大象传媒

Coal was hard to come by during the second world war. The railway had plenty mainly good steam coal some of which came in large lumps or even bigger as in this case. Our driver spotting this very large 'nob' of coal lying at the trackside decided he had a better home for it. He was booking off duty at the time in the very early hours when everything was quite and of course dark even more so because of the black out.

Even under the drivers overcoat the coal was scarcly concealed however he decided to persist. Collecting his bike from the loco he balanced his load over the crossbar but even then the weight he had to bear was considerable. Making slow progress both pushing his bike and containing his illicit cargo he made his way towards home.

Having made some good progress he relaxed a little now expecting to have his burdon home a little easier than expected.

At that moment as all was going well a police officer stepped out of the night to stop our driver.

"Where are yow gooing then" was the first question. "I'm gooing homm, I've just finished 12 hours and I'm raight tired"

With that the officer decided it was time for a lengthy conversation, fairly meaningless and about the war, the weather and anything related to the blackout.

As he went on and on the burdon of the nob of coal became greater causing our driver to greater efforts to balance and not to reveal his ill gotten gains. Perspiration poured profusely from his brow as he tried to maintain his part of the 'innocent' conversation.

Finally our officer had had enough idle chit chat so bade our driver goodnight. As he started to leave he turned once again to our culprit and says to him, "next time if I wer yow I'd tek a smaller lump, goodnight"!!!! A lesson learnt.

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