Giant Memoirs

December 17th, 2009

Gerry used to have a great job.

“It was my life, and I loved everything about it. That job was me and I still am that job. If it was that easy to let go I would have done a long time ago. I really would.”

 Gerry is a giant. Between 1987 and 1999 his legs were the tunnel just before the turn off for High Wycombe on the M40 in the South of England. Not many people are aware that the Government employed giants in this capacity to cover large sections of roads.

 “Originally it was to save money with construction costs. They told us that it took twenty years to build a tunnel and we believed them. It was only later that we found out the figures were wrong, that they’d lied to us. The workers who were going to be employed to make the tunnels would throw rubbish at us as they drove past shouting, “Job stealers!” and “Faddy Long Legs!” but it’s hard to hear anything when they’re shooting past you at 90mph. I thought they were gloating about their facial hair.”

Gerry still looks back on those twelve years with a lot of fondness and warmth. A lot of his friends were also employed in the same scheme.

“Samantha was the overpass on the M5 near Bristol. Danny would double as the tunnel near Birmingham city centre and that one as you come out of Manchester depending on what day it was. My best friend Liam was only a few miles down the road from me and we’d spend most of the afternoon talking about sheep. Liam loved sheep.”

When the budget cuts were announced in the summer of 1999 a lot of what the government considered to be unnecessary services were abandoned including penguin traffic cones, squirrel dusters in the House of Commons and the Giant bridges. Gerry was the last to go having done it the longest. He remembers vividly the last day.

“I didn’t want to do it anymore. I had lasted all that time and this was the only day I didn’t want to do it. I kept picking up cars and using them to pick my nose. A few people were shocked, they had never realised it was a giant and not a tunnel. They ran screaming from their vehicles. The army were almost called in until Jimmy Saville, running his thirtieth marathon that year, stepped in and sorted out the situation. I still owe him a pint.”

Since leaving Gerry has had a varied and ultimately unsatisfying series of jobs that never quite capture the imagination and thrills he experienced from being a tunnel. It is something that practically none of us will ever fully know about.

Entry Filed under: Bedtime stories,Chris,Ian,Kev