Chipping Camden Nightmare – Mike Mccrow (37th)

Whilst at RAF Brize Norton in 1965-66 I had two additional sources of income to supplement my RAF payments. Firstly, I worked in the Beehive Public House in Carterton in the evenings and secondly on Saturday and Sunday mornings I worked, along with three or four my RAF associates, at the dairy in Burford bottling milk for delivery to dairies across the Cotswolds.
One Saturday morning when we got to Burford Dairy the owner, Ian, asked me if I would drive the flatbed 3-ton truck to deliver milk to the several dairies across the Cotswolds. The full-time driver had not turned up for work.
The two lorries used by Burford dairies were second hand and had seen better days.
It was extremely hard work, as the crates were stacked several high and had to be manually pulled onto the lorry from the loading bay using a hooked iron bar, then roped down to ensure no movement when on the road, and the reverse at the delivery destination. The lorry need lining up and reversed, often into cramped spaces.
What should have been a three-hour shift turned into a never ending one that eventually finished mid-afternoon. I had never driven a lorry before, but my driving licence gave me the authority to do so. So apart from the heavy lifting, I had to learn to drive a lorry in double quick time. By late morning I had achieved about two thirds of the deliveries and had arrived in Chipping Camden entering from the road from Shipton under Stour. Arriving at the junction with the High Street the lorry stalled as I was attempting to move into the main road.
I attempted all I knew in my limited lorry driving experience to get the vehicle going again but to no avail. Traffic was building up behind and could not pass. Eventually a knock on the window and the guy from the builder’s lorry behind me suggested that he would bump start me by using his lorry to push me out onto the high street. After a few minutes of education on bump starting lorries, we got under way. He started the push and my vehicle moved forward I turned left onto the Highstreet and let the clutch out and thankfully the engine fired, and we started to move.
Unfortunately, the builder’s lorry wing mirror got caught in my securing ropes, not that I knew at the time, as the next thing I knew was that about 30 crates of milk came off in Chipping Camden’s High Street. Metal crates, many dented and crushed, dozens of broken bottles, milk running down the gutter. Traffic at a standstill and a gathering audience. All this outside a bank, Lloyds from memory. Banks opened on Saturday morning in the 60’s from 0900 until 12.00 The noise was deafening, the Highstreet blocked and now I had stalled the lorry again. This was not a situation where I felt in control of the outcome.
There are times in your life when you know someone is looking down on you. Within minutes the staff from the bank, nearly all ladies, were in the street helping to clear up the glass and help put the crates back on the lorry. Someone from another premises came with a broom to sweep up broken glass and a hosepipe to clean the gutter.
The Bank allowed me to use their phone to contact Burford Diaries and I then sat tight in the lorry to await rescue. Eventually after some time Ian arrived and showed me how to get the lorry started if it stalled. Shame he did not do it before I started the journey. I then completed the rest of the deliveries for which I still had a milk.
This was the one and only time I carried out the delivery job. Bottle filling and washing was far less stressful and that is what I stuck to in future.