The Beer Gets Through

Happy Christmas

"I won’t get much in that," I say, looking disdainfully at the small vehicle.

"You'd be surprised at how much you can get in the back of a mini," says Mr Franklyn the manager.

"Serves you right auth," says my so-called friend. "You have to serve at least two years before you get the big van."

The blighter insists on calling me auth because I inadvertently told him I was a writer. Every morning he greets me the same way. "Hello auth, how's the book going?"

"I haven't got to the chapter with you in it. But when I do I'll let you have a copy."

I load up the back of the mini van and drive off. The car feels thoroughly unsafe. Minis are pretty close to the ground to start with, but with a dozen crates of beer and a keg in the back the axles are almost on the highway.

I bounce over the yard and onto the road. This is going to be fun. My cousin is working as a temporary postman over christmas. It seems a daft job: getting up at five in the morning; struggling round the streets in the dark and cold on a push-bike; getting lost; and struggling with loads of post while your fingers freeze.

Starting at nine o'clock, driving round in a nice warm vehicle, and delivering the good news in bottles was more my kind of job. Everyone is pleased to see me. I am offered cakes and mince pies, and occasionally a glass of sherry, and every so often someone presses money into my hand.

So off I go. The first port of call is in Welwyn Garden City. I roar along the narrow little road towards the viaduct, and over a hump-backed bridge, which comes upon me rather suddenly. The car doesn't actually take off but the beer does. It rises majestically in the air and comes back down with one hell of a crash. I'm hanging onto the steering wheel, trying to keep us out of the ditch. I'm quite shaken. It sounded as if the whole vehicle had fallen to bits. I pull over to the side of the road and open the back doors fearing the worst. I'm expecting a vast river of mixed booze to sweep out through the back, but everything looks intact. I am quite amazed, and this time drive off at a more sedate pace.

On the way back I'm whistling a merry tune, thinking how wonderful is life. The little van simply zooms along now it is empty. I could swear the thing is actually smiling. I veer round a bend and suddenly there it is. I'd completely forgotten about the humped-back bridge. We hit it at seventy miles an hour, and the whole car shoots off into the air as if we are going off a ski-jump. Some way down the road we land with a hell of a jolt, and I could have sworn the back of the vehicle fell off. I stop for a piss in order to recover, and drive the rest of the way back to Hertford at a more respectable fifty-five miles an hour.

"You know Chingford?" asks the manager.

"Sure, I went to school with him," I say. "A total berk."

“Yes, yes, very funny. Chingford. Out on the A11. You know how to get there?"

"I have a map," I say. "I am prepared." I look pleased with myself.

"Good. He's an old customer of ours. You're delivering this lot to one address." He waves some papers at me. "And this lot," he points to a small barrel and a cardboard box, "including the pin of beer, goes to this address. Don’t forget to take the wedge and the hammer. You'll need to tap the pin. Has anybody showed you how to do it?"

I frown. "Err… no."

He takes me into the back of the stores. There is a pin on a trestle. "This is how you set it up." He takes the pin off the trestle and puts it on the ground. He picks up a mallet, and a small piece of wood, like a wooden finger, and uses them to bang in the bung at the side. Then he fits a spigot with a tap into the hole. He then lifts the pin back onto the trestle. "And don’t forget to test it." He bangs out the bung at the top and turns the tap. Beer flows onto the stone floor. "And don’t forget to put the bung back in!" he shouts at me. "The number of people who set it up and leave the bung out; and the next thing we know the customer is complaining his beer is flat."

"Okay, no problem," I say. And he gives me the delivery notes.

I load up, and drive carefully over to Chingford. I deliver to an address in the High Street, and then drive off into the wilds with this pin. Setting it up had seemed disarmingly simple in the store, but I've forgotten in which order things have to be done. I put the pin on the trestle, get my hammer, and bang in the spigot. A great spurt of beer shoots up my arm, all across my face, and hits the opposite wall. I hastily wipe up the mess, and decide to creep off before it is discovered, when I realise I had better check the thing works, so I turn on the tap, but nothing happens. I can't understand it. I turn the tap the other way, but still nothing happens. I peer at the pesky thing and consider simply doing a runner. Then I notice the top bung is still in position. I hastily knock in the plug and insert the bung loosely. Then I try the tap, and, lo and behold, beer pours out all over the carpet. I turn it off quickly, tighten the top bung to seal the pin, and leave.

Coming home is a bit of a difficult journey. I come back down the A11, and turn off just before reaching Ilford, and head back towards Friday Hill. It's a road that winds across a bit of heath land and then down a hill to a small bridge with a stone wall on each side, and then the road goes back uphill to the junction at the top.

I can see out across a long expanse of the road with nothing in sight so I put my foot down. I am doing nearly eighty when I spot a petrol tanker heading towards the bridge from the other direction. I am going so fast it seems obvious to me that I’ll hit the bridge long before the tanker so I'm not worried, and keep my foot hard on the floor.

Just a few yards from the bridge I notice the tanker is still pounding along and that we are both going to get to the bridge at the same time. I reach for the panic button. I quickly look in the mirror. How that is going to help me I don’t know, but it seemed a good idea at the time. And then the penny really drops as I realise it is too late to take evasive action, so I carefully aim the car at the gap between the tanker and the bridge. There is a quick "tish" sound and we pass each other right on the crown of the bridge.

I drive on up the other side of the hill, over the top, and then on to the next hill which comes up to a T-junction. Going up this next hill I overtake another lorry. I am just pulling past it when the engine judders, and dies on me. The lorry I was supposed to be overtaking begins to gain on me on the inside, and there I am rolling to a halt in the middle of the road on a hill approaching a junction with wagons roaring past me on both sides.

I feel a right idiot sitting there in the middle of the road, and it is some time before I realise I've run out of petrol and need to switch on the reserve tank. It is then that I find out what that "tish" had been back on the bridge. There is no glass in either wing mirror. The mirrors are still intact with just tiny scratch marks on the outer curve. I must have hit the tanker with one mirror, and the bridge with the other, and the glass has been sprung from each frame. I stand there looking at the damage, grinning my head off, and thinking what absolutely amazing judgment I must have. I had fitted the van into the gap with pinpoint precision.

It's just after five. I drive back towards Enfield. I'm approaching Southbury Road. The traffic is slowing. I'm stuck in a rush-hour queue.

Rush hour? Someone's got to be taking the piss. Who's rushing? We are all stuck here, either stationary or just edging forward at about two miles an hour, one foot on the brake and one on the clutch. On the pavement, people are walking by. They are going on foot faster than we are.

The time is approaching five thirty. I'm busting for a pee. I haven't been since lunch time, and the guy at the first drop offered me a small bottle of beer, and I foolishly drank it. Now I need to do something about it. I'm hanging on all the slow, creeping, foot-juggling way up Southbury Road. At last we're at the lights. They change and I roar out onto the dual-carriageway. Just a few yards down the road is a lay-by and I pull over and get out. I pee for simply ages up against the front wheel. There's buckets of the stuff. It just keeps coming.

The lay-by also happens to be a bus stop. There are hundreds of people waiting for the next bus. I keep peeing, and then a bus pulls into the lay-by. I'm being stared at by the passengers in the street and those on top of the bus. But when you need to go…

I get back into the driver's seat with a sigh of relief, and let the bus pull out. There's a building by the lay-by. I stare at it. It is a large, box-shaped building. And there at one side is a sign. It says "Gentlemen". It's a bloody public bog. I can’t believe my eyes. I was in such a hurry to have that piss that I hadn't noticed I'd pulled up right outside a loo.

I drive slowly and sedately back to the yard. There is no hurry. I am now on overtime.