BAiT acoustic album progress

After today’s rehearsal and the standard internet cafe session in Nick’s kitchen, we (i.e. BAiT) resumed work on recording vocals for the acoustic album we are making. We worked on the last vocal tracks for the album, i.e. Andy’s vocal lines on the tracks Drowning Man and Chris’ and my vocal parts on ‘On A Winter’s Morning’. All seemed to go well. Next, we move on to Nick’s final keyboard parts for the album and then it’s time to get on with the mixing.

LGV assessment

I was up earlier than usual this morning, as I had to be up the road in Hinckley for an initial LGV driving assessment. The bloke assessing me seemed surprised that I had never been in the cab of anything bigger than a Luton van (under 7.5 tonnes) before, and he had to explain some basics to me, like the fact that you start an LGV in 3rd gear, unless you are on a hill. He also had to explain the handbrake to me. To me, that is why I am going for lessons. Sure, he can assume that I can already drive a car, but cars and lorries (as he himself said) are very different beasts, but why would he assume that I knew anything about lorries, other than what was required to pass the theory test? I had the same thing when I did my Direct Access course for my motorbike licence, and had to tell the instructor to go back to first principles – for some reason, he seemed to assume that somehow everyone has prior knowledge of riding a motorbike, and it felt a little bit like that this morning. Anyway…

I drove the lorry for about half an hour, into and out of Hinckley town centre. I felt a little bewildered at first, but felt more comfortable towards the end of the session. Like a motorbike’s front brakes, the air brakes on a truck are very good at what they do, so you have to go a little easy on them. The guy observing me commented that I had good all-round awareness and made good use of the mirrors and positioned the lorry well in the road and around junctions and roundabouts. He was impressed that I didn’t hit a single kerb throughout the session. His final conclusion was that I could probably manage fine with a five day course rather than the seven day course that they run. He said he was quite relaxed throughout the run, but that he thought I needed to work on my confidence – that would come with some more time. So, all in all it went pretty well for an initial assessment. Now I need to book the five day course.