Brilliant read - - nearly as good as the result! Congratulations, Pete 
Fanflippintastic!!! That brought tears of joy to my eyes. Brokeback mountain!!!
Woo! Congratulations mate
Well done, congratulation, bravo, and for he’s a jolly good fellow. Got my training next week and test the following Tuesday, to say I’m getting a bit nervous would be an understatement of the most epic proportions. I hope my training and test go as well as yours did. Job jobbed mate! 
Well done Jon.
Evening fellow Kings (and wannabee Kings) of the Road 
Many thanks to all those who have posted, as well as those who have undoubtedly had a read (judging by the number of views). I hope my small contribution has helped pass a few minutes with a chuckle or two along the way and maybe, just maybe, there is a nugget or two of genuine information hidden in there somewhere for anybody thinking about following a similar journey.
In any case, it is time to resurrect this post as the next stage in my daring adventures to enter the world of insanity is now upon me.
After a little toing and froing with courses and dates, I finally have the timetable to full superhero qualification set out before me.
Starting in the morning, I shall be partaking in everyone’s favourite - yes, you guessed it, the CPC ‘week of fun’ 
Clearly nothing to worry about as such, and I’m not expecting anything as riveting as the latest developments in String Theory - but just hoping that there will be enough meat on the bone for me to gnaw at throughout each day. Otherwise I might have to self-induce a coma…
On a more interesting note, I am also booked in to do my C+E training during the first week of June - with my test on the Friday at midday.
Now I know this may come as a blow to some of you, but unfortunately this is not going to involve Terry. Not sure if I explained previously, but he pretty much always takes care of the Class C training. Disappointing, I know, but we have to move on…
Still, and on a more positive note, it gives us the opportunity for new ‘exploration’ with a different trainer 
Updates to follow, when appropriate,
Jon
Happy post Bank Holiday weekend, fellow Knights of the Road!
Hope the force allowed you to steer clear of the wobble-box influx and kept you safe whilst negotiating the hoards of dawdling day-trippers 
So in an attempt to keep my post up-to-date, there are a couple of nuggets to digest:
This coming week I am on to the final stage of the beginning of my ‘journey’ 
Namely, C+E training and test.
Sounds a bit Churchillian that I know… but I am under no illusion that having all the relevant bits of paper only gets your foot firmly on the bottom rung of the ladder.
Then the ‘real’ learning can begin.
Just contemplating as to whether I will keep this post going with Daily Training Updates, or start another thread. Come Monday I guess we will see…
Either way, please be ready to plough through my ramblings and shower me with clever words of wisdom and advice.
Or, failing, that, just point, laugh and stare at the skill-less loser in the corner 
Secondly, happy to announce that I successfully ‘survived’ CPC week.
Luckily it was a smaller course and our trainer was flexible enough to incorporate a decent amount of practical, hands-on time out on a truck in the yard.
So we would, for example, go through the slides on Tachos and then go out and fiddle around with the various ones fitted to the trucks we had available.
Again, same for the Daily Walkaround - classroom and then hands-on outside.
Much better that way. Am sure most would agree.
In fact, and as I will come to, I think the course should be a lot more vocationally based.
Overall I have to say I was surprised at the amount of info we went through on some, if not most of the topics. And that is backed up by the fact that I now have a new A4 binder full of copies of all the slides we went through.
Not exactly sure what you have to go through for an O-License, but if it is much more in depth than the material I saw, I would be very interested to hear.
I know I will be preaching to the already converted on this site, but I would have to say that I thought a lot of the information was superfluous to a driver.
In the same breath, however, I do appreciate that by teaching at this level and volume of material, the idea must be to try and raise the overall awareness level of everyone involved in the industry.
And I guess that can’t be a bad thing.
Still, as a newbie, I would have much preferred to have seen, for example, a whole day spent dealing with ‘loading’. And by that I mean, first the theory in the classroom, and then straight outside actually ‘doing it’ on a real truck. Everything from axle weights to positioning, strapping to sheeting.
I know there are a myriad of practicality issues here, and that’s probably why it doesn’t happen, but still, I think it would be far more useful.
Anyways, time to have a wander around the interwebs for any relevant prep I can do for my upcoming C+E week.
Jon
Decided to start a new thread for my Class 1 ‘Blog’.
Thanks to all who read/commented on this thread.
If you can bear to wade through more of my ramblings, here’s a link to the new post:
Jon