How my fiancé and I escaped dying under 44 tonnes of tinted toilet tissue for Timothy White and Taylors of Tintwistle

8/8/2019 How my fiancé and I escaped dying under 44 tonnes of tinted toilet tissue for Timothy White and Taylors of Tintwis…

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-my-fiance-and-i-escaped-dying-under-44-tonnes-of-tinted-toilet-tissue 1/3

ROAD TO REDEMPTION Part V

How my fiancé and I escapeddying under 44 tonnes of tintedtoilet tissue for Timothy White

and Taylors in Tintwistle



Nothing that’s happened in the past few weeks of chronicling the hell of living on the A519

through Staffordshire has left me so furious.

But before I relate this latest incident I want to remind everybody that I have a letter

from Mr Bill Cash MP saying he ‘will get back to me as soon as possible’ in reply to my

letter about the horror of more than 10,000 vehicles a day thundering by less than three feet

the front door of my ancient home.

That letter from Mr Cash MP arrived 22 years and one month ago and I’m still

waiting for a reply. Yes, I have contacted your offices Bill on a number of occasions.

Anyway, let’s go back to Tuesday November 2, 2010, at 3.30pm: I pulled out of my

driveway into the A519, my fiancé, Andrea (pictured above) by my side flicking through

Bob Dylan tracks on our Mondeo’s stereo. For once the road was empty, except for a giant

shape looming on the High Bridge.

Incredibly, by the time I’d reached third gear and 30mph the delivery giant’s shadow

was overtaking us like some awful brooding spectre . . . I looked in my rear-view mirror and

all I could see was a massive steaming oily metal grill.

This maniac driver – a man who makes a good living tearing round this green and

unpleasant land and terrifying people - can’t have been more than three feet behind us. And

he was gaining.In circumstances like this people suggest you dab your brakes to make the rear lights

flash … I believe that to be illegal, even if you claim you were about to run over a rabbit

mesmerised by your headlights, besides, if I had dabbed my brakes it was likely this load of

44 tonnes of tinted toilet tissue for Timothy White and Taylors of Tintwistle would have

ended up on the back seat of the Mondeo.

I either had to speed up and pull away, pull over – but the only place to go was the

pavement – or slow him down. So, I started to slow him down. That’s when he started

flashing his lights and blasting his horn …

Sometimes, you’ve got to stand up for yourself.

There was still, quite amazingly, no traffic so as I continued to slow down until the

car slid to a halt across the white line. The wagon stopped easily and the cabin bounced on its

springs, then hissed. I could see a fist being waved at me like a hammer inside the cab.Well, that was one threat too far. This bloke had just tried to kill us with his

indifference to our existence and now was making threatening gestures because I’d diffused

the situation.

I got out of the Mondeo and walked back to his wagon. And I stood there and I

looked him in his visored face. Now he was looking straight ahead over the roof of my car.

The cab stopped bouncing in another rush of air.

I waited. The driver was looking around crazily now, as if he wanted to escape, make

what he obviously saw as a threat stop. So I pulled open the cab door. The air in there was

heavy with smoke and sweat. Frank Sinatra crooned from door speakers.

The driver was a little old guy sitting six feet above my head with his feet barely

reaching the pedals. He was 60 if he was a day, scared and running on empty.

“What were you doing up my arse, man?”

“I was doing thirty,” he looked worried.

“You were three feet from killing us ...”

He said he was sorry. And that was it, I pushed the door shut on his humming

crooning cab and walked back to my car and my fiancé.

As we drove off the wagon didn’t move, it sat there outside a row of ivy-covered

cottages like a beached ocean liner.

I don’t know if what I did was right in the eyes of the law, but it was right in the eyes

of my own law. And perhaps my actions stopped somebody from getting hurt along the



A519 as it threads its mile after country mile of cottages and stiles and hedgerows and horses

and dogs and women and children, and old folk and me.

If this idiot hadn’t been stopped before he turned me and Andrea in to a tin of

sardines, it could have all ended very differently. As it is all that happened was some stressed

out trucker had his metal and chrome macho dented.

But Bill, this is a true story from the Village of the Damned and there are hundreds of

people still waiting for you to address the matter. Come down here Bill, spend a bit of time

with your constituents … bring us the answers you promised 22 years.

Do something to help us.

Documents

How my fiancé and I escaped dying under 44 tonnes of tinted toilet tissue for Timothy White and Taylors of Tintwistle