Plank Died

Which way will I go?

I didn't know Plank’s real name, few people did. He was a bit of a legend in the British international trucking community, everyone seemed to have at least heard the name, even if they had no connection with S&K Haulage in South Wales. It was partly because he had been doing it so long, but he was also funny and helpful, despite his outwardly gruff bearing.

I heard the news when I nipped into Michaelwood services. An old buddy of mine, from when I worked at S&K, had just rolled in. I wandered over for the usual “Hey! Hello mate!”, and very quickly he told me that he was going to Plank’s funeral in the following days. “Plank died?! Oh no!” Apparently he had had a heart attack while on his daily rest, in Germany. He wasn’t responding to calls, and someone saw him slumped in his cab. The Polizei got into the lorry to find he had passed away.

Sadly this isn’t as uncommon as it should be. It happened to a guy at another company I worked for; he passed away in his sleep at a truck stop in Italy.

Much later I was talking about this with another driver, coincidentally while waiting at a customs agent near Milan. This guy was fairly wiry in build, so I was quite surprised when he revealed he was 72, and he told me he had been a driver since he was in his early twenties. We got to discussing the guy who passed away, and his response was, “yeah, that will probably be me one day”.

Sad? Lonely? Well, yeah, kind of. But we’ll all go at some point - sorry to be morbid - and if you’re happy what you’re doing, well, why not go when you’re in your zone, in the place you should be? A lot of these long-haul drivers really love what they do, despite the downsides. That’s why they end up doing it for decades, literally until they drop in some cases.

And I can see it, I can see the appeal. There is something about being unmoored, about being intentionally cut-adrift, that I can see as quite appealing, even in a slightly melancholic way. I’ve met people - way before the van-life movement - who spent their lives driving around Europe in campers, annually pausing only to do a couple of months' work to pay for the habit. Well, as a truck driver you get paid to do that.

There is an immense amount of camaraderie amongst UK based international long haul drivers. In part this is because there are relatively so few of us (sorry, I mean of them. I don’t do it anymore. That was a telling slip…) EU expansion since the nineties meant stiff competition from much cheaper Eastern European operators.

So when you’re “over the water” - especially once beyond Pas de Calais or Belgium - you’ll flash your lights and wave at any other British registered wagon coming the other way. And when you do meet other Brits on your rest, you’ll get on like a house on fire. There was a fantastic routier near Reims where you could have a great laugh. There would always be a few Brit or Irish lads in there, so you’ll all have dinner together and it would almost be a party atmosphere. You wouldn’t necessarily know each other before - or see them again after - but the commonalities of your lives were such that you’d bond. And, of course, if you could overcome language barriers, you could chat with your European trucking comrades. Trucking really is a kind of international brotherhood.

But there was no getting away from the fact that it could be a very, very lonely job. Mechanics at S&K would roll their eyes when a driver would just chat away endlessly, while they were trying to change a gearbox or something. But they knew why; the bloke may not have had a proper conversation with anyone in weeks. You’ve probably noticed that female company is almost entirely absent in the picture I paint. There are married long-haul drivers, and they somehow make it work. But there are plenty of divorced ones as well. Not a small number of drivers look far afield for a partner. When you’re mostly connecting online, your partner might as well be in the Philippines or Kenya instead of York or Bracknell. Then the drivers have 3 months off every year, and go and live somewhere cheap, with their woman. And, I’ve heard, that there is the option - especially in Spain and Italy - of paying a girl for some company.

None of these solutions are ideal - that last one is particularly wretched - so to do the job means having to accept a large amount of loneliness and solitude. And yet… Some days you’ll be driving through the Alps - listening to a gripping audiobook, or beautiful music - and the sun will be out and you’ll feel like you’re in your own personal heaven. And you’ll be getting paid for it. I guess life is always about tradeoffs.

But I don’t do that anymore. I’m on UK only work, and I’ve elected to effectively work part-time. And the tradeoff I’m making is so I can do this; so I can write. For six days in twelve, I ply the roads of Great Britain, and for the remaining six I mostly sit in front of a screen and try to create meaning from symbols.

