JOHN HOLLAND:
Well just to tell a story about Jeff Ruggins and me. I started at Asian Transport at the same time as Jeff and over the next couple years we became good mates and I met Rita Jeff partner at the time but on one trip Jeff told me that Rita was putting the hard word on him to get married. On returning to the UK Jeff told me he was going to ask Rita to marry him and that we should catch up for a drink so after a couple of days at home I phoned Jeff to find out what was happening. Well the phone call went like this. Hi Jeff when the wedding then. Jeff Your not going to f…king believe this I got home and on the front door was a list. Number 1 in Jeff Ruggins life-- AMY the truck he drove. No 2 The Pub. No3 Chelsea Football Club and so on and she put herself at number 10. So Jeff said to he was in the [zb] and open the door and went into their flat and started to ask her to marry him. Then Jeff said to me on the phone your not going to believe what she said after I ask her to marry me. In his words she said that she wouldn’t marry him if he was the last f…king man in the world. [zb] it he said meet me down the pub will have a few drinks. Jeff stayed with Rita until his death and I was with Rita at the funeral a really great couple RIP Jeff my old mate
My friend Christine and I (Lindsay) had the pleasure of meeting Jeff Ruggins out in Kabul. He certainly was a character! Really nice guy though. We had the time of our lives and nothing much has come close to the adventure…we were hitch-hiking around Europe in 1976 and were walking across the Galata Bridge in Istanbul when we heard an English voice (not like nowadays when there are English-speaking people travelling round wherever you go!). It was a guy buying a typical Turkish “fish in a roll”, we got chatting and he told us he was a lorry driver. We told him we were hoping to travel to India as we had heard so many wonderful tales (we lived on a houseboat in Amsterdam for a while as 16-year olds and learned a bit about the big wide world from all the hippies on their way to and from India). He asked if we would like a ride in a lorry out as far as Teheran, or Kabul even. Quick geography lesson…we ummed and ahhed and it sounded such an adventure, we had hitch-hiked in lorries in the UK and other European countries and were both quite hooked on them (especially DAFs which always seemed extra comfortable). Anyway we agreed it sounded a great idea, the guy (wish I could remember his name) said he would introduce us to some of the drivers on their way out as I think he must have been on his way back to England. We ended up going out in a little convoy of four trucks - I remember a lovely guy called Lew, from Sheffield - one of the things I remember most about him was that he donated blood regularly at his local hospital to a little boy in Sheffield who had some rare blood group. That really was a mark of the kind of guy he was, really kind and ready to help. Another guy in our convoy was called Dave and I seem to remember he worked for White Trucks, he was definitely from Bristol. He really got nervous on the trip and the others made him pull himself together as he could hardly eat or sleep because he was so stressed - all the talk of the bandits in the Tahir pass etc. He used to survive on little tins of condensed milk every day, while the rest of us sat round making the camion stews (corned beef and beans mainly I seem to remember!). What an experience it was, sitting around a fire in the middle of the desert! Christine and I were 18 at the time I believe and didnt realise that experiences like that dont come along every day at the time!! I cant remember the other two drivers’ names Im afraid, I might ask Christine (we are still in touch and both live in the Southend area again, which is where we were from at the time of our travels). I remember one of the other drivers had his son, who was about 14, with him. I have a vague idea the driver’s name was Ron but not sure. I remember being told about Jeff Ruggins and what a character he was, and we eventually met up when I believe he was on his way back to England. (By the way - I have just read on here that Jeff Ruggins passed away in 1977 - that was the year after our trip out to Afghanistan. So sorry to hear that, he can’t have been very old.) I also remember meeting a youngish lorry driver, probably early to late 20s, who the other lorry drivers were amazed about as he had been to university and was really intelligent etc. but loved driving lorries so that’s what he chose to do. I remember stopping at one Mocamp for a night or two which was probably in Teheran and chatting to some other English lorry drivers there, strange the things you remember but I think one had a lorry with David T. Duxbury Manchester written on the