Another free chapter from Book II

Just to gauge interest, and gain feedback, I am going to post one of the short chapters from *Trucking Hell*.
All I am after is a comment on whether you think a book full of similar is worth presenting to a publisher
Oh, and let me know about all the typos too, as I wrote this one in my 1/2 hour lunch break.
Thanks


The reasons for the strike are, for the purpose of this story, unimportant, although at the time they were front-page news. French truck drivers had decided, en masse, to blockade all the major routes through their country and all the ports. As a result, delivery to Spain was turning in to a real pain. Nonetheless, I had delivered in Madrid, loaded in Seville, and was on my way back to the UK. Customs had been cleared at Irun, in Norh West Spain, and I had just driven back in to France, when, over the CB, a voice called “Any British truckers out there, you should pull in to the Shell petrol station, as the road to Bordeaux is closed, and we’re being diverted up the back way to Toulouse and through to Bordeaux on the motorway” Oh bum, that meant having to fork out for motorway tolls.

However, I had a fuel card that allowed me to pay for toll roads, so it was not such a hardship, but it meant more delay, more expense, and as a result less profit on what was already not a particularly well paying load… As my workmate Alan was due along this route as well, I rang him and informed him of the problem. He told me he’d meet me at the Shell station, but he was running several hours behind me, and wouldn’t be at the Shell station until maybe midnight. We arranged to run up to the docks together, I bid him farewell, and hung up.

Rather than use the café in the petrol station, as it was a nice evening I decided to eat ‘Café Camion’, and got out my cooker, set it up on the walkway behind the truck cab, and started cooking potatoes, tomatoes, ham and eggs. I hung a black bin bag on the air intake for the rubbish. I sat in my deckchair beside the truck, looking across at the forest that surrounded the fuel station, and decided that, as the sun slowly set, the birds sang and the breeze gently stirred the leaves, that life was, on the whole, pretty damned good. I ate, washed everything up, packed away the cooker and left the bin bag ready for disposal the next day, then went and showered in the services, and retired to bed with a book. By eleven I decided that I wouldn’t wait up for Alan, but turned off the reading light, and fell asleep.

Suddenly I was wide awake! The cab was dark, and shaking. Someone was on the walkway giving it a hefty shove. I looked at the clock. Just after 2AM. Damn you Alan, and your practical jokes. I wanted to sleep! I leant out of the bunk, and pressed the button to lower the window in the driver’s side door, stuck my head out and yelled “Do you know what damned…time..it…is…ooer!” It occurred to me, as I looked up, that I’d not actually seen Alan since that time, a few months earlier, when we had a drop too much wine in Cherbourg. My, how he’d changed! Instead of being five feet eight, he was well over seven feet, and by heck had he put on some weight. He really needed a shave, his breath smelt dreadful, and he needed to see a dentist. His fingernails were in need of a good trim, and the fur coat was really not him. Either that, or I was in fact not looking up at Alan at all, but a great big brown bear. Alan snorted, and blew steam from nostrils the size of pint pots. At that point I decided that this was, indeed, a brown bear. And I seemed to be annoying it somewhat by yelling in its face.

The problem with electric windows is that sometimes, when you want them to close, they seem impossibly slow. This was one of those times! Fortunately, after a couple of swipes at the door the bear seemed to get bored, and decided to entertain itself by trying to rip the cab off the chassis. After a while this also seemed to lose its entertainment value, and the bear went quiet. I, in turn, started to breathe again, and very quietly crept back into my sleeping bag, and hid under the covers, because as everyone knows, 15 tog of material will even fend off the axe-blows of a maniacal psychopath, so should be fine against a bear. Eventually I fell into a troubled sleep, filled with images of teddy-bears with grudges, and soon it was morning. I was a little wary about leaving the cab, but eventually a few other truck drivers started to surface, and amongst them was Alan. He sauntered across, then did a classical double-take as he looked at the side of my truck. I clambered out of the cab to see what he was looking at. Attached to the air intake was a quantity of shredded plastic, and the side of the cab had what certainly appeared to be tooth marks on it. Of the rubbish that had been in the bag there was no sign. No eggshells, no potato peelings, no tins…brown bears like a traditional English fry-up! Who knew?

looks and reads good to me, u have a way with the words as if your actully sitting in my front room telling me the story

Good read Gaz..... do we get any more.... great story anyways

That was brilliant!!!

Great story Gaz

Oooh, I dunno...If I put too many of them up here, no one will want to buy the book!
Oh, maybe just one small one, then