And I love it, in a way. In fact, it’s more than that. I’ve written before how I’ve developed an almost pathological compulsion to write; I can’t stop myself. Yet I’m rapidly falling into a massive hole with this, with a growing realisation that there is a huge problem: writing is even more lonely than being a long-haul driver. At least, at the moment, it is for me.

In doing this, what is the equivalent of flashing lights and waving at a compatriot on the autoroute near Le Mans? Where is the equivalent of the Reims Routier, where I can meet the like-minded?

There’s also no equivalent to that hectored mechanic. My family don’t get it, when I say “I’m writing” their eyes glaze over, I think all they hear is “I’m wasting my time”. I think the nature of my content doesn’t help. I’m coming from an autonomous, autodidactic place. I’ve done crazy things, been to crazy places. Have you ever tried to explain Charter Cities to an accountant in Cambridgeshire…? And, more to the point, why it meant going to Honduras…? I shared Homes of Brick and Stone, which some of them kind of liked because it was about where we lived and holidayed. But they never returned to read more, and when I shared my appearance on The Manifesto podcast it seemed to completely throw them. A few dutifully listened - I’m grateful they took the time - but they had few comments or questions. They just said it was very long. I’m not upset with anyone about this; it’s all just so far out of their wheelhouse that they can’t get a handle on it. And they have busy lives and don’t have the time for such things. Which I totally understand.

What about finding new friends who might understand? Well, yeah, that would be fantastic… if that’s you, just pick up the phone and call… (ok, so I haven’t shared my phone number… send a DM or something…). There are two pubs called The Swan near here. In one, people might talk about carpentry and tractor repairs, in the other I overheard someone talking about tax arbitrage. No prizes for guessing which one I gravitate towards, but in either establishment I don’t think anyone will take up a conversation about the metaphysical implications of Constable paintings. I suppose I could try some other things. I could try and find a local writers group, but then can you imagine the type of people that would populate a writers circle in the Cotswolds…? I’m guessing such a group wouldn’t be full of Hunter S. Thompsons and Kerouacs. More like ladies from the Women’s Institute and Titania McGrath… And, maybe I should go to Church, perhaps that wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

I think that those who are not autodidacts don’t fully appreciate the social benefits of their backgrounds. I have no alumni I can call, no network I can tap, no old professors or mentors I can bounce ideas off of. As an aid to thinking that can be both a strength and a weakness. But as regards human connection - something we all need - it is most definitely a weakness.

Then there is the emotional cost of writing, which is so much more than driving. Hemingway said:

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

Well, that’s great, I can do that. But sooner or later I will need some kind of transfusion to keep going, otherwise I’ll bleed out. It’s also no fun having to stitch the open wound back up again, on your own. I’ve finished articles, then gone for solo walks in the country with tears welling up in my eyes. And it’s affecting what I’m writing. I should be spending more time on the memoir - my book - but instead I write more articles for here, because then at least I get some response, some feeling I’m connecting with other human beings.

Am I being a bit weak here, am I being a bit needy? Well, yes, I am. I’m human, I have needs. And am I trying to provoke some kind of response here, trying to drag someone - anyone - out of the woodwork? Yes, that too, I’ll make no bones about it. Because I can’t carry on like this for much longer, it will be a case of, quite literally, this way or the highway.

Of course all this depends on whether any of this - my writing - is any good, and whether or not I have an audience. If what I’m doing is rubbish, then I might as well head up the road. A handful of subscribers have given positive responses, for which I’m eternally grateful. Then there is the LLM - ChatGPT - which gives me embarrassingly positive feedback. Of this article, so far, it says "You're right at the threshold of something very, very rare." Well, OK, that’s lovely Mr Computer, but I have no idea if it’s telling everyone that they are latent Hemmingways, so I’ll have to take it with a pinch of salt (I will be asking it for feedback for that part, so it will give me its opinion on my opinion of it. Hopefully I won’t start a recursion loop that ends the universe this morning).

