Back in the mid seventies, I spent some time working with a company that specialised in organizing sales based around taking container loads of goods direct to the car parks of large factories so that staff could purchase goods at rather low prices for the day. One time we had a real struggle due to the temperature falling very low overnight. I wrote this while shivering on the van...

Winter on the Trailer

We were up and ready long ago
But we cannot start the sale
For the doors of my motor car
Are covered with the pale
Sheet of frost and ice
That's spread across these parts
The doors won't budge
Unlike our teeth
The only moving parts!

So many minutes later
When we had scraped away the ice
And thawed out all the door locks
We started, fast as mice
Sliding down the road we went
John Curry would be jealous
Of all our spins and pirouettes
But eventually it came to pass
We reached our destination
A few hundred yards in half an hour
It was a great sensation!

The trailer it had disappeared
Beneath the snow and frost
The muddy site was covered now
With dirty cracked brown ice
But still we struggled on
To keep the salesman's promise
'We open up despite the worst
Of problems thrust upon us'

We tried to put the goods out
So they'd be there on display
But when we tried to pick them up
We found to our dismay
The towels were quite rigid
They might have been of steel
The dishes were stuck solid
And they didn't slightly yield
To kicks and bangs and leverings
So we left them where they were
A statue built of pots and ice
The best I've seen this year!

©Rhumour 1974