Page 93 - It's a Rum Life Book 3 "Ivy House Tales 1970 to 1984"

in one’s mind. Then Mr. H had found a source of animal feed in Cyprus, Olive nuts.

We had not actually been involved in the delivery of these, but on one journey into the
‘principality’ I received an urgent call from Mr. H to collect some of these Olive Nuts from a
client without delay, it was hyper urgent.
Michael was also delivering hay close at hand and he had one of the ‘Wonderbun’ Ford 4D
7 ton platform lorries, I was driving the ex Marshal Brothers long wheelbase Bedford KM
16 ton platform lorry.
Between us we could legally carry about 14 to 15 tons.

A Bedford KM truck, picture from the
internet. The KM was recognisable by
the double “bumper bar”. It was a rated
16 ton gross weight lorry with two axles.

(They had a six cylinder engine but their
power output was dreadful.)

I made contact with Michael and we both
arrived at the farm to be met by the
distraught farmer’s wife who began
accusing us of all kinds of dreadful things.

Evidently after the farmer had begun to
feed these olive products to his young
cattle they had begun to die, and they were still dying! What could we do but proclaim our
innocence, fortunately we had not delivered the animal feed which was the only thing in
our favour. The farmer was away from home, as far as we knew taking legal advice on
how best to claim compensation.
Our firm instructions were to clear all the olive nuts from the farm post haste and we would
be paid well to do the job. So we got stuck in and managed to load the whole lot onto our
two lorries. Assuming that each bag contained a half hundredweight or so we estimated
that we must have loaded at least 20 tons.
Fortunately for the old Bedford that did not like hills, it was downhill back to Lincolnshire.

It was the next morning, a Saturday, when Paul came on the scene. The Bedford was due
a regular service and inspection and Paul had been booked to come and do the same.

We had not expected it to arrive home fully loaded and as I was still in bed suffering the
after effects of the hard work loading followed by the interminable journey, Paul decided to
act on his own initiative.
The workshop was behind the house in our old maltings, access was by double doors but
as this particular vehicle was unusually long, to get it in one had to approach at an angle.

Unfortunately for Paul he had decided to go in forwards, this restricts one’s
manoeuvrability and when I was eventually called from my bed to deal with the problem,
he had already managed to drop the back axle of the lorry off the edge of the approach
slope twist it sideways and jam the whole of the side of the lorry at an angle of 45 degrees
against the main doorway. Consequently, all the bags of olive nuts in that area of the body
were shattered although still contained by the canvas lorry sheet.

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