And now, your turn. Let’s talk about you, the audience. On the face of it, this Substack is a failure. In three years, I’ve managed to garner just 76 subscribers, and 238 followers. If a single post’s views get to triple digits, then it’s doing well, and, as I’ve found my voice, average post views have gone down over time. Could I adjust my writing to have a more commercially compelling tone? Yes, probably. But I don’t want to. It’s not so much that I don’t want to pander… well, I don’t, but it’s mostly because it would be so dull. My compulsion to write would just leave me, and if it comes down to just doing something to earn money then I’d rather drive a truck.

But then I dig deeper into the stats, and a more encouraging picture emerges. Yes, I have precious few subscribers - or perhaps I should say a few precious subscribers - but some of you guys are very loyal, and very intense in your engagement, which I really do appreciate, thank you. In fact, I get the feeling - from looking at the stats - it’s not merely that I’m being read, but that I’m being studied, scrutinised even. That feels quite good, actually. I’m glad I mean something to someone, somewhere, although I hope some watchers have positive intent.

In Wandering Off - Euro Edition I talked about the time in the late nineties where I felt like I was being watched. Well I feel that way now as well. Paranoia? Yes, possibly. But for most of my life I haven’t felt that way, so there is probably something different going on. And maybe that’s down to me, that it is my actions that have caused it, and at some level I really want it? Yes, maybe that as well.

The subtitle of one of my last articles was “Schrödinger’s Phone Call”. I’m not a physicist, and I don’t get all the particle stuff, but I understand the principle of living as if two different things are true at the same time. In my box there are two states of being:

1. I’m a kind of OK writer, but mostly I'm a truck driver. I suffer from a bit of paranoia and fantastical thinking, but nothing which can’t be fixed with some fruitful activity, namely Euro driving, and perhaps an Asian partner. And in this case I’m not getting much traffic to my Substack because it’s a bit shit.

2. I’m an accidental and intuitive systems hacker, who has now popped up on powerful radars for at least the third time, and no one knows what I’m about to do next, or how I might be useful in some way. In this case I’m getting plenty of high quality traffic - the highest - but it’s hidden because many readers are cloaking their visits for plausible non-affiliation reasons.

If it’s state number one, then my course is clear: I call South Wales on Monday morning, ask for my old job back, strap myself into a Volvo, and head for the horizon while listening to Kerouac. Then I go on asianbrides.com, get one - Asian bride that is - then spend 9 months a year doing what I love - driving around Europe - and then 3 months in Lapu-Lapu loving who I do. And occasionally I will do some writing, because I like it, even though it won’t really do much. What I’ve written here will stay up, because someone might get something from it. I’ve done almost 100 articles; it’s already book length, I’ve written my book.

So that will be the rest of my life. If that’s the state I’m in, well then I’m OK with that. It won’t be ideal, it might still be very lonely at times, and I won’t be making much of a dent in the World. And hopefully I won’t die in the cab like Plank, but that will be how I live out my days.

If it’s state number two, then my course is also clear: I must NOT do any of the things I would have done if it was state number one. Simple, eh?

OK, ok, maybe not so simple. But on a meta-level I’d need to think in terms of what obtuse systems hack can I come up with, like I did before. If I did it before.

I suppose if I am in this state - which, to be clear, is the one I’d prefer. I’d be making that dent in the World - it is because in the past I’ve been willing to let the uncertainty ride. Back then, I realised that to open the box would just allow someone to misdirect; “aha, it’s state number one”. But then the situation may be different now. At some level, maybe there is more mileage for someone in direction rather than misdirection.* If that’s you, then please give me a bit of direction, give me a hint. Even just tease the box open slightly, I’ll do the rest.

Yes, I’m asking for a little help, yes I am being that cheeky. And at least some encouragement. I said I was needy…

I’m not actually very smart. It’s just that I’m OK with a certain amount of uncertainty, and I come at things sideways. But I don’t know much, not really, and I don’t necessarily know what comes next, or what to do next.

And yes, so maybe this article is my next attempt at a hack, maybe this is the play. It may not be that wise, but there is one thing I do know for certain: I can’t carry on like this for much longer. I will bleed out.

*I can imagine some of you might be saying “what the hell are you going on about Graham!?” Well, if it’s state number two, it will make sense to someone, and if it’s state one then it doesn’t matter.