Page 37 - Demo

35Sandhurst or bus (t)There we were on a Saturday forenoon, bowling down to Sandhurst for a sports competition where Cliff Spink was to play Cricket and I was in the Badminton Team.I was in Cliff%u2019s newly acquired Morris 1100, appropriately, I suppose, sky-blue. Cliff had had some trouble over this acquisition as in the time between agreeing a sale and letting go his previous Mini to buy the 1100, someone had tail-ended the Mini at the Waddington Approach traffic lights whilst we watched a Vulcan land. Anyway, back to the trip to the School for Pongos. Readers may recall that large parts of the A1 had yet to acquire Motorway status and several bits of the route still went through built-up areas as either dual carriageway or just single carriageway roads. One such was Hatfield. As Cliff eyed the road ahead, I spotted going northwards on the other carriageway, an MG B. We had just discussed the B as at that stage I had a fancy, though sadly not the means, to own one. So, innocently,I exclaimed: %u201cLook there%u2019s a nice B%u201d. Cliff took his eyes off the roadfor a second before returning to a forward look-out only to find his windscreen more or less filled by the rear of a double-decker bus which had stopped, we swear, without indicating. Cliff reacted quickly bleeding off a lot of speed to nudge, just, the rear of the bus. Well that was it. The bus driver%u2019s SOPs obviously dictated %u201cWhen in an accident, dis-embuss all pax%u201d %u2013 so he did. We were suddenly surrounded by about 40 bus passengers who had been turfed off, some of whom were very grumpy at having their journey delayed. No one was hurt, the front of the 1100 was a little damaged and the bus was barely scratched. After an exchange of Insurance details, off we beetled on to Sandhurst, planning to return north later that night after the sports. What we had failed to appreciate on the daylight drive south was that the headlights were damaged. Cliff did a brilliant job driving back with only sidelights in the darkness, in the face of oncoming headlights. We made it safely %u2013 if very slowly and very late.