W.H.WILLIAMS (spennymoor)

Well someone certainly must have been sticking pins in a wax effigy as I’ve had a fortnights play of my greatest Flue-Cold hits. just as it seems to starts to go anther one comes along & along & I can hear myself saying I remember you. It must be 10 years since you last visited.but whilst feeling weak & sad for myself something comes along & links Bandag Truckers. Taffy Davies, The Flue a book and it was via a telephone call from an ex driver George Sykes yesterday afternoon.

Until you put the book on I never realised it was written by Chris Foote-Wood, the elder brother of Victoria Wood the recently deceased TV comedienne.

I came across Christopher Wood as he was calling himself way back in early 1960s. He was producing a free newspaper in Bishop Auckland area and in those days before we employed the services of advertising agents one of my many bits of jobs was dealing with our advertising. I cannot remember what happened as it was so long ago but I was in discussion with him of putting regular advertising in his paper & in return he would do a one off feature on our business. We did not get on & no deal was reached. However in life often you need to work with people you don’t particularly like so about 5 years ago I approached him to see if he’d write my book. I would provide all information photos etc help promote it and didn’t want a penny so all profit was his. He was interested but I had to pay him a retainer of aprox £10,000 with obviously no hope of one penny back. Needless to see why it never went ahead.

Then back to George sykes call. We had drivers that were very good, in fact excellent but they did everything correctly as perhaps you would except but occasionally you needed those who would give that bit extra, which again we had a few, but they tended to have been there years & were gradually getting older. Then there was George who was relatively young but totally mad & we had great hopes that if we could chanell his enthusiasm the right way we could have a very handy assett.

Taffy Davies used to send his vehicles in to be washed & always tales came back of their exploits of the Middle East Runs. I thought the drivers were mad often driving though war zones. However the excitement this had to offer finally caught up on George & he left us to drive for Taffy 22 years until eventually Taffys business ended when he died.

But it wasn’t this that George rang about but an accident he had earlier this year with his present Employer David Fox. Travelling past whetherby northbound in a DAF with 24 tons of slabs on his trailer he had gone into intermittant loss of concienceness. He had a dash cam film him as he left the A! at the Harrogate interchange & plowed down the embankment to eventially hit a pllar. The engine gearbox were detatched and the 24 ton of slabs coming forward smashed the cab off. Miraculously George was still inside sat in his seat seatbelt on whe it came to rest.
George rang to ask did I watch it on Helicopter rescue & I had forgotten feeling sorry for myself with flue.
George is now 71 waiting to get his licence retuned in Feb. Are you not frightenedit might happen again I asked No he said It had been caused by the flue jab & I wont be having that again