S.I. woman addicted to driving Green Line buses in U.K.

Press, 10 April 1980, Page 15

S.I. woman addicted to driving Green Line buses in U.K.

Kay Pringle is a girl with drive and ambition J- the ambition to drive a Green Line coach. Having experienced the in-..; adequacies of an “organised” coach trip to Amsterdam last year, 28-year-old Kay took up the challenge that she could do better and vowed she

would qualify as a coach driver. She is now the possessor of a licence to drive semi-automatic 0.m.0. (one-man-operation) vehicles and is based at Staines London Country bus garage —- a long way from Hawea Flat, Otago, where she was born. “The other drivers told me: ‘lt gets in your blood

and you can’t get it out’, and that’s true for me. Every day is different, and each stop is different because the people are different. I love it,” she says. When not driving 9| tons of coachpower,. Kay normally transports herse.f from her flat in Chiswick on a moped, but recently this was “run over by a black taxi,” as

she puts it, and may have to be replaced. Kay is a holder of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Gold Award which she gained in Dunedin. After completion of her award she took over the running of the scheme at the Dunedin Y.M.C.A. with 60 young people under her wing. As soon as she reached London she contacted the

headquarters of the award scheme to make sure she could be involved in its activities during her stay in the United Kingdom. “It is a life-long commitment for me.” In addition, Kay has found time to take part in a pilot course at St Mary Abbot’s Hospital, West London, for volunteers to help check old people’s

hearing aids in their homes. Kay arrived in England in 1978: “But it looks as if my promise to my father to be home for Christmas, 1980, will have to be a flying visit” She hadn’t allowed for the attraction of being On the Buses.