Incessant, driving rain and a filthy windscreen hamper progress to Antwerp. That, and searching diesel stations round northern France – heavy trucks need road tax for Belgium.
I’m now back on the European leg of the Tina Turner Tour…and there are no White Cliffs of Dover until early April; we will be touring solidly on the continent until then.
At 06.35, after just three hours in the bunk, drunken colleagues stand outside my truck window. A loud, slurred, somewhat incoherent conversation ensues. Don’t you just love these twenty-truck tours?
Then “Namibian Colin”, who shall feature regularly in this blog, accidentally blows his airhorn at 9 o’clock. When doing his daily sit-up getting out of bed, his bulky paunch catches the stalk on the steering column; he’s simply too fat..
24th January:
Good heavens! I could hardly look. Four bendy young honeys in miniskirts degrading themselves on stage…IN LEATHER. Yes, of course I watched Tina’s show. ‘All this crumpet is bad for my blood pressure,’ I wheezed chattily to Spotlight Operator Number Six. ‘Not mine,’ he said. ‘I take tablets.’
A sexy camera angle captured a guitar riff and four swaying rumps – in deliciously tight outfits. The rhythm section sizzled. Dancers’ tousled hair flew in all the right directions in ‘rolling on a river‘.
There was a token sensible haircut among them, though: the “thoroughly modern millie” of rock ‘n’ roll. ‘Big wheels keep on turning…’ yelled Tina.
My eighteen wheels certainly did. Sixteen forward gears; 750 kilometres to Berlin. Probably a bit less if I hadn’t let Namibian Colin go in front. His narration over video footage is pure gold: ‘This is me getting us lost.’
600 km in one day seemed quite enough, so we pulled into Bobby’s Diner for cheeseburgers.