• Cats might have nine lives but one French cat has decided to get a new one.
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Top Cat, the one-year-old tabby, decided to run away from it all and apply for asylum in Britain. To do this he had to get to Britain first. Top Cat hid in the back of a lorry travelling from Paris to Welwyn Garden City.
"He hitched a lift with us to come to Britain and it is our duty to look after him", says Mike Godfrey of MSAS Cargo International based in Bracknell.
The French are taking a very dim view of all this and Le Parisien newspaper is campaigning for the cat's return.
"He will not like the food in Britain", says the paper. Top Cat (renamed Napoleon in France) is having his six-month quarantine fee of £400 paid for by MSAS. Vive la diference and all that.
• As one dedicated to raising standards in the transport industry, I am very interested in education, so I was delighted to receive a letter from the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA). My delight turned to dismay, however, when I read it. ILEA explains that it has been trying to update and computerise its Transport Division publications system. "At present we receive differing amounts of your magazine each month and there also seem to be irregularities in the people receiving them". The Hawk appreciates that some people may have "irregularities", but Commercial Motor readers? . . . Surely not.
• About 800 escaped turkeys caused chaos on the Al last Wednesday after the lorry they were on toppled over an embankment.
Motorists had to swerve violently as the least 40 wellfed gobblers scurried across the busy junction with the M1 near Doncaster. Local police and firemen fought to corner the others who were making a break for it. "If they had got out all hell would have broken lose," said firechief Keith Gill. "It was pure pandemonium".
Half the 1,500 birds were killed when the lorry belonging to Turners Turkeys of Spalding crashed, blocking both carriageways.
It was like a scene from a surrealistic sci-fi movie, as stunned drivers watched their Christmas dinners evade rescue teams. Turkeys were rounded up and then gave firemen the slip-again.
A second lorry was sent and the surviving turkeys resumed their fateful journey to Spalding. The truck driver was treated for cuts at Doncaster Royal Infirmary.