A flash in the mirrors illuminates a raccoon’s intestines on the trailer mudguards.
In fairness, I don’t quite know what went under the wheels. But I can’t face removing animal guts, and I’m hoping a lengthy journey will dislodge them – hopefully somewhere in Austria.
Aha, the flash turns out to be Namibian electrocuting himself on the tramlines – his trailer glances off the overhead power cables, attributable simply to a difference in trailer heights, not driving ability.
I need to butter him up a bit actually, because foolishly – in the spirit of combat etiquette – I’ve granted him a blog entry. The rules allow that he may choose pictures to embarrass me, and that the text will remain uncensored.
If, however, it contains phrases like, ‘Barnaby is brilliant’, I may have made slight changes in light of readability. Namibian’s entry, destined for history’s annals, will come shortly.
Electrocution is only a passing worry, actually, with eighteen rubber tyres underneath us. My pal, Turner, however – he’s driving on the Pink tour – texts me a few hours later as he rolls under the same tramlines and partly dismantles them.
Like the first person to try and unscrew a jar lid, Namibian had only loosened them. Turner, like me, has also had a recent hefty fine – this time from the “Go-box Gestapo”, an apt
moniker for the Austrian road tax enforcers.
Jeepers, sleep-deprivation is a formidable opponent. Warding off the spectre of heavy eyelids, I spend a good deal of the journey to Frankfurt removing remnants of key lime pie from a stray inverter cable in the cab.
My living area is in rather a poor state, actually. It’s simply a fact of life that some people are tidy (anally retentive) and others have tourist leaflets, tea-stained scraps of A4 and trombone mouthpieces surrounding them.
With stinging eyes, on another 1000-odd kilometre push, I wonder about producing a mollycoddling note from my mother asking if I could be in bed by 11.30pm, and not to be out in the cold for too long during truck-loading at night. No, I thought not. It’s hardly the sort of thing that platoons tolerate.
I’ll tell you what, though, there are few things worse than waking, after far too brief a doze, to a Namibian saying there are still 711 kilometres to go. It’s a 
savage blow, but one I take on the chin. And at least the police are leaving us alone tonight.
I still seem to be the talk of the town regarding the policewoman/penis incident last week. Cookie said flippantly, ‘phwoar, was she wearing boots?’ and Turner, ever the cad, texts: ‘you should have done her over the bonnet!!!’ He likes exclamation marks.
Mulling the matter further, I think that being strung up by one’s testicles could be deemed worse than driving when tired.
We knock off a few more miles and pull in at Neumarkt truckstop for a meal and a proper sleep. ‘I don’t want anything too heavy,’ says Namibian, tucking
into a Tudor-banquet-sized plate of food. ‘Maybe just a burger and chips.’