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Sleep Apnoea (apnea ? ) and the Commercial Truck Driver

A subject close to the Captain’s heart (and brain) this week.

Much has been made lately, particularly by our American friends, for the need for proper rest periods for interstate freight truck drivers. Many in Europe will look down their noses at this protestation as most trucking organisations seem determined to avoid the imposition of tachographs, the ‘spy in the cab’ found in all EU lorries and which were originally resisted by drivers there.

By using easily forged log books many in Europe believe their cousins out West are missing the point. A tachograph provides incontrovertible evidence of a drivers work pattern. No boss can insist a trucker exceeds working hours regulations, no gung ho, drive all night, lunatic can pop a Benzedrine and fill in a time sheet worthy of Hans Christian Andersen. But sleepy truck drivers cause horrific accidents – lots of them.

There is however one aspect of the drivers rest argument that the Yanks are starting to take seriously.

Sleep Apnoea, an extremely common disorder, particularly amongst those of us over endowed in the waistline department.

A condition particularly prevalent amongst men and even more common when the man is a fat b------d who sits at the wheel of a lorry all day munching anything that isn’t green (with the possible exception of old pizza slices found in the footwell which he convinces himself ‘must be Jalapeno’s’).

Your author and editor was diagnosed with this condition after going a few rounds with a bloke in a long black cloak and an agricultural bent several years ago.

Sleep disorders of this type are now rampant and perhaps now is the time to explain a few facts to those who perhaps feel they are just a minor irritation (formerly guilty m’lud).

The term Apnoea comes from the Greek for breathe therefore it doesn’t need a lot of explaining that literally we are talking here of ‘sleep breath’, or rather we’re not; perhaps it should be called ‘sleep lack of apnoea’. Any road up what happens is you stop breathing; completely. There you are, having a nice kip, and you simply cease respiring.

Now after a while, sometimes quite a while, the brain realises it is about to die and decides to wake you up. Of course the biggest problem with this scenario is that unless you have sensible Mrs Captain lying next to you all night and giving you a sensitive, caring jab to the ribs every time you decide inhalation has gone out of fashion, you may well not know you even have a problem.

So here are some clues.

If you wake up with a headache like you drank a quart of tequila, dark rum and creosote the night before but in fact you went to bed with a cup of Horlicks, then it’s time to go see the man.

There is usually a questionnaire to complete (at least in the UK) which asks you to rate from 1 -10 how likely you are to fall asleep in certain situations, sitting quietly at home or in a traffic queue, that sort of thing.

If you are a candidate they kit you out with a mini recorder and some Velcro belts and sticky pads and you wear this lot when you get your next nights kip. After the subsequent computer read out you’ll be told if you have apnoea.

Now let’s get this straight, this is not just about you dozing off in the pm with a book.

It isn’t even about the numerous accidents, many fatal, that occur worldwide every month when truck drivers fall asleep at the wheel, although you might want to think about that.

No, this is just to let you know that what you have is a damn sight more dangerous than you probably know. When your brain jerks you awake or kicks off that big deep breath in the night when it thinks it’s dying – THAT’S BECAUSE IT IS.

The human body has very little storage capacity for oxygen. Unlike our marine cousins the whales and dolphins after three minutes without oxygen permanent brain damage will occur. A couple more minutes and it’s goodnight Vienna.

But damage starts to occur even earlier and as your sats (Oxygen saturation levels, not the school test dummy) drop, so brain cells start to shuffle of this mortal coil (they snuff it).

CO2 levels build up and that’s why you end up with a head like one of Keith Moon’s drum kits (God bless him).

Now the good news is that there is no need for anyone living in a civilised country to suffer; even better, there’s no surgery involved and the cure can stop your premature death (and that is what is occurring) in its tracks.

As I say, that’s the good news, obviously different strokes for different folks but generally you’ll end up with a treatment similar to that which your Captain (and the skipper’s wife) have enjoyed (note from Captainess ‘tolerated) for seven years or so.

Usually in cases of apnoea the cure consists of using a breathing aid, a Bi-pap or C-pap machine, which recognises when you stop and simply pumps the requisite amount of air into your lungs before damage occurs.  

This means wearing a mask all night and breathing via the machine.

You will look like the ghost of Hans or Lotte Hass or a late entry in the gimp convention (weekend wear section) and you will sound to your partner like Tiger Woods following twelve naked lovelies round the golf course, but you should get a good night’s sleep.

But much, much more importantly, if you’re out driving regularly there is far less chance that you’ll doze off and murder someone.

