Chapter 3

Nan and I drove back to camp. We were grinning stupidly at each other, patting each other's leg and making indecent remarks.

It was a bright spring day, full of hope, prospect and new beginnings. The East Coast of NZ's North Island has some of the greenest countryside around in that season. By high summer its usually burnt brown. Suffice to say it was day to remember.

As we rounded a wide curve I noted a large blue Volvo coach waiting to turn from a side road. It just didn't register with me until we were nearly up to it. My mind was simply away with the fairies.

Nancy clicked first and exclaimed,

"SHIT it's THEM!"

She then threw herself across the seat with her head in my lap, a somewhat compromising position to anyone observing.

Now my old Bedford Beagle died long ago but needs some mention. It was basically a 1968 Vauxhall Viva van specifically for 'commercial' use. Unlike the Viva it had no side windows, except the driver's and passenger's, of course.

This meant there was ample area for some decoration. Its original green colour had long been augmented by grey primer around the guards, sills and bonnet. On the sides I had painted 'Black Sabbath Birmingham Rocks'in large black gothic script. It was the sort of thing you did in those days.

Needless to say, it made the van somewhat distinctive. Upon reflection it wasn't the most tactfully illustrated vehicle to take to a Christian camp.

The Volvo had a considerable height advantage over us and Nan's reputation would have been better served if she'd remained upright in her seat.

As we passed the bus I could see John standing next to the driver staring straight down into the Beagle's drivers seat.

There was only one woman at the camp who had as blonde a shade of hair.

"Do you think he saw us?" Nan asked, hopefully.

"If he didn't he should wear glasses," I told her.

We spent the rest of the journey working out some plausible excuses. None seem to fit the available facts and were far from believable. Unless John was a complete idiot, of course.

When the bus arrived, Nan and I were sitting on the bench outside the dining hall bracing ourselves for the forthcoming lecture. As the sightseers alighted they waved and laughed in our direction. We waved back and laughed along with them.

John stalked up to us, glaring at a few eavesdroppers who had lingered to watch the fun. John watched them wander away before speaking to us.

"Where did you two get to?" he asked.

"We went on a picnic," I answered, " down the coast a way."

Although I answered his questions, all the time he was directing himself at Nancy.

"Did you tell anybody where you were going?"

"I was going for a drive when I spotted Nancy walking along the beach," I lied."We decided to go on a picnic, it was a spur of the moment thing. I'm sorry if I broke the rules."

"Yes... well, we can't have people going off like that," he continued, "Nan, you should know better. Your parents would be upset if we allowed you to go driving around the countryside. What if something happened to you?"

I had to accept that he had a point. Charged with the responsibilty of ensuring the group's safety it would have been their necks that would be in the noose should anything happen.

"I'm sorry John," I conceded, "put it that way and of course you're right. We'll tell you when we're going out again."

Nan gave a little start beside me. She sensed I was baiting him. Ignoring me, John continued addressing Nancy.

"Nancy... your behaviour... We need to think about how we're to serve Jesus's expectations of us."

'Here it comes, ' I thought to myself.

"God wants us to follow the path of righteousness. The temptations of the Devil are everywhere waiting to deceive us away from His path."

All this time Nan looked at a spot near her feet. She was worried John would convey news of her 'behaviour' to her parents.

"God wants us to be happy," Nan said, almost inaudibly, "I did nothing wrong... I was with Don all the time. I'm old enough to..."

"Old enough!" John bristled, "to do what, Nan?"

"To look after myself, John," she replied defiantly.

"Fornicate with the Devil you mean!" John spat.

Nancy stared at him open mouthed, we both did. I wasn't sure what to say lest I make the situation worse. Nan mouthed some words before she was able to say,

"WHAT?"

"FORNICATE, Nancy. Lying with someone who is not your husband who, for all we know, has been sent by the Devil to blind us... to lead us away from His path..."

"Oh bullshit, John..." I couldn't contain myself any longer.

Nan sent me a warning glance, I subsided.

"I never... I didn't sleep with him!" Nan protested.

"Don't lie... God hears everything you say."

I was getting angry by this stage, my caution was ebbing away.

"She's telling the truth, arsehole," I said, "and what fucking business is it of yours anyway? She's over 16 for Christ's sake."

Admittedly I could have put that rather more delicately, oh well...

"YOU TAKE YOUR FILTHY MOUTH OUT OF HERE," he roared at me.

