• Dentist Roy Bullivant has converted a double-decker Birmingham bus
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into a mobile surgery. Room for any more fillings on top?
• Next time you're crawling nose to tail down Park Lane or shuffling bumper to bumper along the Strand, spare a thought for drivers across the Channel.
Contrary to popular myth your average Parisian is less likely to be careering around the Arc de Triomphe on two wheels of his 2CV than inching down the Champs Elysees at a snail's pace (in garlic butter, no doubt). Acording to Transport Minister Peter Bottomley, the average speed of traffic in Central London is about 18Icmfh — worse than Rome, where Fiats zoom along at a breathtaking 20km/h, but better than Paris, where pedestrians might get along faster than traffic ambling at an average of 14km/h. Vive La difference.
• Aspiring HGV drivers who fail their test should ponder this cautionary tale, snapped up by the Hawk on a recent flight over the States. The manager of Niagara Falls Driving School, one MZ Rangton, had to make the following official statement about a particularly wayward learner: "Mrs Margaret Freal was a good customer of ours, so we regretted reporting her to the Department of Transportation.
However, as it looked as though she was going to fail her 47th test she lost confidence in herself and tried to persuade our instructor to pass her by tucking a $100 bill into his breast pocket while they were driving, lost control of the vehicle, and ran into a passing police car."
Can't you picture Ms Freal helping the instructor out of the wreckage, and stepping over a pair of recumbent cops to ask if she'd passed?
• A coach driver got more than he bargained for recently, when four of his passengers took flight. They were not of the usual innocuous sightseers, but jailbirds, who overpowered their escort on the M6 near Wednesbury. The civilian driver called motorway police as they'd, "had it away on their toes" (I believe that's the correct phrase) and the prisoners managed to climb the motorway embankment, jump across electrified railway tracks at Bescot and swim a canal and the River Thames, before collapsing at the back of Manor High Street, Wednesbury, where their wings were promptly clipped by the forces of law and order.
That'll teach them not to tip the driver.
• Four officers from the Met have set off from New Scotland Yard on the European Police Challenge Drive.
They aim to visit the police HOs of 12 European capitals in 10 days — and, what's more, without infringing any traffic laws or speed limits.
The boys in blue will wear full uniform throughout the 8,000km journey in a standard Ford Granada patrol car through Belgium, Luxembourg, Austria, Italy, Spain, Portugal and France. Be reassured, if you're on the Continent: that Met jam sandwich on your tail is not a Sangria-induced hallucination.
• An East German worker who was cleaning the road on the no-man's land between his country and the West German frontier last week waited until the guards were not looking and nipped into the West on his road sweeping vehicle. Maybe he'd heard the contract was going out to tender. Who says Eastern Bloc municipal operators lack initiative?
• Crossways (Frating) lorry driver Leonard Stubbings, who sustained a double fracture of his skull and a broken wrist when his cargo of Indian food fell on him as he unloaded it, has won nearly £25,000 damages in the High Court. Stubbings, of Walnut Way, Tiptree, Essex was one of the more unusual victims of Indian food. Most injuries, in the Hawk's experience, result from mistakenly gulping down a doublestrength Vindaloo instead of the planned Kurma.
Stubbings claimed the trailer was badly packed in India and sued the firm of stevedores who packed the lorry and the shipping agents who oversaw the operation. Stevedores Ardeshir Cursetjee & Sons, and its agents Merzario Shipping Agencies, both of Bombay, denied negligence. Mr Justice French found against the stevedores.