Why Nottingham City Transport's 35 History Bus deserves to be better known

Preparing for Nottingham City Transport's official launch today of their 35 History Bus Guide I came across this poster published in 2014 to publicise the first free day out organised by TravelRight and led by me. The poster below was designed by local historian and graphic designer Chris Matthews and put up in community centres and libraries along the route of the 35.

That bus on Saturday 24 May 2014 was one of a new generation of double-decker buses returning to the route after a decade of it being single deckers and it was driven by Anthony Carver-Smith, NCT's Publicity Manager, the man behind this latest guide. Without him none of these things would have happened and that I thank him sincerely.

I love the crisp lines of Chris's poster and how it draws in the eye in.

Chris has an online link to his version of my 35 History Guide (click here to see Chris's version), which uses my text but is very different to mine. I love it all the same as I do NCT's version designed by Nicola. I doubt if there is another bus route England which has received as much attention. By my calculation five guides in five years, albeit three by me (one for Bilborough, one for Lenton and one for the city centre)

Chris's poster gives away our shared interest in promoting and remembering the historic importance of municipal housing, better known to most as council housing. I love the juxtaposition on the poster of prefabs in Bulwell, which the 35 passes right by as it makes a final dash from Cinderhill Island to Bulwell Bus Station, with Wollaton Hall. The latter might fairly be described as a rich man's folly insomuch as it served no useful purpose as far as the ordinary folk who lived in its shadow for over 300 years before it was bought by Nottingham City Council in the early 1920s, except to remind them whose power and wealth it was that condemned them to live in poverty (I suspect that most did not see it in these terms, that was the way life was ordered and they made of it what they could). A good comparison for us in 2018 is to think of our childhoods and how we accepted the world we knew as the order of things. Time and again people say, despite the comparative poverty, how much they enjoyed their childhood. It's certainly how I feel about growing up in the post-war 1940s and 1950s.

The 35 is such a great urban bus route as much for what it represents as for what it is. Here, on a 54 minute bus journey, is a little glimpse of England!

This will be my message today when I attend the launch of NCT's 35 History Bus Guide at Wollaton Hall in less than 80 minutes from now!