People stopped in their tracks all around the camp as his voice echoed off the buildings.

I stood up, Nan cried,

"NO! it's alright..."

Nan pushed herself between John and I.

"Just GO!" she exhorted me, " go on... get in your van," then more quietly, "I'll be alright... please!"

"I'll need to get my gear... from the hall," I told her.

"Get it and go, please... it's not worth it."

She pushed me away from John in the direction of the concert hall.

"My number's in the book," she told me quietly, "call me, during the day, when we get back."

I complied with her instructions, loaded up the van and left the camp.

The group had another week before they were due to return home. A week of anxiety for me and, god knows what terrors for Nan. The film, 'The Exorcist' had just come out, I recall, and it gave me no comfort.

I was also broke and the Government Labour Department had firmly suggested that I seek paid employment. At the top of the list I received from them was the Council Bus Service.

I indignantly dragged my heels all the way to the job interview, determined they would find me unsuitable. They didn't, I got the gig, I was to become a Trolley Bus driver.

15 years later I left the, now privatised, bus service as senior driving instructor and employment officer, but back then, I gave myself a month, tops. Life is full of surprises, so they say.

In truth, I loved the job the moment I sat in a cantankerous, 30 year old B.U.T/ English Electric/ Metro-Cammell Weyman Trolleybus. The brute had no power-steering, an unsprung driver's seat with a sheet of hardboard as padding, well it felt like it, and a cab layout requiring the maximum amount of effort to do the minimum task.

Wellington is much like San Francisco only smaller, and steeper. The streets are impossibly narrow and no logic seems to have guided the original town planners.

In my little rural township where I live today its impossible to imagine how anyone managed to guide an electric bus, confined to a strip of road 20 feet wide, by virtue of the need to stay underneath overhead wires, through rush-hour traffic. Go wide of the lane and the poles mounted on the roof would come off the wires and leave you like a floundering whale, dead. There was no battery auxillary power because of weight considerations.

Anyway, I would have three weeks training before sitting the three licenses required to drive city Trolleybuses. It was a cruise and a lot of fun.

I spent my evenings propping up the bar at the 'Green Howard, ' a popular musician's haunt in those days. Wellington's small rock community hung out there to relax, swap gossip and check out any gigs that might be on offer.

One day I got talking to a couple of guys who'd just returned from Australia. Their band had tried to break into the Aussie scene but had broken up in the process. These guys had decided to return home.

"Have you heard of a band called 'Slowhand'?" I asked them.

"From Adelaide?" one said, "been going for years... I hear they're playing metal these days, like every other sod."

"This guy used to play for them, a kiwi," I told them, "he's a Christian now."

"Aw bullshit," the guy said, " they've had the same line-up since 1968."

"That can't be true," I replied, "that would mean this guy John was playing with them since he was about 12."

"Ask Brent," the guy insisted, "he opened for them in Melbourne last summer."

I asked Brent Raymond, drummer for ace guitarist Billy T.K's band 'Human Instinct.' He confirmed the information, John had never played in any band in Australia or anywhere else that anyone could remember. In short, Youth Leader John of the Assembly of God was a liar.

I admit, I felt a malicious glee at the news. Some bike dude had even seen John's Ariel Square Four customised motorcycle, in 'Custom Bike' magazine. The talented builder was a Dutchman from Groningen, not a Kiwi from Lower Hutt.

The more I thought about it the angrier I became. John had spun me a crock that I'd swallowed hook and line. He and his friend had then scared the living crap out of me that day in the room above the church. They'd got me so worked up I'd halucinated angels and bolts of bloody lightning. I felt an absolute fool.

And he had the temerity to accuse my Nancy of lying to him! Damn! I wished Nan had not stood between us. Ok, he was bigger, fitter and stronger, but just one swing at his sanctimonious, holier-than-thou face and I would have worn my subsequent injuries with pride.

By the end of our second week of training on the buses we were to sit the written exam for our licenses. The test was ludicrously easy and seemed designed to ensure no-one failed.

1) When you see an amber light, do you:

a) Speed up to get across the intersection quickly?

b) Slam your breaks on as hard as you can?

c) Slow down and prepare to stop?

Doh! That was an absolutely true question from the exam.

It was a simple multiple choice exam with the Police Department generously supplying the answers several days before. Therefore it was no more than a straight memory test. Nevertheless we were allowed time off work for 'study.'