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148 
BIRD'S EYE VIEW
Page 46
Page 47
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BY THE HAWK
• Staff at Great Yeldhambased Thompson Haulage were aghast recently when the firm's cats, Ginger and Fluffy (both 10 months old), went missing.
They had boarded one of the company's vehicles, driven by Ian Flemming (no — another one), while he was loading furniture and carpets in the back.
Flemming discovered Fluffy at the final destination on his run to Bristol and booked the cat into a local cattery for four days until his return trip.
Ginger, clever puss, was already at the same cat hotel. He had grown tired of life on the road and jumped ship at the first stop a Bristol carpet shop where he was given a saucer of milk.
The shop owner identified the cat and took it to the cattery until Thompson could collect it. A company spokesman says they have no plans to go into livestock haulage. • What is believed to be the biggest and most luxurious horsebox in Britain made its debut at the National Shire Horse Centre in Plymouth.
Mounted on an Iveco Ford 16-tonne GVW Cargo, it will transport the centre's show team of four Shire horses all over the country. The Shire show has been sponsored by a deal with lveco Ford and its Plymouth dealers, Vospers Truck Centre.
Moorland Horseboxes built the steel frame, fully clad in I8-guage aluminium and with reinforced sides. The interior has up to two double beds, shower, toilet, colour TV, fridge, cooker and hot and cold running water for the horses?
• International jet-setter, arms dealer and escort of beautiful women Adnan Khasshoggi, started his career with a truck. His meteoric rise began when his father sent him $10,000 to buy a car. Khasshoggi invested the money in a truck which he leased out.
And it was also trucks that gave Khasshoggi his first major deal: he sold a fleet of American trucks to the Saudi royal family for $245,000.
From these modest beginnings Khasshoggi became one of the elite super-rich. He recently sold his personal yacht for $30 million. Asked if he was the world's richest man, he replied: "Well-to-do, well to-do . .".
His life of luxury may soon be curtailed, however. He was recently nabbed by Swiss police for alleged illegal deals with disgraced Phillippino expresident Marcos, so maybe he should have stuck to trucking.
• Coals to Newcastle, fridges to esidmos, and now oil to the Arabs. Shrewsbury-based oil company Morris and Co is building up a brisk trade by supplying lubricants to many oil-rich countries in the Middle East, including Kuwait and Oman.
• A dramatic road chase involving a pair a West Midlands Travel buses took place in the suburbs of Birmingham last month when a three-year-old girl climbed aboard a bus without her mother.
As the bus pulled away her desperate mum commandeered a second bus, ordering the driver the give chase through the streets of Small Heath. Mother and child were finally reunited at Digbeth police station, after the driver of the first bus spied the unaccompanied toddler.
• Environment Secretary Nicholas Nimby' Ridley last week turned his attention to ridding the country of graffiti as part of Environment Week.
While scrubbing away at the graffiti-smeared walls of a London hospital he managed to squirt the cleaning liquid into his eyes. The name of the campaign is Operation Eyesore. • There was definitely no horsing around when Peter Lane Transport (that Bristol-based transport firm which tends to get lumbered with weird and wonderful loads) was asked to move two old horse-drawn carts — without horses fortunately — from Wales to Devon.