Did The Earth Move For You?

Moses came down from Mount Sinai in his triumph with the Ten Commandments and the Red Sea parted before him.  I came down Mount Street in Nottingham in my Scania with five customer cars and the whole pavement parted beneath me.

Moses only had to contend with Pharaoh and the Egyptian army with their chariots.  Fall through a pavement in Nottingham and you have to deal with Council officials, utility providers and people pretending to be policemen, sorry, policepersons, in hi-viz jackets and bulletproof vests.  Not to mention the veritable army of self appointed experts who just happen to be passing and helpfully pass on tips about digging out tanks during the Battle of the Somme.  “What you need, young man, is flypaper and a coal scuttle.  Wrap the axle up in greaseproof paper and you’ll have it out in a jiffy, what!”  Which is why I decided to wait out the episode in my cab and grab forty winks.

What happened was this.  I had a delivery of five cars to make to one of the umpteen ‘hand car wash’ places that have sprung up everywhere in Nottingham.  Because Councils make everywhere as HGV unfriendly as possible these days there is nowhere to offload and the racetracks that serve as roads to the demented drivers of Nottingham – who make the Wacky Races look like a 1930’s drive in the country – are not exactly the most ideal place to make a delivery from.  That’s assuming you can even see them under the yellow lines, red lines, chevrons, cameras, bus lanes, cycle lanes, yummy-mummy school lanes, antiskid surfaces and red top tarmac.  Therefore I pull onto the pavement to drop the cars off.  Unfortunately, the pavement gave way under the weight of the lorry – a fact I can only subscribe to mining subsidence from the days when Britain had what we used to call industry and employment.  The nearside wheel went into the hole up to axle height, with the vehicle resting on the anti roll bar.  Fortunately I could adjust the air suspension to maintain a level surface in the cab so I didn’t spill my coffee whilst awaiting the recovery vehicle.  This would have arrived a lot quicker than it did, had not our buffoon of a ‘service provider’ sent it to a different street in Nottingham to pick up a coach.  No wonder they couldn't find me.

Recovery with an impressive beast of a three-axle Foden was swift, thanks to the simple expedient of attaching a chain to the front and bodily lifting the truck out of the hole and swinging it onto the road.  The experience didn’t seem to have harmed the Scania, and it performed normally for the rest of the day.  Now we have to wait for the reams of paperwork and claims, followed by insurance battles and counter claims in order to decide who pays how much and to whom.  Not something that Moses had to deal with, of that I’m sure.