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ridiculous and unacceptable! We have paid a lotta money for this tour and you don’t even have a working microphone’. I checked with my colleague and her mike was ok. Off we went but at the next stop, her mike packed in too! Meantime my coach was supplied with a new mike and my colleague’s was fixed.
All went smoothly after that until we reached Greenock. A film starring Gerard Butler, ‘Dear Frankie’, had been partly filmed in Greenock. The top-floor flat in a tenement block on one of the main streets was occupied by the hero and his family. We drove along this street which, by this time on a Friday afternoon, was busy with traffic. The flat was at a T-junction with traffic lights. We didn’t even have to point out the building – these ladies knew it immediately! We warned them it would be difficult to stop at this busy intersection but, oh no! They all leapt to their feet, demanding to get out. The driver dared not refuse these terrifying ladies and hurriedly opened the doors. Out they leapt and swarmed across the street like a herd of locusts, bringing the traffic to a complete standstill! The faces in the other vehicles were a study to behold – they could not believe their eyes. I shall never forget that spectacular day in Greenock – all because of Gerard Butler.’
Guiding through the years
By Manuela Fraenkel
‘I am part German, Italian, Spanish, and English and was born and brought up in Scotland. I did my first guiding while still at Boroughmuir school. It was either 1964 or 1965 with Argentinians.
After studying in Germany, I did a season’s driver guiding while a student in 1969, using the money to go to work in Colombia, supposedly for a year but that turned into seven.
‘On return to Scotland I worked in my family’s souvenir and giftware wholesale business. In the early 1990s I was still involved in the trade as a sales agent for Scottish crafts and books having sold the wholesale business but I decided to start doing some guiding again.
‘I have always been interested in business and languages - I speak German, Spanish and Italian - and used to give my overseas clients tours when they came on buying trips, which is why it was easy to take up guiding again in the 90s.
‘I immediately became involved, right from my very first guiding job in 1990/91, with STGA members, earning their trust and respect - always charging what they told me to (it was the days of fixed rates), never undercutting or going behind their backs for business.
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