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Saved by the Bus
QNE of the few defenceless men ever to face the charge of a lioness and live is a bus driver of Central African Road Services, Ltd., who operate a large fleet of Leyland vehicles in the Federation of the Rhodesias and Nyasaland.
The driver, Patrick Sakala, was underneath the bus making a slight adjustment to the brakes when .a lion and lioness bounded out of the bush straight at him. Although warned by the shouting of his passengers, he was unable to move before the lioness charged under the bus, but the animal stopped abruptly when she ran into a piece of metal and impaled herself.
Sakala crawled out opposite the lion, dashed for his cab and drove off rapidly. Returning later for tools left behind in his understandably hurried departure, he found the lioness dead, the metal having pierced her brain. The 7i-ft-long carnivore was hauled aboard and the bus made a triumphal journey to its destination.
Had Someone Blundered ?
FOR some three hours the whole width of Hagley Road,. Edgbaston, Birmingham, was recently blocked, this including the evening traffic-peakperiod. The obstruction was caused by an oil fractionating column 115 ft. long and weighing about 43 tons, which was on its way for shipment to Anglo Egyptian Oilfields, Ltd., Suez.
It had started its journey to Birkenhead from the Oldbury Works of Babcock and Wilcox, Ltd., but a low bridge on a more direct road forced the use B30 of a circuitous route. Escorted by a police patrol car, it had been brought down Portland Road, but the tight turn at the junction between this and Hagley Road proved too much for the length. Eventually, after a gatepost had been accidentally demolished and a bollard purposely removed, the load, on its two multi-wheeled bogies, was shifted by breakdown vehicles.
The next day Wolverhampton was successfully negotiated at lunch time, the outfit descending Snow Hill and passing along Garrick Street against the normal traffic stream. It passed to the off side of the Island at the top of Broad Street and, in the same manner, the island at Five Ways.
It is understood that, later, the hold-up was the subject of an inquiry by the Birmingham police, for the advent of this huge load appears to have been something of a surprise—even to Birmingham.
Boots Spurred Him On
SHOOTING of exterior scenes for films can always be relied upon to create local interest, and recent activities in the region of Chapel-en-le-Frith have proved no exception.
John Whitty, the film and television actor, has been seen there in attire reminiscent of the " Genevieve " period, for he is acting the part of Mr. Herbert Frood in a film that is being prepared to illustrate something of the history and activities of Ferodo, Ltd.
A horsed cart descending a 1-in-5 gradient in Derbyshire, and using old boot soles for brake