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BUSMAN'S HOLIDAY
By Ian Milligan
ISBN 1-904181-69-4
PRICE: £13.99,
€20
BOOK DESCRIPTION
Ian Milligan was born at Billingham-on-Tees in 1943, the first son
and last child of his parents Elizabeth and John. After leaving
school at the age of 16, he served a full apprenticeship as a
mechanical engineer, simultaneously he was a promising goalkeeper
with local amateur football teams, turning down the opportunity to
sign as a full time professional footballer. At the age of 21 Ian
joined the Merchant Navy which enabled him to further his hunger
for travelling and his new job took him to all parts of the globe.
He ended his engineering career working offshore in the North Sea,
but strangely enough this is where he was given the time to
discover, what would be his new career.
His offshore working rota consisted of two weeks on the rig,
followed by two weeks leave. This eventually changed to a 2 weeks
on and 3 weeks off system. He saw the opportunity to utilize his
free time. He could travel and be paid for it, just by gaining a
licence to drive a coach. Two weeks after applying, Ian was the
owner of a P.S.V. Licence, and a new part time occupation.
Ian served another apprenticeship working for several local coach
companies, day trips toScarborough and Blackpool, and of course the
football away matches carrying the followers of their particular
team. He moved up in the coaching world by driving for Bee-Line
Holidays.They were the premier coach company in the North East of
England at that time. Ian drove both in Britain and Europe for
Bee-Line until their demise, after which he was given a contact
name at Wallace Arnold, a Leeds based Coach Company.
The Traffic Manager then at W.A. is a man who Ian still respects to
this day, Jimmy King. Eventually Jimmy moved across the Pennines to
the Wigan based travel company, Shearings Holidays. Meanwhile Ian
resigned his well paid job offshore and decided to work full time
at his new occupation travelling around Europe and being paid for
the privilege.
Ian made the same journey to Wigan 4 years later and much to the
annoyance of some longer serving drivers at the company, he was
given the privilege of conducting several prime tours with his new
company. Over the years and conducting longer tours as far away as
Greece, Ian turned to more local destinations and specialized in
cities such as Paris and Amsterdam where he directed his own
personalized guided city tours.
Busman's Holiday is full of true situations and people, (whose
names have been changed but if they ever read this book will
recognize themselves immediately) that happened whilst Ian was
employed as a tour driver and guide. There are many, many more true
tales left to tell. This book was written in Thailand, where Ian
now lives. |
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