Tales from the road [1]

 As I have mentioned previously I spent quite a lot of time working as a van driver, during this time I've covered many miles and as you might imagine come across some real characters. It would be a waste not to tell these stories, so gather around the fire and open your lugholes for some of my tales from the road.

 One of my first assignments was a delivery to a home in Crewe. The package was too big too fit through the letter box so I rang the bell, a few seconds later a man appeared dressed as a pirate, he had the eye patch, the parrot on his shoulder, the works, but he was missing one salient ingredient to any good pirate costume, the hat. With a look of shear glee on his face he protruded a cutlass from it's sheath and scratched his signature onto the form, damaging my clipboard by the way before ripping the package from my hands. Using the cutlass he slashed open the package to reveal a pirate hat, which he proudly placed upon his head, he paused and smiled, before suddenly frowning, snarling and chasing me back to the van with his sword aloft. He was a right fruit loop, I've never felt truly comfortable visiting Crewe since.

 I once delivered a box to a lady called Pandora, it tickled me. I mean that I was amused because it was Pandora's box, I'm not accusing the box of tickling me.

 Heading north on a delivery I found myself on a quiet country lane, up ahead I could see a minibus looking in bad shape, steam pouring out of the engine, I slowed down and asked if I could be of assistance. I was informed that the minibus was taking the players of Chasetown F.C to a big game with North Ferriby Utd and that if they failed to show up then they would forfeit the game and be deemed to have lost 3-0. There was no chance of fixing the minibus in time so I let the players in to the back of the van with the rest of my deliveries for the day and drove them to the game. We just about made it in time and the team invited me to stay and watch, they were awful and lost 4-0, so in hindsight they'd have been better off staying on the country lane.

 Quite often it turned out that we'd been asked to deliver quite bizarre things, some of the items I delivered in my tenure as a delivery driver included: Three oranges wrapped in a carrier bag, a drawing of some chickens, 18 golf balls in a clear Tupperware box, a hamster cage complete with hamsters, a man called Norman, a bunch of flowers with a note of apology attached which I was asked to read and finally, and most disturbingly a life size wax model of Toyah Wilcox which the recipient insisted I join for a cup of tea to say thank you for the lift. It was a crazy job.

 Anyway, you've had your fill of stories for tonight, get to bed you young whippersnappers.