Here's the text:
Last month, I was recounting how
I should, by rights, have been a contender for the Olympics, given my regular
morning sprint for the bus to take me to work at Harold Wesley Ltd., in
Victoria Crescent, Burton. Mind you, the
early morning Park Drive would probably have ruled out giving Messrs. Ovett or
Coe any sleepless nights.
Running for the bus, and cursing
breathlessly as it pulled away when I was within yards of it, was a constant
feature of employment at Wesley's. This
was made all the more bizarre as I now knew a few of the Burton Corporation bus
drivers quite well because I had made the Transport Club in Guild Street my
local, which was ridiculous really because it was more than 1½ miles from my
house. Still, if the run for the bus
didn't keep me fit, the hike to and from the Club should have done.
Back in the days of the old
Routemaster buses with the open platform at the rear, the bus driver was a
mysterious figure, only visible from the back as he ploughed his lonely route
in the separate cab. In those days, the
person you got to know was the bus conductor, who was more than likely to be
female. Some of these were friendly
sorts, willing to chat and joke, others were real martinets who delighted in
making you wait for your change or gave you a telling off if you tried to jump
off the platform as the bus came to a halt.
I believe this combination of male drivers and female conductors sparked
a few romances, some of which should probably not have been happening.
When 'One Man Operation' buses
came into being, it obviously spelled the gradual demise of the conductors but
also made the drivers into customer-facing workers. Some were fine with this and were very
sociable, others should never have been anywhere near the customer and would
have been best kept in the separate cab.
Take Courtney for instance (names
have been changed throughout to protect the guilty). Courtney's whole demeanour told you that he
really didn't think he should be driving buses for a living, he was made for
better things. He also viewed the rest
of the human race as a sort of sub-species who were to be tolerated at best and
berated at worst. He was not above
giving passengers a short lecture if they transgressed in any way and I'll
never forget the time when he stopped the bus at the zebra crossing at the
junction of Derby Road and Borough Road, to give chapter and verse of the
Highway Code to some unfortunate who had mistakenly thought that it was one
crossing and vehicles should stop for her.
Courtney made it clear that the island in the centre made it two
crossings and he was therefore not obliged to stop. This went on for quite a while and made for
an entertaining debate, if you didn't have anywhere particular to be.
The other driver who lives in my
memory, and still has me waking up screaming some nights, was known to all and
sundry as Mad Maurice. Maurice was a
red-haired Irish man who clearly would have liked to have been driving a sports
car but actually didn't have a car at all.
He drove his bus at a furious
speed, accelerating and braking with gusto and throwing double-deckers around
corners at a rate that made you wonder how the heck they were going to stay
upright, which was a particular concern if you were trying to enjoy a quiet
smoke upstairs at the time. Maurice
didn't communicate with his passengers in any way at all, other than the
occasional low growl and no-one dared to take issue with him, even when he
stopped his bus outside his house in Uxbridge Street and disappeared, for quite
some time, to go and pick up his sandwiches.
Well, at least that's what I always assumed he was doing. Of course, to make up the lost time, he drove
even faster for the rest of the route.
You had to be a patient and
doughty sort to ride the buses in the 1970s.
