that one) there was now a sizeable crowd of spectators gathered who clearly had nothing better with their time than watch a car transporter driver make a complete and utter idiot of himself. As I was now the focal point of their day, I was trying to play it cool and act nonchalantly as if this was all part of the job and a case of ‘there is nothing to see. Please go home.’ Of course inside, I was shitting bricks.

After an hour of pussyfooting around and trying the gently-gently approach, I arrived at the conclusion that there was no nice way of doing this job. Time to get brutal. I couldn’t jack the car up from below, ergo; I’d have to lift it up from above. I attached a ratchet strap to each front wheel, and hooked the other end into the rear of the top deck. Then I lifted the deck as if I was loading, and this hauled the car up as well. It’s not clever and it’s not pretty, but as a last resort, it does the trick. The straps run so tightly against the body that the front wings were damaged, and it also took out the passenger side mirror as it took the tension. But with the car lifted clear I was able to manhandle the ramps into position and lower the car onto them, then gingerly drive it off.

I’ve built up a good relationship with this customer, and he was fine about the whole thing. An inspection of the car, a quick test drive around the block followed by a phonecall to base to do a quick negotiation and everyone was happy. No arguments, lawsuits or bad feeling – accidents happen; it was chucking it down with rain and the decks and ramps were slippery. No permanent damage was caused, so job’s a good ‘un. A refreshing change these days.

I loaded the four returns without crashing any of them and chugged back to base. By now I was a couple of hours late, so they’d thoughtfully loaded the Atego with my next delivery. So it was a quick tip, followed by taking my tacho and bag from one truck to the next and setting off back to the city of the zombies. Because I hadn’t loaded the cars myself, I didn’t know until I got there that every single one was flat. Fantastic! It was a case of getting in, getting out, getting the battery pack etc, etc. I need all this. One car would only drive with the battery pack attached to it, an Astra had a broken bonnet clip that could only be released by whacking the bonnet in a certain way at a certain place – I felt like Fonzie in Happy Days hitting the jukebox. Heeey!!!

All in all it was not a brilliant day. And I never did get parked up to plan my day in the North York Moors. Mind you, looking at the forecast for the weekend, I’m not sure now …

They tell me that there's always someone having an even worse day than you are.

There's Going to be a Murder ...

Grumpy Git Productions are pleased to announce the release of their latest film, so without further ado, please sit back and enjoy Murder on The Ferry Meadows Express. I recommend full screen with the sound turned up!

I have to say that this film is 8 minutes of pure self-indulgence on my part. I wished to create a railway film that told a story along the way, but when I first set out to the Nene Valley Railway two weeks ago, I had no idea what could be achieved. In a way, the Thomas weekend a fortnight ago did me a favour, as I concentrated on shooting footage from the train and small detail segments. My visit on Saturday concentrated on the exterior shots, and gave me plenty of clips to play with and edit. I also wanted to pay homage to the most evocative piece of railway filming I’ve ever seen – the famous departure scene in Murder on The Orient Express. The truly inspired music score by Richard Bennett captures the atmosphere of a train journey in a way that no other piece of music has done, so using parts of it were essential in my home-grown version. I loved the atmospheric build up with the introduction that leads into that rousing station departure scene. The pace of the music follows the train on its journey to the intermediate stop, followed by the tranquil calm of the middle section before the triumphant crescendo of the final station arrival.

The name of the film and this article is not directly linked to the Orient Express. The soundtrack on the level crossing scenes was ruined by a small child aged around 5 or so, who was having the great-great grandmother of all tantrums at Wansford. His face was as beetroot red as his shirt, and the howls and screams that he was emitting not only drowned out the steam loco, they gave Def Leppard playing live at Wembley a pretty good run for their money as well. His mother was doing her best to ignore him with those ‘it’s just his little way’ shrugs that I found as annoying as the brat himself. The murder in question, therefore, was my suggestion to chuck him into the adjacent River Nene and stand on his head. Needless to say, my well intentioned and genuine offer was met with a hard stare and some presumably sarcastic comments – obviously I couldn’t hear them due to the racket. I know how my mother would have dealt with such a situation; I still have the bruises, a pronounced limp and deafness in one side to prove it.

