for lunch at Monkhampton: "...in a big courtyard, about twenty char-a-bancs were parked—char-a-bancs which had come from all over the country". Charabancs appeared several times in John Le Carre's The Little Drummer Girl. The Jethro Tull song "Wond'ring Again" by Ian Anderson uses the term: "Incestuous ancestry's charabanc ride..." George Harrison described the plot of The Beatles' 1967 film Magical Mystery Tour "a charabanc trip". On the Small Faces' 1968 album Ogden's Nut Gone Flake, the title character of the Happiness Stan suite of songs taking up side 2 lives in a Charabanc, described in characteristic fashion by narrator Stanley Unwin as "a four-wheeled fillolop out the backgrove". On the 1968 performance by the band of the suite on BBC2's Colour Me Pop, Unwin renders this section as "an ancient Victoriana Charabanc – and this was the old type, sit-up-and-beg, rotate fit a poppy with solid wheels." The charabanc appears in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. Mr Lawrence, the March's wealthy neighbour, lends it to the March girls. Jokingly, they call it the "cherry bounce". In Malta, a British colony until 1964, the term (spelled Xarabank) survives today, and is used to designate a public transport bus. A trip to the seaside is the subject of the humorous song The Charabanc by Ivor Biggun. See also Charabanc (rail), used at one time for second- and third-class travel. Stage Limousine Songthaew References External links Charabancs, coaches and carriages on Jersey Rockin' Down the Highway with Paul Grushkin: April 2007. Seabrook Coaching Stable Dispersal Auction: Roof-seat Break. The Carriage Association of America, Inc. Side loader bus in Tasmanian Transport Museum Bus transport in the United Kingdom Animal-powered vehicles Buses by type