Louth Nipper bus saves author and inspires debut novel

Anna Williams describes herself as “just an ordinary mum from Louth” who was diagnosed with a WHO grade 2 benign meningioma, a rare brain tumour, in 2011. At the time, she was working as a teaching assistant at Lacey Gardens primary school in Louth and was six month pregnant with her daughter, Connie, when she started getting bad headaches and this escalated into a throbbing eye, and was diagnosed initially as a sinus infection. But before long, her right side of her face swelled up and she was admitted to hospital for a CT scan, which showed a 4cm x 2cm lesion behind her eye. The tumour was rare in that it was hormone-fed, and her pregnancy hormones were increasing it in size, and so her surgeon arranged for her to have a caesarean section to get her baby out, with her eight-hour brain surgery to remove the tumour shortly after. The surgery removed most of the tumour and she also underwent radiotherapy, but then ten months later when baby Connie was crawling around, she accidentally head-butted Anna and the resulting headache didn’t go away. It turned out that there was regrowth in her residual tumour and now Anna said it is a case of ‘watch, wait and see’ to see what the future holds, but that she considers herself to be “fortunate”: "Connie has saved my life twice,” Anna said, “If I hadn’t been pregnant with her in the first place I never would have known about the tumour, and then her head-butting me alerted me to it.” The tumour has also seen Anna diagnosed with epilepsy and she has had to stop driving for a year from the date of the last seizure. "This is like having your wings clipped,” she said, “Not being able to drive affected my ability to work and be independent, and I was in a really bad place.” Once she regained a bit of confidence, she started using the Louth Nipper bus service, operated by PC Coaches, and Anna said that using the bus to get around gave her freedom and independence back. "Without knowing it, their everyday reliability and kindness and lack of judgement saved me in so many ways,” she said, “I would come home and tell my husband all about how you can see people’s lives unfolding on the bus. "For example, there were people who would ride the bus all day as it was warmer than going home to their empty house, and another would confide that they were having housing issues so we put together a list of phone numbers for her to get some help. "Then on the other end of the scale, there was a young girl going to college, and a 96 year old whose ride on the bus to Louth to get her hair done was her only trip out of the house each week. "This bus saved me and gave me my independence back and it means so much to me, and my husband said I should write it all down.” And this was how ‘Little Nipper to the Rescue’ came to be born, which is set in Louth and mentions many familiar sights in town. The book sees Nipper the bus facing his insecurities as Nipper thinks he’s too small or not as good as the other buses, but finds his confidence with the help of his trusty driver Clive – named after the Nipper’s real life driver. Anna said this was her way to address her own insecurities of not being good enough now that she has been labelled as “disabled” due to her tumour and epilepsy – but those labels don’t exist on the Louth Nipper bus: "Despite the list of labels I have accrued, I returned to work, have battled to overcome obstacles in my way and overcome misconceptions and discrimination in many forms. No-one judged me as I got on the bus, it was like a breath of fresh air.” Anna has dedicated her book to all the everyday unsung heroes whose unspoken acts of kindness make a big difference. "It’s to celebrate just how many unique individuals it takes to build a community & is my way of saying thank you,” she said, “It's a great example of community spirit and people coming together for no other reason than they care about Louth and the people in it, and recognise the good that is going on all the time right in front of us but often unnoticed.” To mark the launch of the book about the Nipper bus that has meant so much to Anna and several others in the community, a photo launch took place on Thursday (November 2) at Louth bus station, organised by PC Coaches, where Anna, as well as the other aforementioned heroes of the book, met their adoring public. One of those meeting the team and Anna was threee-year-old Ziggy, who is such a super fan of buses that his mum Sally Glover set up an Instagram account https://www.instagram.com/ziggyonthebus/ which documents his love of buses – and his excitement to meet Anna and Clive the driver! ‘Little Nipper to the Rescue’ will be available to buy on Friday November 10 from Amazon and Waterstones under Magic Mouse books, and is also available from Little Bits of Louth on the High Street.