Taxi!
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One of my colleagues who drives to work each morning past the new Covent Garden market in Vauxhall, London, tells me that there is little detectable increase in traffic in the area — at least at the time he is travelling. However, there are sometimes a few vehicles about which have obviously come from the market. A common sight — and one which must be a bit worrying for haulage operators — is that of taxis laden to the gunwales with market produce. Either these are hired by fruit and vegetable retailers with 0 licences or serve as extra transport. Sounds like an opportunity there for some enterprizing haulier or van hirer.
Incidentally, I am told that there is still a regular flow of foreign heavy trucks to the old Covent Garden site off the Strand. The resident traffic warden there is now used to drawing route maps of how to get to Vauxhall, it appears.
Wrong patient?
ANYONE who travels by bus must have come across the occasional bad tempered driver or conductor, indeed there are times when they seem to be more common than the other kind.
Although I'm sure that one-man bus operators in Manchester are no more frightening than their opposite numbers anywhere else in the country, according to a recent report some Manchester passengers are so frightened of the way in which these drivers object to giving change that special psychiatric treatment has been devised for them.
Doctors and nurses at the University Hospital in South Manchester play buses with their patients. In the game, chairs and tables are arranged to form a bus entrance• and the patient has to pluck up courage to ask a member of the staff — who plays the driver — for change.
The game is recorded on videotape so that the patient can see himself.
Part of the treatment is to make the patient play the part of the driver so that he can analyse his own reactions to the situation.
It seems to me that if the situation is so bad, the psychiatrists are treating the wrong people!
Record to beat
I reckon you have to be pretty special to drive for 32 years, most of it in traffic conditions, and retain an unblemished record. But that's what Frederick Haynes, 65, has just done — and in doing so has won the Southern BRS "Safer Driving" Cup outright.
He must be particularly pleased to be first winner of this new safety cup, because he's just retired from the road to the yard. But his 32 years of trouble-free driving have included 31 on the same contract for Bradbury_ Greatorex, which is virtually all London deliveries, and that makes his record all the more remarkable.
Congrats
My congratulations to 58-year-old Arthur Slater, better known to us for his large fleet of well-kept Fodens in the North East than for his sailing prowess. He has been presented with a "Man of the Year" award at a Council for the Disabled luncheon at London's Savoy Hotel after scoring Britain's first ever win in the Southern Cross Cup. Their best performance came in the SydneyHobart yacht race. Arthur, who lost a leg in an accident during the 1959 Monte Carlo Rally, captained Britain's team of three yachts.
by The Hawk