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• Police chase
Four lorry drivers led the Aberdeen police a merry dance last weekend. It happened at the LDoY competition at Seafield Links when the police officers were endeavouring to find an overall winner in the Highway Code section of the competition. Eventually, when the field had been reduced to four they were tucked away in the back of a police van. There were three rounds of questions and on each occasion the police failed to crack the deadlock. At the fourth grilling, last year's British Champion Norman Singer was the only man to survive.
• Please Miss
So Norman Singer returns to Bramcote on September 10 to defend his title. It's been a busy year for Norman since he lifted the silverware last September, what with trips to London, Stockholm and social events organized by Shell and BP. And on bank holiday Monday he and his wife were invited to the Norwich LDoY contest. While there he competed (in a lunchtime side attraction) against a retired schoolteacher on a Bedford fire tender which she had converted into a mobile home. The lady, Miss Muriel Kilvert, later left for Canada where she will drive "Peregrine", the fire tender, across Canada down the West Coast of the USA on the Sante Fe trail into central America, where she will be doing research into the life of Indians, and then into South America; later she will ship the vehicle to Calcutta and drive up through Asia and across Europe to arrive back in 18 months' time.
By any standards that is some trip for a converted fire tender; by the time it gets back it will be celebrating its 21st birthday!
• Crawley carnival
Talking of Norwich — which we were — they are proving to be trend-setters in the LDoY competitions. Each year they have almost as many side-attractions as there are at the Final and this year they have been joined in the "day-out-for-the-family" type of organization by the new Crawley centre where Alan Ransome, the secretary, is putting on a massive side-show. He has a number of attractions for commercial vehicle operators and drivers and there is a chance for dad to show his skill on an Army rifle range and, I understand, over an assault course. For the less energetic the Brighton Boys' Brigade and the Lingfield Silver Bands will be providing music throughout the day.
This looks like being one of the highlights of this year's competition.
• Chicken game danger
Reporting a "terrifying new 'chicken' game being played in the Goldington area of Bedford", the Daily Express last week described how youngsters gather at a kerbside where lorries normally halt before turning into a main road. The "last across" trick is to run under the vehicle before it moves off. A local headmaster is quoted as saying, "1 know the sort of thing that has been happening but the children don't take notice of warnings." , There is, however, an obvious warning in this story for lorry drivers — as well as for schoolmasters, parents, police, traffic wardens, safety officers and everyone else whose responsibility it is to try to save kids from the horrifying consequences of such stupid pranks.
• Cab comfort
It looks like refuse collecting could be one of the "plum" jobs for drivers very soon. At the Cleansing Conference at Bournemouth a TGWU official is said to have proved conclusively that existing labour forces working 35 hours in a three-day week could cope with our present-day requirements. Now if that were not enough, one of the refuse collection vehicles on parade was fitted with a cigar lighter and a cab radio as standard equipment. If this trend continues there is just a possibility that the £40 a week cigarsmoking refuse vehicle driver might not want to go home for his four-day weekend.
• Top Perkins man
Fireman John Shaw of the Leeds City Fire Brigade has won himself a weekend for two in one of Europe's capitals. The 36-year-old Yorkshireman won the Perkins' Drivers' Club Member of the Year Competition for his enthusiasm for his job and his service to the public. The competition is open to drivers of all types of Perkins-powered vehicles and equipment and takes in road vehicles, agricultural, industrial and marine equipment. The runner-up was Bill Clark from— wouldyou-believe-it? — Aberdeenshire.