Richard Canning

Today I drove down to Nottingham and back. I'm very wary about my satnav, which seems to re-route at the drop of a hat, so I ignored its advice, this morning, and spent much longer than necessary either stuck in or avoiding traffic on the M6. This afternoon, then, when it decided to bring me home up the M1 and across on the A57, I just did what I was told.

Not that I completely avoided sitting in traffic jams on this journey either and it was while I was somewhere on an A road - maybe even the A57, itself - that I was sat opposite this lorry. I guess it's not particularly notable in itself, and I admit it hasn't made for a very exciting photo, but every time I see what I think of as a long distance lorry, I am reminded of Richard Canning.

I spent my teenage years living in Worcester Park and attending school in Kingston upon Thames. This meant that during term time, Monday to Friday, I caught the 213A to and from school. For the couple of years before my brother was making the journey with me, I would catch the bus with other boys from my year, although I wasn't really properly friends with any of them.

The one who lived closest, just up on Avondale Avenue, was called Richard Canning. Apart from the fact that he had ginger hair, I can't really remember very much about him, except for a fragment of one conversation, which has stayed with me for the last thirty-five years. 

I guess we must have been talking about what we wanted to be when we grew up. For myself, I had no idea at all. I'd had a vague idea that I might like to be an astronaut, but this clashed with my ambition to be six feet tall. (Later on, my ambition would be to be in a successful rock band, and this desire sustained me until I was actually in a completely different career.)

Anyway, Richard Canning told me that he wanted to be a long distance lorry driver. (Actually, maybe we were talking about why he was going to study German.) I do remember quite clearly being taken aback by this because, I suppose, it didn't really seem like an ambition to me. In hindsight, though, it seems quite a nice job to aspire to, not least because I imagine it was reasonably easy to achieve but also because, in those days before satnav, most journeys into Europe would have been quite an adventure.

I don't know what happened to Richard Canning. I can't even remember him from sixth form. I hope he did go on to fulfil his ambitions, though. All I do know is that he stayed part of me, forever tied to long distance lorries, on the basis of one snippet of conversation, one day, thirty-five years ago.