Cars in My Life

This is my latest book and this time it is not a techbook but a story of my romance with the cars in my life.  I have always been a keen or at least budding motorist.  I have owned several cars over the years from a mixed bag of products. 


I also spent many years in direct sales and in later years Internet sales.  these enteprises resulted in selling, sourcing, collecting and delivering often very large items such as Roll Top Baths, Steam Cabins, Steam Baths, Whirlpool baths etc.  I recall one steam cabin was very badly packed and weighed 125 kilos.  Almost impossible for one man to deliver.  However, despite informing customers that assistance is required if they wish to have a FREE delivery service many customers ignored these guidelines.


Finding the addresses was also a challenge.  This was the early days of SatNav and frankly most of them simply didn’t work.  We had to rely on postcodes and customer instructions.  Post codes are one of the least reliable aspects to work on especially in remote areas.  I recall one delivery in Scotland where the post code had pinpointed our destination to a specific farm only to find that the real location was 3 miles away.  Some of the customer directions were frankly appalling.  We used to get comments like- “give me a ring when you get there.  Inevitably either the mobile wouldn’t work or the customer wasn’t answering.  Another favourite was ”ask anyone I am well known in the area” .  On one delivery to Ireland we tried to do just that.  After we had stopped at virtually a dozen different addresses.none of whom recognised the customer’s name we eventually zeroed in on the delivery.  After nearly 2 hours.  On another delivery to remote Aberdeenshire we called the customer as instructed, about 7 times.  On each occasion they didn’t answer.  Finally we managed to locate them on an ordinance survey map and when we got there we found out they didn’t want the goods any more and hoped we wouldn’t arrive.


Many of our delivery days were up to 18 hours with a day trip to wildest Scotland.  An average day was 12 hours.  We also describe in the book our North American holiday which covered 10,000 miles in 16 days, often without an Interstate Highway.  


In total I have now covered in excess of 3,000,000 miles and loved every minute of it (except for holdups and weather disasters. I recall one holiday returning from the continent and encountering severe flooding.  We flooded  the engine once and had to detour to Surrey via Greenwich. It took about 8 hours from reaching the UK to finally arriving home in Croydon.


I hope you enjoy the book.  I am currently trying to figure out what to write about next.