Gymnastics.

Firstly, I’m sorry but a very brief explanation is necessary. The two trailers we use at work for the Leicester night trunk trips, are both double deck’s, and are 16 foot high, and 44 foot long. One has a sloping ‘aerodynamic’ front, while the other has a square front.

Having used the square front one for the previous 5 nights, last night I was on the second trunk, so had the sloping one. Last time I’d used it, the rollers on the curtains had been so reluctant, to co-operate, that I’d nearly pulled a muscle, so when I got back to the yard, I’d kicked up quite a stink about it, and said that it can’t be right that we have to risk a hernia or slipped disc or something, just because they’re too tight to sacrifice a bit of oil. If nothing else, they must have some old sump oil knocking around. Well, they said they’d ‘look at it’, which tends to be about all they do! So last night, when I eventually got on the unloading bay, (aka tipping bay) I wrapped my gloved hand round one of the back straps, leaned back, and yanked it as hard as I could. The curtain shot backwards, and so did I. My hand slipped out of my glove, and stayed firmly wrapped in the strap, and I ran backwards as fast as I could, but not fast enough, and I landed on my curvy butt, just inside the warehouse, with such force, that my legs went up in the air, and I all but performed a very elegant backwards somersault! Two forklift drivers stopped and asked if I was okay, while struggling to keep a straight face, but as soon as I assured them I was fine, they burst out laughing and gave me a round of applause, lol.

This was only the second time in my life that I’ve done a backwards somersault. The first was in 2008, when myself and another driver stopped for the night at a Spanish services. There’d been no spaces in the modest sized truck parking area, so we’d stopped on the side of the slip road onto the motorway. We couldn’t carry on, ‘cos we’d done our maximum driving time for the day. ken, the other driver, had a left hand drive Daf, and I had one of our daughter company’s right hand drive Volvo’s, so I was parked with the drivers door right by the side of the road. There was a drop from the edge of the tarmac, of about 3 inches, then 3 or 4 foot of scorched verge, before a gully, rather than a ditch. At the time, the 3 UK tractor units were Mercedes’ and the bottom step on this Volvo was higher than the Mercs, So with this extra step down to the scorched verge, I made a mental note to remember this in the morning. Well, needless to say, I didn’t remember. When I got up next morning, In my dozy state, I climbed down backwards from tha cab, as usual, and suddenly there was no ground. This resulted in my knee coming up to my chest, and as I hadn’t been holding the handles very tightly, my hands slipped off the rails, and I was effectively catapulted backwards, away from the lorry. The aforementioned curvy butt, hit the ground, just over the top edge of the gully, my legs went up, and I rolled over backwards, down into the bottom of the gully, where my hands automatically went up behind my head, and as I came to an abrupt halt, my right foot came down on the ground, and my the top of my left calf fell on my right knee. And there I lay, slightly dazed but actually quite comfortable! I looked around to see if anyone had observed my gymnastics display, and was pleased to see that there was nobody around. But as I lay there, I saw Kenny’s feet materialize on the other side of the front lorry. So I tried to look as nonchalant as possible, and actually got away with it! When Ken came round his cab and saw me, he said; “Mornin’ mate, enjoyin’ it before it get’s too hot?”. I said “Yea, best time of the day, this, and I’ll be sitting in the cab for long enough.” He nodded in agreement, then said: “Right then, coffee?” “Yup”, I said. Here came the moment of truth. Had I injured myself, or not? I hadn’t, so off we went. and to this day, nobody’s any the wiser……except you!! 🙂 Have a good day.