It was a cold, damp, overcast October day in Wollaton Park, where Susan and I turned up for what we thought was the official launch of the 35 branded 'History Bus'. A few were already out on the road. Little did I know until I saw it that this one was special — it had my name on it!
Click on the pics to enlarge. Susan took all these pics (you can see the official NCT pic on their website).
Well, here I am kneeling down beside my name. It was some moment. What there isn't a pic showing is Susan and Anthony Carver-Smith, NCT's Public Relations Manager, who was behind the 35 History Bus Guide and the whole branding exercise, helping a 74 year old to stand up!
Here's one of Anthony and me holding the just launched 35 History Bus guide.
I also got to sit in the driver's seat. As a child growing up in Wembley my ambition was to be a bus driver, but in those days you had to be 23 years old before you could get a Public Service Vehicle (PSV) driving licence and on leaving school at 15 I got a job which took my life in a different direction but I remained a bus user, having started travelling on the 83 London Transport bus (still running) between Wembley and Kingsbury on my own from the age of four. At first my Nanna or an aunt would put me on the bus and another aunt would be waiting for me at the bus stop beside the parish church in Kingsbury.
By the time I started school aged 5 I was a seasoned bus passenger, able to go on a 79 to visit my mother, who lived in another part of Kingsbury housekeeping for a lovely family doctor, originally from Poland, who had adopted the surname 'Sheldon'. The things you remember with fondness once you start writing never ceases to amaze me!
The blue sky in this pic says a lot about my memory of the day — there is nothing 'overcast' about it, but Susan confirms it was cold and it was damp. The professional photographer and his assistant had to use large light reflectors, as this pic shows, so perhaps it was not as bright as it looks, given how modern hi-tech digital cameras do so mucg for us when we take a pic.
I rather like this one of me, sitting in the driver's seat, talking to the photographer.
I did actually get to drive a bus in 1982, in West Berlin of all places, whilst attending a week long international airports conference and exhibition in my then capacity as Chair of East Midlands Airport in the company of my good friend Dermot Arthur, who was on the EMA Committee as well as being a Nottingham city councillor and Chair of the council's City Transport Committee, just before Maggie Thatcher and her crew began their attack on all kinds of municipal ownership and enterprise. Thanks to folk like Dermot, the City has held on to NCT but EMA was sold off and, at first, privatised but eventually, I'm glad to say, EMA found it's way back into municipal ownership (it is now owned by Manchester Airport — which is owned by a collection of Greater Manchester councils).
In Berlin, Dermot and I were, at first, transported everywhere in a large Mercedes saloon with 4 police motorbike outriders. It took a few days to persuade Berlin officials to give us public transport passes instead, which enabled us to explore the city (and visit East Berlin) on our own. It was a memorable week.
Closer to home, Susan created this Nottingham bus doorstop in the early-1980s whilst I was a Nottinghamshire county councillor (for the Cinderhil, Highbury Vale, Old Basford, Stockhill area). It took her a couple of years and has the bus route number on the back and the nearside. Back in the late-70s and early-80s Nottingham buses had gone one man operation and the technology didn't exist to change route nos. and destination displays automatically, so they disappeared. It was something I opposed at the time and campaigned against. I'm sad to say, despite being a life-long trade unionist since the age if 15, it was the drivers' trade union which opposed drivers doing what had once been the o;d conductors' job. In the end, technology overtook the objections and bus displays are the best they ever been in Nottingham, so it is a story with a happy ending!
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