Page 68 - It's a Rum Life Book 3 "Ivy House Tales 1970 to 1984"

driving round the country meant I knew the dimensions of the lorry perfectly and every
cone remained in place.

Now out on the open road, it was still early morning and as we arrived on the outskirts of
Grantham, what seemed like every schoolchild on earth was venturing forth.

Everywhere I looked there were children on bikes, they were all over the pavements and
queueing at ‘zebra’ crossings.
Perhaps the extra stress had affected my examiner as much as myself, as a few minutes
later, when we were in the very centre of Grantham on the High Street, which had not long
before been the original A1 Great North Road, he instructed me to pull over and stop
outside Boots the Chemist.

Picture of Grantham Town Centre......the roads were quite narrow!.

“I have the most dreadful indigestion”, he told me briefly. “You will have to stop here while I
go and get something to help.” So there I was, a learner driver in an HGV with ‘L’ plates,
abandoned by my examiner on my HGV test, right in the centre on Grantham on double
yellow lines in one of the busiest streets in the County at five minutes to nine am. My only
thought was “All I need now is a policeman walking by, this was the kind of thing television
programmes are made of!”
We had broken at least two road traffic laws in just stopping there, never mind me, an
unqualified driver ‘displaying “L” plates and being ‘unaccompanied’.

My test must have begun at about 8.15 a.m. and it ended at about 9.30 a.m.

We had arrived back at the testing station and it was the time for lots of questions on road
safety, the highway code and then loads and loading of vehicles. I really cannot remember
if he asked which laws we had broken when we stopped for his indigestion tablets.

Looking back, perhaps if he had not thought me a pass possibility he would not have
chanced his arm in stopping for his tablets. FJK 140 and I both ‘passed’, first time!

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