Discovering Hannah's Secret

Annoyed, no annoyed wasn't the right word -- fuming, better but still not enough -- totally bloody pissed off, now that sums up exactly how I felt when my general manager finished giving me the good news of what I was due to be doing for the rest of the week in work.

I had turned up for work as usual on Wednesday morning expecting a day much like any other. I work for a large country stores outlet in the heart of the Devon countryside as a gunsmith. It may seem an unusual occupation but as a farmers' son I had been around shotguns and air rifles ever since I could remember and the careers officer at school arranged an apprenticeship in a gun shop when I left at 16. I spent the next 10 years learning and mastering my craft until our little shop was bought out by a major chain of country stores and I was employed in their gun room as their in-house gunsmith.

Gordon was sat in front of me and had just finished explaining how Ivan, our lorry driver, had broken his ankle the previous evening slipping from his cab in our yard after the days deliveries. He continued to ramble on about how there were no agency drivers available this week due to it being August and the middle of the holiday season, how store deliveries were of paramount importance for a profitable business, how several of the 40 shop employees could drive our 3 pickups for small deliveries but no one had a Heavy Goods Vehicle licence for the 26 tonner -- no one that is except me!

The bombshell! Of course! I had never made any secret of the fact that I held a Class 1 lorry licence, I had passed my lorry test as soon as I was old enough just to help dad out around the farm, it went together with the tractor, forklift, telehandler and cherry picker licences I also held -- to be fair there wasn't a vehicle I could think of that I didn't have a licence for.

And that was it. Gordon said he had already spoken to Matthew -- the manager of the gun room -- who had confirmed he could handle things whilst I took over the delivery driving for the remainder of the week. That was a laugh, I had a cabinet full of work pending, none of which he was qualified to deal with or even remotely competent to look at but he had assured Gordon he was going to placate the customers and Gordon had bought it.

I couldn't get out of it so decided to make the best of a bad lot. Whilst Gordon arranged for the yard lads to load the lorry I headed to our workwear department for a change of clothes. The store staff wore a corporate 'uniform' of pale blue polo shirts and cargo trousers, but in the gun room the clients expected much more of a "country house gent" feel so I was in my usual outfit of a tweed jacket, tattersal shirt, dark brown corduroy trousers and oxblood brogues. I grabbed myself a pair of steel toecap boots as well as black cargo trousers