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  2 - Dedication.  
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Chapter 1
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Hold Tight!
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Beginnings
Learning
Getting Away
Winchester
Freedom
Southampton
City Transport
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This story spans sixteen years of my life, during this time of course I met many people. Most were nice to me, a few for whatever reason felt they could not be and to this latter minority I can at last say what I was not allowed to back then: Who gives a xxxx? In any event they were all interesting in one way or another but some I remember more fondly than others.

There was of course Jack 'Bunny' Austin at Winchester, one of the first conductors to take this eighteen-year-old trainee under his wing. At almost seventy years of age he still had a smile and a cheery word for everyone. Even after they took him to the pub round the corner for a drink and then put him on the 14:40 number 69 to Fareham!

At the other end of my career, although not quite the last driver I worked with but certainly one of the easiest, Dave Logan on Southampton City Transport.

But if I had to choose one person who summed up the experience of working 'on the buses' in the 60s and 70s it would have to be Freddie Wheeler.

A long serving driver on Hants & Dorset Woolston depot he came over to Southampton when Woolston was closed. He showed me that work should be fun and you don't have to be young to be a rebel. And his wife too who, finding a double decker bus parked outside her house in the middle of the afternoon and Freddie and me taking an unauthorised break, made us a cup of tea as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Freddie, wherever you are now, remember this: I KNOW you read the notice telling everyone to avoid Titchfield. Just because YOU wanted to see the carnival ....
 
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