Sometime in the 80’s I once sat next to an obese bloke on the Harry Shaw coach. I got half a fucking seat. I could deal with the numb arse but the smell of his skin-flap cheese haunts me to this day.
It would have to be all the way to and from Ayesome fucking Park too.
I wonder if that was not just the same trip - but the same coach I was on?!
I had been deliberating all week about going to this game (1988/89?) A few buddies had already booked up on HS and I left it till Friday afternoon to do the same. I was booked on 'coach' No 5. I arrived at White St coach park the next morning with just about 5 mins until departure - Walked past coaches 1, 2, 3, when I got to coach 4 it was apparent there would not be another coach alongside it - hidden in it's 'shadow' was the frickin minibus, with a big No '5' on the windscreen.
I got on and immediately got the impression it was full and I didn't have a seat. Only when I walked further up the aisle did I realise the back seat of 5 was occupied by 4 - including a rather large chap. Begrudgingly they all squeezed together/apart to concede my seat.
That wasn't the end of the trial tho as only 4 people at any one time could sit back given the available shoulder room.
It's fairly obvious that on such a long trip you need to occasionally adjust your posture, so when ever one person leaned forward, the previously 'denied' one would immediately sit back as a few inches became available. and so it carried on - through the howling storm that blew our little bus sideways all the way up to the North East.
You know the town you've arrived at has got a bit of form when even the local constabulary 'big' it up by warning you not to use the pubs in town.
Three or four probably wished they'd ventured a little further north to the utopian paradise they call Sunderland as they trudged to the turnstiles a couple of hours later with slightly flatter and bloodier noses than what they'd arrived with.