Only joking – the bruises cleared up long ago.

Out of interest, here is the original Orient Express scene:

Peterborough or Bust

Well, bust actually.

Ever thought that things are going too well, and all of a sudden you’re going to come to a grinding jarring halt? Yes, me too. This week my regular lorry, the Iveco Cargo, has been away for a service and MOT so I’ve had the pleasure of driving our spare truck, the much newer and more pleasant spare vehicle that is our recently purchased Mercedes Benz Atego.

Lovely truck to drive, but the bodywork rather lets it down.
This was one of the Atego's first outings, a day return to Liverpool.

With the huge downturn in car sales this year, car transporters have dropped drastically in price, so when this truck appeared for sale it was too good an opportunity to miss. I’d hoped to be given the lorry as my full time vehicle, given that it is newer, lower mileage, more powerful and a lot more pleasant to drive than the old bag of spanners. But, no. The accountants, who always know best, decreed that the Merc should be the spare lorry, sitting around doing nothing most of the time, whilst the Iveco would lurch on in full time use - since when it has broken down twice and needed a new engine and gearbox at a cost that only Fred Goodwin wouldn’t flinch at. Yes, say the accountants, but on paper, it’s cheaper to break down and require a very expensive recovery operation than it would be to use the more modern lorry that can make it as far as Scunthorpe all by itself. I don’t quite get it, but then again, that’s why I drive them and don’t do the accounts.

So I was delighted to send the Iveco off for servicing last Friday, and get my hands on the Atego this week. I picked it up on Monday, glistening in its fresh coat of paint as it had just been resprayed into company colours.

What a difference a fresh coat of paint makes! Now it looks great,
and is just waiting for the new company vinyls to be applied.

The week flew by until Friday morning, when I had to collect the Iveco, load up and do a delivery in Peterborough. Long before reaching my destination, I knew I had problems. The air pressure was falling, and I lost all my low-end gears as a result. Pulling away from a roundabout or junction was similar to pulling away in a car in fourth gear – judder, judder, judder, lurch, judder, stagger, over-rev and finally crawl away. Having thus endeared myself to the road users of Cambridgeshire, I crawled and lurched into my destination, which was Lincoln Road in Peterborough. I stopped the truck, pulled on the parking brake, and that was that. I could clearly hear the escaping air; it was shooting out with some force. The fault was a two-inch split in the reinforced pipe – not what you want on a Friday.

Worse followed – I couldn’t raise or lower the decks without air, so the cars on the top deck were stranded. The usual phone calls to base and our service provider were exchanged, with helpful comments like, ‘Drive it up to Lincoln and I’ll take a look at it.’ I won’t put my actual reply in writing here, as I’m fairly confident that you can guess. After an hour of various phone calls and helpful advice, our service provider agreed to get someone to take a look. This would take time, so in the meantime, the problem was how to get the cars off. The first thing I tried was the traditional bodge. Some cloth wrapped round the split and tied with a couple of cable-ties should suffice – no. The pressure just blew it off. A ratchet strap might work as they are very strong, but there wasn’t room to work. A more ingenious method of unloading was required.

The Atego was also working today, and, quite by chance, was engaged in a delivery on the other side of Peterborough. Another phonecall summoned it to assist – on arrival the Atego reversed down Lincoln Road until the two trucks were back to back. The decks were jiggled about a bit, and the three cars driven across from one lorry to the other. This took 45 minutes, as the Rover was flat as usual – they hold their battery charge for about, oh, anything up to 6 minutes after you take the key out. The Clio suffered from all the usual Renault problems – they are bags of shit. Sorry, but no other word conveys the low esteem that I hold these ‘vehicles’ in. Other car manufacturers get their electronics systems from IBM and Phillips. Renault just take apart singing Santas and bung the wiring into their cars with a Gallic shrug.

“What iz ze problem, heh? If it is right-hand-drive, zen zees car is for ze English, oui? So, we send them le merde, porquoi pas?’

