BUSMAN'S HOLIDAY

By Ian Milligan

ISBN 1-904181-69-4
PRICE: £13.99, €20

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.