The break in the Coldplay tour is over and we are back at it. I’m currently just north of Rome with 5 of the other 40 trucks. We’ve made good time, cruising through France and then the Frejus tunnel, emerging west of Turin in Italy. The views as you exit the tunnel are astonishing; valleys and snow-capped mountains, villages and towns tucked under the overpasses below us. The change in architecture between French and Italian buildings is noticeable. Not that any of us could notice it, as we were running at night, but I’ve done this run before.

And I’ve run at night before. Over 4 years of graveyard shifts working motorways prepared me well for the gruelling midnight runs on a tour. These are the times when you can tell who is cut out for the job and who isn’t. We already have a good idea who will stay on in this job, and who will leave…and who won’t be asked to return.

And yet this is an easy tour. What we call a deckchair tour. Lots of sitting around, drinking, exploring, making new friends, and getting paid to do it. But it isn’t a job for everyone. And those who are wobbling right now on this simplest version of our job, would never survive the rigours of a show that bounced from city to city, country to country, in the dead of night.

The crazy temperature is also a problem. It doesn’t matter how tired you are right now, because the 30 degree heat turns the trucks into sweat boxes, and a lot of us struggle to sleep.

Italian traffic is also intense. I’m not sure how many of the natives actually have licences, but they weave in and out of our trucks like flies, using the hard shoulder to overtake, flipping us the finger as we barate them with our loud airhorns.

I’ll see my French girl in 2 days. She’s on her way down from Belgium. I think her confidence in us grows. She’s no longer such a closed book to me. This might be more than I first thought it was.

2 weeks ago, as we headed for Manchester she told me she’d never driven in England before and was very nervous about it, about driving on the “wrong” side of the road, the difference in road signs, the difference in British and european drivers. She asked my advice, and I told her that after 5 minutes of driving on our roads, she’d forget she was ever worried about it. I was right.

I called her just now. She’s come through the Frejus tunnel, same route we’ve all taken. As we talk she peppers her words with French profanities, complaining as the Italians zip in and around her truck, braking late, causing chaos.

“I prefer driving in England!” she says.

It’s a good thing, as I think she’ll be doing more of it in the future…