During his time at Little Lever School we took him to Disneyland
as a member of staff. As you can he imagine he
thought it was a load of over-commercialised claptrap.
He told me he didn`t do rollercoasters and after
some persuasion I managed to get him
on the Runaway Train. From the outside he had watched
it leave the station and return with lots of smiling passengers.
What he didn`t understand was that those passengers wore smiles of relief.

He was ok till we hit the first black tunnel, fortunately
there were none of our pupils in our carriage,
as the black tunnel became dark blue.
I realised at this point that he really did hate
rollercoasters and perhaps I should have told
him the truth about this one. He screamed, shouted,
cursed and called out for his mum. There was
no passenger Steve wearing a smile as
we pulled into the station, but a shaking white ghost.
We escaped the ride and moved to the
nearest bench and I got him a sugary brew.
He probably didn`t speak for a good hour
then he said `I`ll never trust you again`. He did of
course, but I learnt a lesson that day about fear
and the fragility of the Stig and I loved him
more because of it. Rest in peace Steve, find a very slow moving cloud xxx