A lot of people have a lot of negative things to say about the former Prime Minister, the Right Honourable- some would say Dishonourable- Margaret Thatcher of Grantham. This is especially true where I live and this was borne out on the day she died when I swear that I saw and heard fireworks that rivalled Bonfire Night and New Year rolled into one. It must be great to be so well thought of, so universally respected by the British public!

Well I agree with a lot of the sentiment behind those spontaneous pyrotechnics, which did in fact border on pyromania in some quarters. On the other hand I felt a deep sense of gratitude to the iron lady who had unwittingly saved my life several years earlier. I regretted not telling her while she was alive that her very presence on planet earth was the reason for my still being on planet earth. I know, I can hear what you are thinking! You’re prattling on again. Just get on with it and tell the story.

Ok, so here goes. A few years after the Berlin Wall came down, the whole of Eastern Europe was opening up and it was much easier to travel to former Soviet Bloc countries. There was still a lot of poverty and this was the time when all those ramshackle, Romanian orphanages were discovered that were full of emotionally and physically starved children. Somewhere in the cold north of England a cry for help from Bulgaria was heard. Forthwith, two caravans were packed with clothes, tinned food and other supplies and attached to two heavy duty Volvos. And so one mini convoy departed for the Balkans, bound for several countries on its merry travels.

All was going well until misfortune visited a wobbly, windswept caravan on a free-flowing German Autobahn and said caravan paid a visit to write-off city! Two caravans, packed with clothes and food, two caravans packed with clothes and food and if one caravan should accidentally fall, there’ll be one caravan, packed with clothes and food, one caravan packed with clothes and food…Anyway, enough of nursery rhymes…One caravan stayed in Germany, its contents safely stored for another day. The car, free of its cumbersome tow, sped off towards Hungary and Romania and from then into Bulgaria. The other car and caravan went a different way, going through Austria and into the country formerly known as Yugoslavia. The occupiers of this car, being tight buggers, decided that they would not pay to go on the toll road but chose a pleasant route that took them slightly off the beaten track. It was free! Bargain. Or so they thought!

Warning bells should have sounded as they rolled down the country road. Why were there so many traffic accidents in this part of the world? And why did the authorities not move the vehicles overturned in the ditches? These four were experiencing one of those days where your brain registers things in slow motion and you don’t get the gist of what is going on until it jumps up and shoots you through the temple. So what had happened?

Since leaving the UK, crossing various countries and dealing with dead caravans, these intrepid explorers had omitted to tune in to the news. They had departed their homeland, blissfully unaware of a deepening crisis in the country in which they now found themselves. Croatia and Serbia were in a state of heightened tension- well, to be more accurate, a war had started! That was not all: they had avoided the toll and not had to pay to travel along a road that was effectively the border between the two countries. The “traffic accidents” were vehicles that had been blown up and incinerated. This explained why they were enjoying the road to themselves. Every sane person had run for their life. Anyway let me continue…Remember to keep in the back of your mind that Maggie saves

Ahead in the road there was something going on:

“Ooh what’s going on up there? Oh…Oh…What? …Oh shit!”

The road ahead was blocked by a huge tree that had been chopped down to form a barricade. It was manned by a group of men. How many? Double figures. Woolly hats, big overcoat jackets, stubbly faces, pretty unhappy looking, pretty mean looking, guns, a gun for everyone. No gun for the Brits.

As they came to a standstill, a perfect semi-circle of rifle-wielding, self-appointed militia surrounded the four Brits- well it was three Brits and an Australian. She suddenly wished that she was back on the beach at home in Newcastle, New South Wales, non-war-torn-land-of -Oz. Doors were flung open and the driver and front seat passenger (he who writes this!) knew what it felt like to have a gun pointed at- jammed into- your head and side. The driver suffered a momentary bout of insanity when asked for the film from his camera. Imagining himself suddenly as some colonial ex-pat in India he retorted:

“You can’t have it. I’m British.”

The other three passengers had a vision of death’s door:

“Give him the film, you idiot!”

He duly did so, huffing and puffing at the insult to his Britishness.

“Pistole.” The gun jammed at the glove compartment clearly meant that the passenger was to locate and hand over his pistol. He offered a few CD’s and cassettes but failed to find a pistol. People in Lancashire do not, as a rule, carry a pistol in their glove compartment- or gloves for that matter.

By this time the driver had been man-handled and taken round to the caravan door, which he was being told to open up. Guns were pointed at the door. There would obviously be a gun fight as hoardes of fighters swarmed out, flinging grenades at them. The door opened slowly and there they were….To be continued.

 

Hi. I’m back. So you want to know what jumped out of the caravan, don’t you?

Tampons. Sanitary towels. Lady stuff. That’s right. The Bulgarians had requested that their dwindling supplies be restocked so there were boxes and boxes, piled high in full view as the door to the caravan opened sesame. The freedom fighters looked puzzled. They were expecting something with balls to confront them but these….these….lady things.

One of the intrepid charity workers, the one who had aspirations of becoming a journalist, started to converse with his captors. Alas, his knowledge of Serbo-Croat was a bit shaky. Tbh it was non- existent, as were the English language skills of the scary looking stubbly dudes. He tried a sentence in German: wir sind englische Touristen und wir sind verloren. (We are English tourists and we are lost.)

A light came on in the brain of the self-appointed leader of the assembled bandidos.

“Ah! Marrrgarrret Thatcher!”

When you are running on expectation-of-death-adrenalin you can be assured that any old word could come tumbling out.

“Scheisse!” Now I know that many people would have chosen that exact word to describe our revered former leader but in this case it did slip out. It had the desired effect. The guns were lowered momentarily and there were guffaws of laughter as a joke about a world leader transcended language barriers. Maggie had saved four lives. It was a matter of minutes before the tree had been moved and the caravan sent packing the way it had come, with instructions on how to avoid certain death. As it drove off into the early evening sun and the toll road it should have taken originally, the four occupants decided there was only one thing to do in this situation: they would travel ten minutes away from danger, pull over in a layby, put down the caravan legs and put the kettle on. A stiff British lip and a nice cup of tea were the perfect antidote to a near death adventure on the road from Osijek to Vukovar, near the villages of Bobota and Vera.

As a footnote, all supplies were delivered and happily received in Burgas, Bulgaria. The lucky-to-be-alive Brits drove back to England through Macedonia, avoiding the Serbo-Croatian conflict. And just days after returning to the safety of Lancashire, they read one day in The Independent of some shootings on a road just outside of the villages of Bobota and Vera. There but for the grace of God. And the shittiness of Maggie Thatcher of course.

©Cre8ivation