side. Another youngish driver (from Birmingham I think) was very nice and had blond hair and said “flicking” instead of a certain swear word regularly as he spoke! I remember waiting at the Turkish/Iranian border (I think??) and being shown Mount Ararat, where Noah’s ark was supposed to have been found I believe. I remember young Turks trying to put their arms inside the truck and sell watches (Micky Mouse watches as the drivers labelled them), and also trying to grab my friend and I for a kiss. They didnt get far! I remember stopping in Herat I think, or was it Kandehar? and buying the most delicious bunches of green grapes, enormous things, from market stalls with thousands and thousands of bunches of grapes for sale. One of the lorry drivers kindly bought us a can of Coke each there I remember too. So many memories…Oh yes I have remembered that the lorry driver (Ron?) with his son found a bunch of snow chains in the middle of the road while we were still in Turkey I think. The memories of all the kids rushing down from the hills and gesturing for a cigarette is one I shall never forget - tiny kids, some of them looked about four or five, and they seemed to appear from nowhere. We were told Jeff Ruggins threw them bars of Ex-Lax sometimes - not sure if that’s true, but sounds likely?! The lorry drivers talked a lot about how important it was to stay in convoy because of the bandits in the Tahir pass in particular, and it all seemed one big adventure to me, like being a bit-part in a Western movie - I never really considered there to be any danger! They said the kids would often pelt the lorries with rocks if they didnt throw out the odd cigarette too. When we parked up at night for the camion stews, which were lovely sociable occasions, they all used to park the lorries in a circle pointing in towards each other for safety. Christine and I slept in the trailer of one of the lorries while it was parked at the Teheran mocamp, I cant remember the driver but he kindly let us sleep in the trailer and I remember how absolutely suffocatingly hot it was in the morning as the temperature soared. I remember one night in Teheran a crowd of us had a taxi to a hotel somewhere which sold alcohol to foreigners and there were some other lorry drivers there too, it was pretty raucous with a lot of heavy drinking going on. In the taxi back to the mocamp or wherever one particular guy was getting out I remember him opening the car door as we were driving along and nearly falling out, now that was scarey! One day several of us went to the Kabul telelphone exchange…no mobile phones in 1976!! Christine and I didnt bother trying to ring home (we sent the very occasional letter or post card, and even more occasionally picked up replies from the Post Restantes in City post-offices. The telephone exchange thing was crazy, long queues of people including a few drivers trying to ring home. After hours they sometimes got a turn at trying to ring, but usually got cut off pretty much straight away or couldnt get connected at all. It was a complete waste of a day for most! I’ve just remembered one thing while we were in Teheran somewhere with the lorries, maybe the Mocamp or somewhere else they might have stopped on the way - an Iranian guy was reading a newspaper and quite incredibly I saw a little black and white photo of Southend Pier on there, all up in flames! It was one of the times Southend Pier has had a bad fire which destroyed most of it - and there we were, somewhere in Iran, and that’s how we found out about our local Pier burning down! Weird! Sorry for all the rambling, it has brought memories back into my mind from soooo long ago, wonderful days that neither Christine or me would change for the world. We didnt know how lucky we were at the time, but I certainly do now! Oh yes another memory - Christine and I both had several tape cassettes of our favourite bands with us and would pester lorry drivers to play Strawbs albums (!). Mostly they were very obliging, but Im sure they must have got sick to death of hearing Strawbs as we crossed the desert, hour after hour after hour. I remember one of the drivers (unfortunately cant remember which one) really liked Johnny Cash so I got to hear a lot of St. Quentin and Boy Named Sue (still got a fondness for it) and also I remember Jolene being played a few hundred times. Looking back, we are so grateful to all the lorry drivers we met, they all treated us with complete respect and were helpful and kind, and must have had a lot of patience to put up with a couple of naive teenage girls with our “in jokes”, sniggering and oh yes the Strawbs tapes! Oh well, that’s it for now. If anyone, anywhere, vaguely remembers us (Lindsay and Christine from Southend) I’d love to hear from you and Im sure Christine would too.