So, even if our friends in the USA finally decide that 21st century rig technology is for them, if you are a driver of car, van whatever, take a while to check it out if you have any symptoms, you might make a lot of people very happy, without them even knowing.

Pictures (from the top):

They Even Fell Asleep Early last Century,

The Who (just as I remember 'em),

Hans Hass (sans Lotte)

and

Some bloke (not yours truly, that would be too horrible) wearing a C-Pap mask and looking like he's undergoing simultaneous proctology.

Disappearing Britain - A Ramble & A Goodbye

This one will probably be for UK residents only.

Not that the rest of our readership aren’t welcome but sometimes the cultural crevasse intervenes and, just as your Captain struggles with why our cousins across the pond can’t spell, overseas readers might not have a clue what I’m on about.

Oh, and it will help if you’re over fifty.

First question. What happened to the Ford Sierras?

The ruddy things have disappeared, gone the way of the fabled white dog turds.

You can still see driving around Ford Cortinas of every model through from Mark I’s with their lovely triple division round tail lights that always appear on the backs of ancient caravans, even the odd Lotus Cortina ones with the green stripe that predated the Starsky and Hutch “Red Tomato”, that’s toe – mate – o phonetically, through the 1500 E’s and Mark three’s with no rear vision and the Mark IV which they tried to con us that a paint job and a new badge turned into the pretend Mark V (which like every unicorn you have actually ever seen was a horse with a facelift).

No, even the 40+ year old first embodiment of the Cortina still turns up regularly, compared that is to the Sierra. To an old git like me who can remember the great “Jelly Mould” controversy when the model was launched, and then the gradual acceptance that this was a worthy replacement for its popular forebear, it is the story of the dinosaurs all over again but in microcosm mode. To counter paraphrase the old soldier proverb Anglia’s and Escorts may fade away, but Sierras just die and evaporate.

Normally when something disappears from our daily lives there is a valid and explicable explanation. Staying with the car analogy, Fords other vanishing motor was the Corsair, always in an unfair contest with the Cortina (who decided to market those two at the same time?) the Corsair’s V4 power unit didn’t have the reliability of the Cortina engine. They blew up and waved goodbye after just a few years.

Austin Princesses rotted, Metros had their wheels fall off, all popular cars that didn’t last the course despite the huge numbers sold. But they were either badly engineered or rustbuckets. Marina’s lasted longer than their sibling All Aggros and, as for foreign makes, well let’s not mention the Lancia Beta, a car with a life expectancy of a World War One fighter pilot.

You bought it, looked at it, its engine fell out onto your driveway and you had it shot.

But the Sierra, like its replacement Mondeo, was a good car. It seemed relatively trouble free, comfortable and as time went on all cars started to look a bit like it, sure sign of a winner.

I trawled through dozens of video clips to illustrate my point. 90% were juvenile idiots (Ah, those were the days) blowing up engines and drifting their Sierras in interminably long, badly focused films with banging soundtracks or else ultra slick Ford promo videos.

So I settled on this professional job with dear old Tiff Needell calmly talking us through a man driving a "slightly" upgraded car whilst demonstrating how macho he is by ignoring the seatbelt laws.

  So that’s where they all went then.

So whilst on this ponder on the past what else has vanished from our lives without anyone paying due heed?

Well the most notable thing that springs to mind is of course, well, money.

It used to be so simple, four farthings or two halfpennies (that’s hayepnies ph.) to a penny (1d), 3d to a threepenny (thrupney) bit 6d to a tanner (sixpence) 12 = one shilling, 2 shillings a florin (two bob), 2 ½ shillings to a half crown (half a dollar) five bob bit (called a crown but nobody ever did because you only saw one minted on special occasions) a ten bob (shilling) note, a quid, a fiver and, very rarely, a tenner.

OK it wasn’t so simple, but a penny felt like money.

1971, in came decimalisation smallest coin – a halfpenny, they didn’t last long.

From Bottom Left (in the Queens English)

Shilling, Florin, Penny, Three Penny Piece, Sixpence and (centre) a Halfpenny.

In Estuary

Bob, Two Bob Bit, Penny, Thrupence, Tanner and Haypenny.

The satisfying bit however follows.

The battle of decimalisation, like the hundred years war, still rages, and although the die hards have been taken to the brink of defeat that good old reliable, leave it to the last minute, bloody mindedness still keeps the faceless hordes of unify everything, Federalistas at bay.

