In 1985, we spoke to keen astronomer and science fiction author Alex Van Graf, who was better known to his mates at Bury St Edmunds Bus Station as Geoffrey Fielder.
The Bury Free Press report said that after shifts driving his bus, he would return to his Thetford home and think of things more alien than the 955 route to Moreton Hall.
Mr Fielder was chairman and founder of the North Star Astronomy Society and author of the Alien Heavens science fiction anthology.
Astrologer and bus driver Geoffrey Fielder. Picture: Bury Free Press archive
Aged 46, he had been interested in astronomy and space travel for as long as he could remember.
“I was always interested in maps when I was young and I was always looking at them,” he said back in 1985. “Now I’m interested in space maps, which are not all that different.”
Mr Fielder’s writing career got on the road when he was taken on by the Walthamstow Post newspaper as a junior reporter. From there he went into the motor trade, moved to Suffolk from Billericay and took his Public Service Vehicle licence with the Eastern National Bus Company.
Mr Fielder told the Bury Free Press he tried to keep his two worlds very separate as when he was driving he had a great responsibility, while his other ‘job’ as an astronomer was ‘completely esoteric’.
And while Mr Fielder might have had starry eyes about writing full-time and spending more of his time watching the planets, but he said bus passengers should have no fear, as when he was driving he always had his eyes firmly on the road.
Do you remember Mr Fielder? Email your memories to news@buryfreepress.co.uk