Timothy Lea - Confessions of a Long Distance Lorry Driver

‘I know where I’d like you to put it,’ says the bird.

‘I wouldn’t want to run the risk of hurting you,’ I say. ‘Let’s try this hole here. It looks a bit smaller.’

Before she can really get into her stride, mouth-wise, I insert the key in the ignition and turn it in a clockwise direction. To my surprise, there is a noise like my bronchitic Uncle Norman clearing his throat into a megaphone and the engine slowly roars into life.

‘There you are, clever dick!’ says Suzanne drawing her legs up underneath her. ‘I bet that shook you.’

‘I bet it shook you and all,’ I say. I twiddle one of the other knobs and there is a smell of burning dust and old mouse droppings, combined with a current of warm air around turn-up level.

‘There, you see! Everything works.’

I don’t say anything but I have to confess that the old bus has a kind of bashed up charm about it. The seats are so shiny that they might have perspex over them and all the numerals on the dials are picked out in old-fashioned lettering. I can quite see myself chugging round the countryside in this. It is practically a collector’s piece.

‘Well, what do you think?’

The bird has turned to face me and is brushing a wisp of hair out of her eyes. Curled up on the seat she looks quite attractive. Small but well constructed. The fur coat has flopped open and I can see the soft swelling of one of her knockers slotted into the top of her dress.

‘Not bad,’ I say.

‘It’s warm, isn’t it?’

She is right, it is warm. I look beyond her to the driving cab of the lorry Sid is in. The window is steamed up and I can just make out the imprint of two upside down boots. Sid always was a fast worker.

‘Do you think you’re going to like it, Down Under?’ I ask her.

The bird gives me a playful nudge. ‘You don’t mind what you say, do you?’

‘That’s what they call it, isn’t it?’ I say.

‘I dunno,’ says Suzanne. ‘They call it so many things, don’t they?’

‘I suppose they do,’ I say. To tell the truth I can’t think of anything else other than ‘Down Under’ or ‘Aussie’. There is some word like ‘antipathies’ but I don’t reckon she could be referring to that. She doesn’t immediately strike you as a likely candidate for ‘Mastermind’. ‘How about your sister, is she looking forward to it?’.

Suzanne glances towards the next door lorry. ‘Not any more,’ she says. I follow her eyes and wonder if we are talking about the same thing. The window is now open and a female leg is hanging out of it. It waves grotesquely and then is joined by Sid’s. I must remind him to get that hole in his sole mended.

‘It is warm in here, isn’t it?’ I say.

Suzanne takes a deep breath and leans towards me sticking out her lower lip. ‘Ye-es!’ she says. ‘Do you want to try anything? Waggle the gear stick about? Slot it in a few times?’

It occurs to me that this young lady is on the verge of employing techniques not usually practised by the average used car salesman. It also occurs to me that I am a sucker for such tactics. Below dashboard level, percy is responding to the warmth and the promise of good times ahead and is beginning to dent my denims.

‘Are you sure it’s all right?’ I allow my digits to take a stroll along her left thigh. They meet nobody who tells them that they are trespassing.

‘Oh yes. We want you to be completely satisfied with what you’re getting.’

You can’t say much fairer than that, can you? I don’t know what sales manual this girl uses but she could go a long way.

Wasting no further time on idle chit chat, I lean across and show her how good I am at sealing envelopes. She snuggles closer and I draw her towards me and ease her over the hand-brake which separates the two seats. Her legs are now alongside mine and she thoughtfully props one of them against the clutch pedal. In this way there is much less danger of me damaging my wristwatch as I slide my mitt up to say hello to her snatch-box. She is an eager little thing and her brewer’s bung probes for my hairy goat like it is an escaping eel. She is wearing stockings like her sister and it is a real treat to glide from nylon to warm, soft flesh. There’s not that feeling of being trapped at the end of a bag that you get with tights. I hook my finger under the rim of her knicks and she grabs hold of my balls like it is a game of Pass the Parcel and she reckons she is on to a winner.

‘Let me get across you,’ she says. Nothing bashful about her, is there? It’s not a question of an hour and a half’s foreplay and ‘I’m sorry but I’m saving myself for the curate’. I have hardly got my zip open before she has wrenched my pants and jeans down to knee level. Percy bobs in front of me as if nodding his agreement to some unspoken – and probably unspeakable – suggestion and Suzanne raises her chassis and sheds her panties before you can say Roger Carpenter.

‘Here we go then.’ With an agility that suggests that she has done something not totally unlike this before, Suzanne slides a leg across my lap and lays one of her delicate little hands on my poke spoke. ‘Say goodbye to daddy,’ she murmurs. A quick wriggle and my friend has disappeared. Suzanne slides her arms round my neck and settles into a position from which any Rhode Island Red watching would expect her to hatch out my balls.

‘What’s your after sales service like?’ I ask.

Suzanne bounces up and down and closes her eyes. I think her mind is on something else. ‘Do you want me to do it faster?’ she says.

The engine is still running and the heater is still on and I can’t help feeling that it is getting a bit on the warm side. The condensation running down the inside of the windows is a big help in reaching this conclusion.

‘That’s lovely,’ I say. I mean it, too. The sensation is like a butterfly’s wings tickling a naked current – don’t ask me how I know, I just do. Not wishing to interfere with anyone’s pleasure, I sneak out a hand and try and find the heater control.

‘Hold me.’ Suzanne intercepts my hand and guides it to her back bumpers. She is now shaking about like a sack of warm jelly beans and it is clear to me that something explosive is about to happen. Quite what it is comes as something of a surprise.

Suzanne swings out one of her legs, there is a grinding noise – mechanical – and the lorry suddenly lurches forward. She must have knocked it into gear. Before I can take any rescue action I have been thrown back in my seat by the sudden movement and achieved some of the deepest penetration you will read about outside a sex instruction manual. The incident could not have taken place at a worse moment because I was just about to see off a few hundred thousand friends. Now I don’t reckon that I could wave goodbye to my granny if you gave me a Union Jack on a couple of sticks. Down and out, percy dives for the shelter of my thighs and I fumble for the ignition. CRUNCH! We hit something and I slide across the seat with Suzanne still on top of me. She is screaming her head off and I can’t say I blame her. We are still moving but I can’t see where because of the steamed up windows.

Womp!! We hit something else and, more by luck than judgement, I bash against the gear lever and knock it into neutral. No sooner has the vehicle stopped than Suzanne has opened the door and started to clamber out. She does not even wait for her knicks. That is one big advantage that birds have in an emergency. There is no chance of a bloke scarpering with his trousers round his ankles.

We seem to have come to a halt with the snout of the lorry half way through the perimeter wire. It looks like something out of a prisoner of war movie. The Great Escape – you must have seen it. They have it on the telly every other Sunday. Behind us are a couple of bashed in motors that now have a bit more knocked off them than is indicated by the price reduction.