I believe it was the local Council in Hull or Grimsby who ruthlessly pursued local costermongers for selling fruit and veg by the pound not kilo. What a delight when some clever soul (not sole) pointed out that the public scales (Council owned and maintained) on the fish dock still weighed stubbornly by the stone, which is after all how the traders had bought them for hundreds of years.

The politicians thought, wrongly as it turns out, that the population would start to think in kilos and metres, as indeed many of the younger generation do. But mums still sent the kids to the shop for a pint of milk, the same measure that dad used to buy his beer and these symbolic units seem to be set fair to stay on the British books for the foreseeable future (unless Lord Mandy Voldemort reintroduces the death penalty for non metric thinking).

OK,OK, I know these things evolve. Avoirdupois (ruddy French never go out of fashion) measurements still cling on in the US, some places in Canada etc. and these were once from the Latin and yesteryear I’d be rambling on about pennyweights and scruples (yes it’s a now defunct weight)but the point of all this (I think) is that some things disappear from everyday life and good riddance whilst others induce a pang of remorse, of varying degrees, at their passing.

Which brings me to a dedication for this worthless monologue.

A good friend was cremated this week, two days short of his 48th birthday and about to start a new phase of his life in sunny South Africa.

Goodbye to Andy “Fatboy” Riches, a wicked sense of humour, a fine rugby player in his time, and an all round good bloke. No English church has ever seen a crowd so heavy per capita. The world is a shade greyer for his passing, his last break for the try line witnessed by a host of friends.

And one of us will never look at a giant brick fireplace or a pair of wet small boys pants (don’t ask) without remembering him.

Andy R.I.P.

But I've BEEN to the Smallest Pub !

Yes I have, it's called the New Inn and it's near Cerne Abbas in Dorset.

Well that's all a misapprehension on my part apparently. The boozer that three of my mates and I used to sneak into for pints of Bulmers from the wood at the tender age of 14 (no I don't recommend it now)*** whilst we were on Summer camp it turns out isn't the smallest.

It's another pub in the Cerne Valley, the Smiths Arms at Godmanston so there.

No it's not. It's actually the Nutshell, Bury St Edmunds, no, no Wikipedia reliably informs us it's the Hole in the Wall, Brighton, apparently there's a certificate on the wall to prove it, so there.

Only problem is the same Wiki page also tells us the Nutshell is the smallest.

Go figure.

I Reckon this one's smaller

But then again who knows or cares?

If you're wondering what set me off on this particular track (apart from the usual insane random thoughts that come from getting up at five and working too hard all day) it was Ports.

Yes I did say Ports, plural.

Not the dark brown nectar from Brazils home town but the things we sail into. As AT would say the land/water interface for transfer of commerce,personnel and the extrapolation of a travel based undertaking.

Now the first Mate and I have taken a bit of an interest in the dockside agenda lately (what with it being our job and all).

In one of our more random chats on the subject of all water borne freight he happened across a site which claimed to show the smallest dock in Britain.

Having seen the photo's I'm pretty sure that's an accurate description.

That's it Folks. In its entirety.

Firstly many thanks to Bob Jones for his wonderful photo's.

Let's be honest, how would you feel about docking in there on a stormy night on the Berwick Coast?

A visit is definitely in order for this one, the sort of Ports we visit in the line of duty have a ring of rainbow coloured scum slopping in an oily ripple round some miscellaneous polystyrene bits.

I mean this place might not even be real.

It's been "blasted out of the Gegan Rock in the shadow of Tantillan Castle".

Who wrote this stuff? JRRT himself I reckon.

Perhaps Bob is really 18 inches tall with a pointy hat.

Seriously folks I just hope that the tiny Harbour at Seacliff IS the smallest Port in Britain.

Otherwise you lot are all going to post objections and send me pictures from your ruddy phones of some scummy little puddle of Barking Creek or the Lower Mersea.

But have no fear.

I won't publish them.

I shall sit here and dream of the tide getting up at the foot of the cliffs in Seacliff.

Many thanks to Bob for letting me use his shots, you won't see better.

You can see more of our British Ports (as people in 94 countries now visit the Handy Shipping Guide)at www.ports.org.uk

But they aren't all gonna be as pretty as this one.

*** Actually that's a fib.

The Moral Imperative and Freight, Trucks, Shipping and All That

Here’s a fact that has the Captain running up the crossbones and opening up the gun ports.

I’ve touched on the subject of the gentlemen of the Press on a couple of occasions when writing this rant. And yes, I know it’s not the freight press who are the main culprits, but we’re all complicit so let’s have a few things out in the open.

