Gramaisc
Forum O. G.
Every now and then, a song pops up and I know where I was when I first heard it.
You Tube has just suggested Lola and I know where I was to within a few yards. It was a Friday in 1970 and it was on the radio when the school bus ran out of fuel a few hundred yards after picking us up. This was in Cyprus and the journey to school was a daily treat, much more exciting that anything Alton Towers would dare offer - fifteen miles of dramatic roads, traversed as fast as possible.
The chap driving that morning was the owner of the small firm that provided our bus, he had four at the time, and actually worked part-time with my father on the base. He prided himself on the mechanical condition and reliability of his vehicles and was horrified when he realised what had happened. He was a Turkish Cypriot, living in Limassol, this was before the partition, and one of the coolest people I've ever known.
As the actual situation became clear, one of the lads ran home for a fuel container. Luckily, there was a filling station a few hundred yards away and the bus was going again after about fifteen minutes, with enough to get it to the filling station. After filling up properly, we headed off at tremendous speed, even though we were used to some dramatic driving on normal days. He was determined to get us there with the minimum delay, and he had another job to go to anyway.
During the journey, plans were laid for a hasty evacuation of the bus in a safe manner, we would leave from the front seats first, so there was no crowding, "like paratroopers" as he told us, exit and remain to the left of the bus, so he could swing right and head off immediately, without running any of us over.
Normally, we got off the bus a few hundred yards from the school, in a service road, and walked the last bit, but he was going to head straight in, to get us there with the minimum delay. I know it was a Friday, because that was the only day there was a full school assembly, outdoors, on a tarmac playground, to the right of the entrance road.
Halfway through some hymn or other, we hurtled into the school grounds - in order to execute his intended right swing about, we immediately turned left, off the paved road, and began the right turn on an area of loose rock, eventually coming to a halt in an all-enveloping dust cloud. We evacuated the bus within seconds, as planned, and he zoomed off.
However, the dust was so thick that we could only see about six feet initially, and nobody had kept their sense of direction in the excitement. We knew approximately where we were, but all sense of direction had gone, we could only wait for the dust to clear. Eventually, those nearer the road began to see enough to move towards the assembly area, and the rest of us could see them and followed.
According to outsiders, we appeared like characters from a Western film, emerging from a desert dust-storm.
Lola always brings that back. A great day.
You Tube has just suggested Lola and I know where I was to within a few yards. It was a Friday in 1970 and it was on the radio when the school bus ran out of fuel a few hundred yards after picking us up. This was in Cyprus and the journey to school was a daily treat, much more exciting that anything Alton Towers would dare offer - fifteen miles of dramatic roads, traversed as fast as possible.
The chap driving that morning was the owner of the small firm that provided our bus, he had four at the time, and actually worked part-time with my father on the base. He prided himself on the mechanical condition and reliability of his vehicles and was horrified when he realised what had happened. He was a Turkish Cypriot, living in Limassol, this was before the partition, and one of the coolest people I've ever known.
As the actual situation became clear, one of the lads ran home for a fuel container. Luckily, there was a filling station a few hundred yards away and the bus was going again after about fifteen minutes, with enough to get it to the filling station. After filling up properly, we headed off at tremendous speed, even though we were used to some dramatic driving on normal days. He was determined to get us there with the minimum delay, and he had another job to go to anyway.
During the journey, plans were laid for a hasty evacuation of the bus in a safe manner, we would leave from the front seats first, so there was no crowding, "like paratroopers" as he told us, exit and remain to the left of the bus, so he could swing right and head off immediately, without running any of us over.
Normally, we got off the bus a few hundred yards from the school, in a service road, and walked the last bit, but he was going to head straight in, to get us there with the minimum delay. I know it was a Friday, because that was the only day there was a full school assembly, outdoors, on a tarmac playground, to the right of the entrance road.
Halfway through some hymn or other, we hurtled into the school grounds - in order to execute his intended right swing about, we immediately turned left, off the paved road, and began the right turn on an area of loose rock, eventually coming to a halt in an all-enveloping dust cloud. We evacuated the bus within seconds, as planned, and he zoomed off.
However, the dust was so thick that we could only see about six feet initially, and nobody had kept their sense of direction in the excitement. We knew approximately where we were, but all sense of direction had gone, we could only wait for the dust to clear. Eventually, those nearer the road began to see enough to move towards the assembly area, and the rest of us could see them and followed.
According to outsiders, we appeared like characters from a Western film, emerging from a desert dust-storm.
Lola always brings that back. A great day.