Page 22 - IT'S A RUM LIFE BOOK FOUR Volume 1 "Northcote 1984 to 1998"

and been travelling almost 24 hours.
Somewhat exhausted, we thought his reserved attitude was only down to tiredness. He
went to see all the rabbits that evening but was very quiet and withdrawn.

Early the next morning he declared he was going back home. This took us totally off our
guard and due to the pressure of preparing for the outing which we had included him on,
we could not even sit him down to talk it out.

Perhaps he had been pondering all night and seen his chance as we had explained about
the important outing to London that he was to be included in.
We will call him Chris. His actual name slips my mind, perhaps because I barely had the
time to meet him. We duly loaded all his bags on the bus as nothing would change his
mind, even the descriptions of the wonders he would behold on the day ahead.
During the whole journey we all took turns to try and explain that he had not given himself
any chance at all. He had hardly drawn breath before he was off on the return leg. What
would his parents and tutor think?
Perhaps that we were a load of English agricultural “morlocks”, just looking for
unsuspecting foreign “prey”.
Goodness knows, at least his tutor had met us and seen the place first hand, at least she
knew we were human beings and not from another world!

LONDON
We arrived in London and none of the various adults on board had been able to change
Chris’s mind. We duly stopped the bus at the kerb outside Regents Park, I hailed a cab to
take him to Victoria Station, and that was that!

There had been no time to telephone neither his tutor nor his family. At least we would be
back home and have time to explain that evening before he arrived back on their doorstep.
The outing continued, the Earls Court exhibition centre was our final destination.

THE ROYAL TOURNAMENT
At the coach park we established the ground rules and once inside the vast building,
everyone understood no one was to actually leave the centre before our designated
meeting time at that particular door. Then they were free to go where they liked and do
whatever they wished in their small groups.