Monday blues lasts all week.

Monday and I'm not at my best.
My tooth has refused to settle down and to make matters worse I'm suffering terribly with hay fever.

I'm waking up at 4 and my eyes are streaming and I was having trouble breathing. I was thinking of blaming a volcano in Iceland, but that would be crazy wouldn't it?







Anyway I go to work and with the help of some antihistamine's, some locally sourced honey and some eye drops, I'm on my way to Bristol.





The first thing I see worth talking about was this old Route master.






A very rare and very expensive London Double Decker Bus.



Not so rare was this old road sweeper and this range rover. It always amazes me what people let rot on their land. There was an old Volvo next to these as well.

Cherwel services was closed last week because of a fire but opened up the next day to sell fuel and overpriced snacks again.

Another day and another runny eyes day. This time I'm local and just love this sign.

I found a Hino truck that wasn't a tipper.
 

Also love this lorry. It seems to make every one that passes it smile.





Tiny mistake I made on a delivery of Bic pens. They are meant to be thrown away, but not before they've been sold.











The lad was great though and helped me pick them all up and took them as they were.





This is an optical table and cost over £30000 !  It was sent to Coventry Uni and the only problem, was nobody knew who had ordered it. It also weighed 485 kg and was meant to be on the 4th floor. It eventually went into the stores until they could find someone to own up.





A brilliant first delivery to Basildon and then a nice two hour wait to head into west London soon paid me back by being the worst job I had done in months.











Right in the middle of Soho just next to this bar was an office on the first floor were 157 packs of real oak flooring was going.
There was also 50 packs of real oak flooring waiting on the first floor to be taken back home with me.

It was very hot and to make matters worse the customer was on his own and it took the two of us over three hours to get his stuff off and my return load on.
The pub opposite got busier and busier and the sun got hotter and hotter and I got more and more exhausted and the pile of wood didn't seem to get any smaller.





We got it off the truck, but it still had to get up the tiny stairs and into the first floor office.





Just as I was about to leave, London's finest decided I had been blocking the road for long enough and put a ticket on the truck.





As I drove down the road I wished I was part of  the  chattering , laughing crowds in the Soho streets and not driving a great lumbering truck down them.





I passed through Camden and up to the M1 without so much as a rest as the load was needed back in Leicester straight away.





Halifax this morning and a reptile center was the place I was dreading. It wasn't so bad in the end because  I only had sand and shelving on board.











A massive fish and chip drive through in Leeds and another high value load in a RSPB bird sanctuary in Yorkshire. These boilers cost over £10,000 each and are used in most new builds nowadays.





I was passed by a trio of camper vans on the way back down the M1 but only managed to snap one of them.







 These are some of the other pictures taken during the week.

I'm still feeling rough as but hope the rest, over the weekend will sort me out.
Here's to an easier week next week.

No wood, but plenty of organic bread !

When I got back to the lorry I expected to find it stuffed to the roof with wood for Kent, but I was surprised , and releaved to find it had been replaced by organic bread and mushrooms for Manchester. It was an organic food store run as a cooperative.





When I got to the store there was a great smell coming from inside and being mid morning, it made me feel really hungary so I went in for a look.

I was amazed that in a shop as big as the average supermarket I couldn't find anything I even recognised , let alone faced eating.

I could smell the deli as it was seving hot food, but tofu wraps and squash soup wasn't doing it for me.

I saw a somosa that looked edible and decided to buy one.

When I bit into it, it was so hard I was worried that I'd crack my tooth again. It went straight back into it's bag.



Another thing that was very disconcerting was that all the staff and customers looked so ill. Pasty complexion, lank hair and really all rather grumpy looking.

I know I bang on about healthy eating but after this visit I had to rush into a fast food restuarant, just to cheer myself up a bit.


After the fun in Manchester I was to be found scavenging around the back of the fair looking for a roofers yard in Bolton.

















And then after a boring run down to Oxford today , another visit to wood hell. Coventry and Leicester.


I took a 15 minute break on the motorway and noticed this run down building at Leicester.


The scariest moment of the day came when driving home in my car and this herd of cows came charging around the corner, straight at me, followed by farmers on qaud bikes. Weird end to a friday but it's not like a volcano has been spouting hot ash all over Europe and stopped air travel or anything has it.



Moooooooo!!!!!!!

The wood run

I'm sitting here in my "Tatty Tosser Top" or Hi Viz to thehealth and safety sqaud, waiting for the loaders to get to me and load me up.






They have to unload my European cousin first though and it's taking ages.

Maybe it's because wood is a slow growing resource, I don't know, but all the wood yards I've visited are very relaxed.

They also seem to have customers in far flung corners of the forest, so why are they buying wood? Just cut some down.
We have movement.
But it's short lived and no sooner had they put a long plank on me they were gone.


We are getting there though, slowly. I've only been here for an hour.


Some far flung places.















These are the types of places you visit when on the wood run.

My day turned full circle when I was sent back to were I started to collect more wood for tommorrow. This time it's going to Kent.



This is my veiw





And still it keeps coming.


Some off my load didn't fit and had to be split between two other trucks but I bet it's already been shoved into my truck for the morning.

Let's see if I get round tommorrow.