THE LIVERPOOL ROAD episode 2

 THE LIVERPOOL ROAD episode 2

All day unloading,he grumbled to himself in cold,noise cap of his lorry.i will be lucky to get done by tea time.he did not prospect of waiting for his turn to unload his six cases of books bound for malacca via singapore,consigned to a certain wong cheng lock. Hope he enjoy reading them,muttered jack Hastings with grim humour as his lorry roared northward through the snow.The traffic lights at newcastle-under-lyme were in his favour.On he went.The lights of park house colliery gleamed dimly as he went by red yellow flames wavered from the firing holes of the bricks kilns nearby.

    Carefully he eased down Talke Hill, pulled off the road at smith's Garage and stopped by the fuel pump.An attendant,so bundled up against the weather as to be unrecognisable,stamped his wooden clogs into the slushy snow as thirty gallons of fuel poured into the tank.jack hastings looked over his snow encrusted load and walked around his wagon,kicking all twelve tyres a heavy kick,to see ifthey are holding their pressur.Great slap of icy snow hung inside the mudguards,lodged there by the spinning wheels during the journey,when he had pulled his vehicle away from pump,and parked it,he stumbled through the storm to the near by café and flung open the door.

    From inside rushed a blast of hot smoky air,smelling of tobacco,tea,toast,fried bacon,hot,oily clothes and roasting leather.Round a hot stove,their boots thrust into the cinders,sat a group of drivers with pint mugs if tea in their fists. The steaming walls rang with accents from london,birmingham,liverpool, Glasgow and aberdeen.No one approved of this weather the snow was freezing as it fell the road of warrington were like glass at Holmes chapel two lorries had collided and fifteen tons of oranges were lying in snowdrift picksford's two hundred ton trailer,loaded with a turbine for a power station was laid up at knutsford,they would not dare to move it till the road were clear,where were the the snowploughs and the grit-throwers ? why did some countries only use salt to melt the ice ?Have you seen what brine does to the underside of wagon ?A hundred lorries held up in kendal ;fifty more in penrith. The road over sharp fell in blocked.

      Jack listened as he took his tea and toast from the tired old man serving behind the counter and thought,if half of this is true,old wong cheng lock is going to be lucky to get his books of this ship.

         Men came in and went out,banging the door.jack hastings rested,warming his hand round the thick pot of tea,folding the wads of toast into his mounth.He contributed his report on the weather,listened further highly coloured comments,gave his opinion that gladstone Dock, Liverpool,was fit place for neither man nor beast in this weather,and reluctantly went forth into the black,swirling our doors.Before he climbed into the narrow cab he covered up more of the radiator grill with the daily mirror of the previous saturday,to try to get his diesel engine to run warmer.

          The lorry moved over the rough ground of the park on to the open road.jack hastings moved the gear level through the gears with the skills of year driving.The familiar road sprang into view in his headlight beams Holmes chapel,knurtsford,warrington,Liverpool.