Listing to Port

I wouldn't sail this ship if I were you
Posts tagged trucks

Seven things carried in passing trucks

1. That medium-sized tanker in a fetchingly sensible shade of silver. This is a shipment of very fine dream sand, as you would be able to discern if you could get close enough to read the hazard notice. I would not recommend getting quite that close, because if the tanker were to suffer a spillage everyone within a three-month radius would end up furiously sleeping for at least three months.

2. The small grey truck with a conspicuous ‘speed limiter installed’ sign. This is not actually a truck. It is two elephants on a specially-modified bicycle. You are only seeing it as a truck because that is what you expect a large grey object to be on a road of this size.

3. The large green truck with a stylised smiley face logo on it, heading West. This truck is full of spies. Literally full: they are stacked some seven deep in an ingenious spy stacking system which cannot be patented on account of being top secret. They are conservatively-dressed and have very serious faces, apart from the one at the bottom who is making fart jokes and being ignored.

4. That red shipping container, glimpsed briefly in traffic in the other lane. Contents: a slightly smaller red shipping container, containing a slightly smaller red shipping container, containing another, slightly smaller red shipping container, and so on. The source of so many shipping containers of non-standard dimensions is not obvious. In the smallest container is a miniature safe, locked, key nowhere in sight, emitting a furious buzzing noise.

5. The small orange shipping container, marked with a logo in a language you do not read. This is a shipment of fruit, primarily silver moon apples headed for the perilous realm, where they will form part of the fairy world’s seasonal fruit baskets. If you are offered one of these fruit baskets, do not accept it.

6. A small-size black and white horse carrier, no horse visible inside. This carrier was once used by one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, and as a result has become a place of pilgrimage for ghosts. At the moment it is being used to transport the ghosts of Arthur Sullivan and W. S. Gilbert. They have obtained some highly sought-after permits to spend the night haunting a theatre in which Hamilton is being performed, and are making their way there right now.

7. Half a house, as transported on a special truck for the carrying of large things. This is a witch-squashing house, as popularised by the film the Wizard of Oz. These days, they are usually remotely controlled; essentially, they are the drones of the mystical world. This one has been damaged by being dropped from a great height onto a particularly rocky coven. It is being sent for repair in Swindon.

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