In 1972 I was the BBC N.I. News Film Sound Recordist (The person with the long gun mic) It was the early, and most violent years of the "Troubles". We were sent to film the devastation at the Ardoyne Bus Depot in Belfast where 12 double decker buses had been set on fire and totally destroyed. As the cameraman and myself tentatively made our way through the smouldering debris, I picked up this strange piece of metal. It was still warm and looked like a lady's jewel-like brooch. But it was not a brooch. It was the remains of a bus:- molten aluminium embedded with thick broken windscreen glass. There's even a sliver of the coloured glass that was used as the driver's sun shield.
Nearly forty years later I still have that "brooch" to remind me of those dark and turbulent times through which we lived.




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