Bunch of truckers
Driving long distances in ridiculously small cars provides a wealth of stories, usually toilet-focused. This one involves the Ukraine again, a country so lacking in hospitality that Chernobyl was probably the best thing ever to happen to it.

Midnight or thereabouts. I'd been behind the wheel of a clapped out nineteen year old VW Polo for so long that my hands were clenching the steering wheel in a vice-like grip and I was chain smoking and singing show tunes to stay awake, which was impressive since I don't usually smoke and can't sing at all. The ProPlus was wearing off and I was exhausted. My co-driver had long since crashed out in the passenger seat and I didn't have the heart to tell him I was falling asleep at the wheel.

We were tired, we were hungry, and up ahead just off the patchy motorway we saw the bright lights of the long distance lorries. The convoy of four useless cars pulled over. We could hear music somewhere. The warm, crackling flames of bonfire danced outside a long, low building and the smell of the meat-on-a-stick enticed us in.

Using the tried-and-trusted international gesture for food (moo-ing and pointing at our mouths) we each managed to secure a portion of meat-on-a-stick. There was even beer - cold beer - the moisture trickling down the outside of the icy bottle. I was going to eat and sleep. This was good.

A smart person pisses when she can, not when she needs to, so I somehow managed to mumble to word for toilet. The kindly harridan behind the counter led me out of the building, along a row of trucks, up a small hill, and pointed at a small wooden hut. I took one step closer and the smell of ammonia nearly knocked me out. A second step, and I had to stuff my scarf in my mouth to stop me gagging. I made it to the hole in the ground smeared with crud and splashed with piss. This was girls' toilet; thank god I never saw the blokes'.

I held my breath for a very long minute and a half before bursting from the shed and legging it down the hill towards the trucks. There I had the delight of bumping in to the hairy lardiness that is the Eastern European truck driver, accompanied by the lovely young and nubile ladies of the night who were selling their wares in the lorry cabs. I arrived back into the cafe to find the harridan screaming at us for more money. Once we got the cars going (no mean feat when you have to bump start it every time you stop) we left hastily to the dulcet tones of Cyrillic swear words and found a lay-by several miles away where I could sleep on the back seat and pee in a hedge in comfort.

Moral: truck stops are maybe not the best places to get a good night's sleep. But then, you knew that already, right? In retrospect, it was not unlike a scene from the Lost Boys. Had I stayed, I bet I would have been vampire fodder.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 14:48, 6 replies)

*click*
Sounds lurvely...
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 14:59, closed)

word trumps
I was trying to get the term "Brechtian" into that little discourse just to steal your thunder, but I failed...
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 15:03, closed)

Hehehehe
I feel an incipient and enduring game of loquacity-poker...
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 15:14, closed)

Well
You've gotta love the Ukraine!





No fucker else will.


click
(Captain Placid 24/7 ball gags, brownie mix and clown porn, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 15:14, closed)

heh
When we first reached Ukraine it was beautiful (driving in from Slovakia). All those mountains and rivers and trees... then it turned into crazy, crazy drivers and lorries and bad roads, and scary people.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 15:19, closed)

@Enzyme
Here is a song for you:

You say lexicon, I say vocabulary,
You say loquacity, I say garrulity,
Loquacity, garrulity, lexicon, vocabulary,
Let's call the whole thing OED.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 15:23, closed)