When the Handy Shipping Guide started to take shape some years ago we all knew that the News was an integral part of what we wanted to achieve. Freight and shipping publications have traditionally been the most yawnsome of enterprises, written (and read) mostly by geeks who had too much time on their hands.

Yes, you wanted to know about the bits that affected you and the work you were involved in, but the rest of it? Zzzzzzz….

So we set out, bright eyed, bushy tailed young*  things, morally impervious to the corrupt influences of the commercial world.

*(Editors note. What are you on now? Young? There’s a limit to artistic licence you know)

We would be journalistic pioneers, cutting our sanctimonious swathe through the politically incorrect streets of the fourth estate.

No, what's getting my goat is the duplicity arising from personal and corporate bias plus the weighting of articles and editorials to suit the views of owners and publishers.

And that’s where my own dilemma arises. It’s easy to criticise this moral turpitude in others but somehow much less admissible when it applies to oneself. Of course freight journalism doesn’t engender the same level of general interest as, say, current affairs, but it is still vulnerable to corruption.

Although the worst of the press has, and very much still does, try to influence affairs in the world outside, politics etc. and this hardly applies to our tiny corner it is still possible to spin a story to suit a regular advertiser or omit an important piece to favour a client being courted.

Yet now we sit slumped against the wall of moral despair, heads in hands, facing the car park of grim reality, outside the Tesco’s of corruptibility, the discarded receipts of vested interest blowing aimlessly around in the empty shopping carts of decency**

** (Editors Note 2. Isn’t that a Bob Dylan lyric? He really has lost it now – That parrots demise has turned his mind.)

For those of you who have actually managed to read thus far I’d best explain what the Hell I’m on about.
It’s the press in general who have always tended to annoy me.

Mr Murdoch’s crew in particular almost always tend to make me feel queasy as I blame that gentleman for much of the appalling standards accepted today as “journalism”.
In his defence there are things which have changed for the better in the press because of his involvement, but generally I believe his influence has been detrimental, nay disastrous.

All the usual old chestnuts are still valid arguments against Rupert, News Corp. and their ilk. We now are expected to pay to watch sports that we traditionally watched free, moral standards have declined alarmingly in line with reprehensible newspaper advertising, literacy is rapidly becoming a joke.

The latest outburst from Rupe’s spawn Jamie against the BBC reminded me of a spoilt child showing off in the supermarket. Jim wants to stifle the Beeb so that he can start invoicing you for the news.
God forbid that the morally bankrupt Muppets who run the UK (or most of it) fall for that one.

The Beeb ain’t perfect, but it’s a damn sight more important than the Murdoch’s and their ilk.

Which brings me back to that mea culpa I was just starting.
Look at it this way. If you read about the recent English Ashes victory in the UK I bet the coverage was a damn sight different to that back in Oz.
Press don’t just tell stories, they include what their readers want. Unfortunately that means censorship, not in the usual sense, but a selective choice of facts and how to present them.

I wonder what the Tripoli Gleaner or its equivalent thinks about Mr al-Megrahi’s situation, not the same as the Sun I’m willing to bet.

I read the other day how Fabio Capello, Italian born manager of the England football team was undoubtedly the best thing since Ploughman’s lunches had to be made with doorstops.
As they’d just qualified for the World Cup, that could be deemed as predictable.

Thing is, the guy writing the piece has form when it comes to Mr Capello (God bless him) and his lineage. When first appointed manager, poor old Fabio, together with the F.A., had to take an incessant torrent of abuse from this particular writer who seemed to consider it immoral and unthinkable that anyone who didn’t speak English perfectly, and hail from within 200 miles of Rugby could be allowed access to the hallowed dressing room, let alone pick the team.

Now although mention was made of the author’s former hostility the low key retraction in no way compensated for the undiluted vitriol which formed the basis of his original pieces.

A case of writing what you think your audience wants to hear or read. Here’s a good example of misdirection by two sides of an argument – you don’t have to watch it all to get the drift.

And that’s where my own dilemma arises.

It’s easy to criticise this moral turpitude in others but somehow much less admissible when it applies to oneself. Of course freight journalism doesn’t engender the same level of general interest as, say, current affairs, but it is still vulnerable to corruption.

Although the worst of the press has, and very much still does, try to influence affairs in the world outside, politics etc. and this hardly applies to our tiny corner it is still possible to spin a story to suit a favourite advertiser or omit an important piece to favour a client being courted.

So I refer you back to a featured tip of the week in HSG a few weeks ago, read and enjoy, but always question – in the meantime we’ll try to play it straight – honest.