Sprig of lucky heather dearie?

Well, lets be fair. I need it.

I am a fairly unlucky person. In fact it's fair to say that I am one of the most unlucky and accident-prone people outside of the the Darwin Awards.

Last night was a perfect example. What started as a nice easy night at work quickly slid downhill into problems of mammoth proportions.

I arrived at my meeting spot with a colleague so we could head to Calais, at which point it was seen that not one, but both of has, had a headlight blown. Easy to solve, I hear you cry; and one would certainly think so.

We both had spare bulbs, but of course they were the wrong ones. We spoke to the truck company and they said get the old bulb out of the other truck and go and buy some new ones. To do this we would need to tip the cab forward at a 45-degree angle. So far so good (apart from being horribly late by now). We tip the cab, retrieve the bulb and then find out that the cab is stuck in the 'down' position. Shit.

Truck company says "Hmm, we dont know how to fix that - why dont you go and buy some bulbs in the other (my) truck, and when you come back we will have found out" Here we go, we are very late now and a touch pissed off. Anyway, after negotiating various roadworks, road closures, and police diversions we arrived in Paris to buy some bulbs from a service station. Once we have done this we remount (don't even think abou that) my truck to find that the ignition barrel has broken and I can't get the key in.

So now we have 2 trucks broken down, out of a possible 2, some 20km apart from one another. After waiting for three and a half hours, a student-type mechanic arrives who can't fix it.

Sigh. Now we have to wait for the two backup drivers to arrive from London. Another few hours passes and one of them has got lost and the other one has forotten and gone to do his deliveries.

By the way, it is now 6am, pretty damn cold, the windows are open and uncloseable as electric and we're both wearing shorts.

We were finally rescued around 7am, having sat in the service area for around 8 hours. What a night.

Oh and by the way, they can't repair my truck until Monday. Life gets better. Only 8 more shifts until I go on holiday - thank fuck for that.