The battery was flat, the bonnet clip was missing so I had to go fishing around to release it, and even when jump-started the immobiliser refused to turn off. But with persistence, patience and lot of swearing, we finally transferred it across. The Ford Focus started on the key and drove across first time – well done Ford! One out of three ain’t bad, I suppose. This was all happening on the road, of course, and I only wish our resident Health & Safety Gauleiter had been observing, as she would be cuddling the litter of kittens she’d just given birth to by now.

Once transferred, the cars were then dropped off from the Atego to our bemused customer. Still no sign of any assistance, so I did the run down to the chipshop to get lunch in. I always try to break down near a café or chippy; it makes the waiting so much more pleasant.


It was two hours before recovery turned up, and he arrived in a small pick up used to collect cars. He had no equipment to fix the truck; his task was merely to assess the job in hand. Well, I’d already assessed it, and summed up my appraisal with a single word. And he’d driven from Huntingdon to tell us that? To be fair, he did attempt a get-you-home fix using some spare rubber tube he happened to have, but just as with my earlier attempts to wrap stuff around the pipe, the pressure just blew it off. So he called back to his base, and requested the service engineer, who should have come in the first place.

This entailed another hour of standing around, during which time a woman from the Council turned up. Oh goody! There is a particularly nosy old bat of a woman who runs an employment agency that exploits foreign workers close to the garage where we deliver. The garage owners and her enjoy particularly bad relations, and everytime we deliver, she phones up our office to complain. She fancies herself as an amateur Health & Safety Gauleiter, but hasn’t got the brains to actually become one, (although to be fair, she has the total lack of personality and commonsense that the job entails) so she does this instead. Now if I were running an employment agency in the middle of a recession, I’d have bigger problems to worry about than delivery lorries. But there you go. Well, today was her red-letter day. Not just one car transporter to annoy her, but two, plus a recovery truck, all blocking one side of the road! She must have had a multiple orgasm, but we couldn’t hear it above the Iveco’s engine that wouldn’t turn off.

The bat has called the Police onto us before, and they’ve duly turned up, and asked me what I’m doing. I’ve told them, and they’ve said fine, carry on sir. So that option was out. But the Council – well, Councils are the natural habitat of the small-minded nitpickers in society; people with absolutely nothing to do all day but find fault with other people who are just going about their lives. Try putting an envelope into your black wheelie bin and putting it on the street at 06:59 and you’ll see what I mean. We may not be breaking any laws by being stuck on the road, but you can guarantee some small minded Council pillock will find some infringement or other. So, along came a woman dressed in her black power suit, driving her black Chrysler (oh, that’s a sign of upward mobility!) Out of the car came a red clipboard and a camera. She wandered up and down the opposite pavement taking photos and ostentatiously taking notes on her red council issue clipboard. What she didn’t do, being a narrow-minded Council busybody, was come and ask us what we were doing there (yes, it was obvious we’d broken down, but you can’t put ‘obvious’ and ‘Council worker’ into the same sentence). This went on for ten minutes, so I made sure my hair looked nice for the photos. With a bit of luck she’ll post them to her blog, as I didn’t take any pictures myself and it would be handy to have a few.

At around 3pm, the actual service engineer finally arrived, some four hours into the saga. He confirmed what the problem was (you don’t say) and removed the offending pipe (yes, he had tools!) and despatched the recovery man ‘down the road’ to a hydraulic specialist to get a new one. This would take time, but what the hell, I’m on wages anyway – and it would be a permanent fix, not a get you home bodge, which suited me fine. So we had a coffee and generally put the world to rights, as you do. About an hour and a half later, the recovery man turned up again, with a biggish pipe – or he was delighted to see me. No, it was a big pipe. This was duly fitted amidst much cursing coming from the bowels of the lorry – these bits are never in convenient locations. Finally, at 5pm, we were done, dusted, and all ready to hit the manic Friday night A1 for the trip back to Newark. I was delighted to be finally leaving Lincoln Road, although presumably not half as happy as the woman at the agency!

Brief Encumbrance

Following my visit to the Nene Valley Railway at the weekend, I've been playing around with various film clips to produce this movie that is vaguely reminiscent of the British Railways Travel Shorts produced in the 1960's. It was fun to create the various elements on the day and edit the assorted clips into what is a short, but I hope watchable, film. Should you be wondering why the usual head-on views of the locomotive are conspicuous by their absence, just read through the previous post!

