The runaway bus!

Another lovely day and an opportunity presented itself for the "3 B" walk: badgers, bluebells and barn owls. The badgers were of course sleeping underground but their setts and paths were highly visible as usual (a veritable metropolis in fact) and drifts of bluebells shimmered under the trees but of the barn owls only their pellets were to be seen.

Another B presented itself however - and how ever did a doubledecker bus from Northamptonshire get to be walled up in a Welsh valley? Spratton (home to the folk festival advertised on the the vehicle) is about 200 miles away.

The sight brought to mind my very first book 'The Runaway Bus', a tale of a mischievous red doubledecker with a smiling face. Deserting its set route it takes off alone to bounce merrily over hill and dale with various animal passengers aboard. It was a slim volume of just a few pages with a paper cover that was eventually sewn on by my mother to keep the favourite going a little longer.

Now even Google cannot find my long-lost gem of children's literature, coming up instead with a 1954 British film of the same name, starring a young Frankie Howerd.