I guess you had to be there

Liverpool Dave’s post about buses has just provoked a memory that makes me smile. The FA Cup fifth round in 1989 saw my team (4th division Grimsby Town) away at cup-holders Wimbledon. This prompted such an exodus from Fishopolis that all manner of wheeled transport was pressed into service including vehicles chartered from GCT. 

I remember standing on the dangerously overcrowded mud bank that passed for the away end at Plough Lane, when a GCT double-decker was spotted with its usual bus route still displayed. ‘3C - North Sea Lane’. Naturally this led to people questioning the driver's sense of direction, reminders to return company assets at the end of the shift, and speculation that there were some bewildered old dears wondering why it was taking so long to get from 'Top Town' to Cleethorpes Sea Front.

By the way, this was the time of the first craze for inflatables at football matches in England. Someone at the local rag sourced a supply of blow-up trout which they marketed as 'Harry the Haddock' and sold thousands. Which just goes to show what the average person in Grimsby didn't know about fish.

Below you can see the travelling horde, ecstatic at the sight of one familiar bus in That London.

Spot the blogger. 

As a further aside, in another flashback (a Proustian moment I believe the cognoscenti call them) I took delivery of a replacement panel for a kitchen unit. I was in the retail unit where this came from last year, picking up something or other. This is on a retail park built not many feet away from the site of the above picture. Wandering around the aisles I felt a shiver run down my spine. A feeling of ‘I know this place’. A spooky moment. It may have just been a breeze and a touch of lightheadedness due to not having had enough breakfast. I prefer to think of it as the long dormant echoes of events played out years before, triggered into vibrancy by the presence of a receptive soul. The spot where the late Keith Alexander headed the Mariners into the lead. I believe it’s time for my meds.