All Steamed Up Over New faces

The weathermen promised a barbeque summer, and it’s chucked it down ever since. Now they tell me it’s going to rain so much that I need to start dusting off my build-your-own-ark kit. So when I woke up to a cloudless sky with the sun beaming down on Grantham, I thought that perhaps the met office had got it wrong yet again. They really ought to move into an office with windows. Anyway, I decided that it would be as good a day as any to venture down to Peterborough and the Nene Valley Railway. I’ve been playing around with the movie function on my camera lately, so I decided to have a bash at creating an actual short film based on a journey along the preserved railway line that runs from Wansford to Peterborough. I regularly travel down to Peterborough when I’m working and pass over the railway close to Wansford Station. I keep promising myself to pop down for a day out - well, today was that day!

Wansford Station

I was up and out early doors and arrived at Wansford as the railway was waking up. It is one of the busiest weekends in the year, so the NVR was running a two train service with both a steam and diesel hauled train in operation, as well as Thomas The Tank Engine running a shuttle service for the kids.

I made a few video clips as the trains were shunted and assembled for the day, and then spent the rest of the morning travelling the whole line, firstly behind the steam loco City of Peterborough, and secondly with Deltic D9009 Alycidon.

City of Peterborough shunts spare Royal Mail stock before joining its train.

Preparing Alycidon for service.

I used these trains to film passing scenery, as well as scout out some likely locations for afternoon lineside filming. But there was a snag. The NVR had carried the Thomas idea to a bizarre conclusion, by sticking faces on the front of every loco, and just about anything else that could move. Now, I’m no killjoy. Well, yes I am, but that’s not part of the remit here. I think that Thomas themes are an excellent idea, as they promote interest in railways in a positive manner and introduce families to rail travel when the kids have never seen anything other than the interior of their Citroen Picasso before. It also brings in much needed and valuable revenue to the railways themselves. There was even a Fat Controller in full uniform interacting with the kids, although to keep Gordon Brown happy he wasn’t the Fat Controller, of course. He was the not-obese-but-not-a-size-zero-waif-who-eats-five-a-day-and-exercises-regularly-Controller. Thomas was running with two coaches representing Annie & Clarabel on a shuttle service between Wansford and Yarwell, and it all made for a great atmosphere at Wansford. I thought about changing the tone of my film and trying my hand at Thomas does Annie & Clarabel in Yarwell Tunnel, but that's just how my mind works.

So, I had arrived during a Thomas weekend. Fine - but please, please, keep it relevant. Sticking funny faces on the mainline stuff working down to Peterborough was out of context and just looked ridiculous. It also buggered up most of my interesting photo locations.

I cycled out to this overbridge and waited half an hour for this shot as the location was great - and yes, I'd forgotten which end of the loco the face was on. Reverend Awdry has much to answer for.

Still, these things are sent to try us, and I just worked around the problem. Once I’d done the two return trips, I reclaimed the car from Wansford, drove round to Ferry Meadows in the nearby Nene Park - which, incidentally is well worth a visit in its own right - took my bike out of the back and set off to see the railway from a different perspective. The line runs through the Nene Park for several miles, and a cycle track runs alongside it for much of the route so there were plenty of photo opportunities to be found. After a few locations were tried out I then returned the bike to the car, drove back to Wansford in order to catch the final train of the day for the short trip to Yarwell behind City of Peterborough. This involved travelling through Yarwell Tunnel, as a tunnel shot was necessary to include in my forthcoming epic movie!

All in all it was a good day out. The NVR staff were all friendly and knowledgeable and the atmosphere on the stations and trains was welcoming. I would definitely return, but only if they get rid of those damn faces!

You could almost be back in the early sixties here. Not that I was
around in those days, but I imagine it looked something like this.

I Like Trucking

I came across this video recently, having only a vague recollection of the original episode of Not The Nine o' Clock News. Most appropriate given my line of work, although I have yet to see a hitch hiker as attractive as Pamela Anderson ..... as for hedgehog sandwiches, well don't knock it until you've tried it!