MIND THE BUS

In the early days of our fishing trips 40 men would attend and with all the equipment that we took with us, not all of it would go in the bus boot. As a consequence all the fishing rods would be taken on the bus and hung from one side rack to the other and hung across like Christmas decorations.

On this particular match we arrived at the river car park and George, who always helped to unload, grabbed his rods and got off the bus, and as he usually did, went to the back of the bus to start unloading the baskets.

Then a series of events took place. George took his rods off and placed them against the side of the bus and started to unload the boot. The bus driver was told that where the bus was parked it would impede any cars that wanted to use the car park later, so, he put the bus in reverse and started to move backwards.

We heard a yell of anguish from outside. In a panic, the driver stopped his reverse. We all jumped off. We had all forgotten that George had got off and started to unload the basket from the bus boot and with the yell he had given, we all expected the worst and George would be under the bus wheels. Thank goodness this was not the case. As the bus had started to reverse George had jumped out of the way and several baskets had been rolled over and were now under the back of the bus. George just stood there with a look of utter dismay on his face and could not speak only point to the bus back wheels. Then we saw what he was pointing at. As the bus had started to reverse, the rod bag that George had placed against the bus side had slipped down and as the bus came backwards the wheels had run over the center of all his rods and they were now as flat as a pancake and utterly useless.

George was absolutely devastated but everyone rallied round and fixed him up with enough tackle to fish the match. The event put a damper on the day out and was one day we would talk about and think about what could have happened.