I now work for a 'leading repair/recovery' firm. Suffice to say, winter was a wee bit cold. The company had anticipated this and being the switched on peeps that they were they gave us snowchains to fit to our vans. OK the vans were still heavily loaded and they were only 2 wheel drive but it was a start!
Me, the Transit and the hill
One particular day the snow had REALLY arrived. Everywhere was thickly carpeted. The main roads were more or less passable, minor roads were a lottery and seldom used roads....well probably best not to bother!. None of this of course mattered to the people in puzzle palace (our dispatch office) who just worked on the principle that the day was the same as any other.
Alarm bells should have started ringing for me when the first job came in: A BMW X5 (4 WD) parked outside the house on a common down an unmade road 20 miles away. Oh boy. I told the office that with the weather as was it would take me about 3 hours to get there.......the girl I spoke to was not convinced. I could almost imagine her drinking a coffee, turning the heating up and sat in front of her PC while she told me "It shouldn't take you that long to get there" Counting to 10 didn't work, neither did counting to 20 in Nepalese. Ho hum.
After 3 hours, numerous slides, several near misses and 2 digging myself out of drifts I was finally within about 400 yards of the car. I could actually see the house!. It was at THAT point I was deassigned from the job and sent to one 8 miles further away. As going to the second one would entail driving PAST the house of the first one I decided that a bit of independent action was required. I fixed the first one. Dug the van out a couple more times and decided to fit my snow chains. Have YOU ever fitted snow chains?. After about 20 minutes I could no longer feel my fingers, after another 20 I could feel them but wished I couldn't. The chains were finally attached and I made my jolly way to my next job, a Ford Fiesta stuck in a snow drift. The address of the job was vaguely familiar but I couldn't figure why, the important thing was the guy was stuck and the job was 4 hours old so obviously he was bloody cold. Off I set.
I was going up a steep hill of tightly packed snow and ice when one of my snowchains started making a noise, to be on the safe side I stopped for a quick look. As I was checking the chains were taut I noticed a flatbed Ford Transit pull up behind me. Next minute I'm joined by a jolly rather large gentleman wearing baggy jeans and a sweatshirt. "Any probs?" he said, "Nope, just checking my chains" I replied. "Pah, chains! my Trannys great in the snow it doesn't need gaylord chains" he replied.....It was at this point that he and I watched his Transit slowly start to slide down the hill. My companion moving with great speed (but precious little thought) said "Oh shit!" and started to run down the hill....as we all know, stopping a fully laden Transit which has its handbrake on and is sliding down the hill is dead easy! He may even have got close enough to do himself some damage but at that point several things happened:
He had taken only a few paces before his jeans gave up the unequal struggle and fell down, but showing great determination he carried on trying to run after his truck. At this point I realised two things: 1. as he had decided to dress 'commando' , there was no holster there to look after his "gentleman parts" 2. 20 stone plus individuals are not good at running when their ankles are hobbled together by their jeans. Showing rather more bravery than sense he tried to continue after his van which was now sliding slowly and gracefully towards a drainage ditch, at this point the laws of inertia and gravity decided to get in on the act, he pitched forward landing face first in the snow and then slid about 30 feet down the hill. I'll leave it to the reader to imagine how deep frozen his meat and two veg by the time he came to a halt!. As he finally slowed enough to find his feet he jumped up removing ice and snow from a delicate area and looked at me his face stricken "Please tell me you didn't video that!" I assured him that while I didn't have a video, his suffering was now etched indelibly into my conciousness. Together we walked (considerably more carefully) down to his Truck which by now had come to a halt with one rear wheel just entering a ditch. I'll draw a veil over how we got it out but he did get back on the road and I continued on my way to find the poor (by now deep frozen) chap in his Fiesta.
90 minutes later I got there. It was at this point I realised why I knew the road name. His car was stuck on a patch of snow....outside a pub!. No he wasn't cold. No he wasn't starving. Actually he was pleasantly warm, fed and watered....yep, inside the pub!. Fixing a grin with some difficulty to my face I found him. I then pushed his car off the snow he was stuck on....apparently the 10 people in the pub with him couldn't do that, and he drove off. I managed one more job that day. My figures were: Time on shift 11 hours, time 'under bonnet' (fixing things) 30 minutes total. Distance driven 50 miles.Time driving 10 hours. Another glorious day in the company!
