On the Buses (My version) Ch 7

Oh boy, what a change from London Transport. It’s like going back in time.
On the one side, the pace of life is considerably slower than the smoke which is a good thing (I think).
Peterborough (Where’s that I said) is a growing city with estates for the London overspill in several areas. This is much to the disgust of the locals, but they are quite happy to shop in the fantastic new shopping centres created by these ‘Cockney’ infiltrators. Not that they new what that meant.
What a strange breed they are here. I can understand the concerns over the huge changes to there little haven. All the places where they used to play as kids are now full of us Londoners. However, with the changes to our lives in London something had to be done. ‘A house in London?’ The guy at the housing office said. ‘Not a chance’ Even being 4th generation Londoner made no difference.
Anyway, I digress, once again.
I get to the depot ready for action and guess what! They have a canteen Ah wonderful, tea time. The Canteen was a very small room, certainly not big enough for everyone and heaven help you if you sat in one of the locals chairs. ‘Oh this is fun’
Then it’s off to the training room to learn how to operate ticket machines and add up fares. Hahaha, you gotta laugh. The ticket machines were something that got nicked from the ark. They weighed a ton with stupid dials which you had to make up the fare with. Oh boy, I’m used to pressing buttons and the ticket pops out on its own. Anyway I treated all this as a laugh and after being given a test it was weekend off and on the road on Monday.
As with any conductor or one man operator it takes a while to get used to the fares on different routes. The biggest problem here was you operated different routes all day long. Half way round the conductor had to get out climb up the front and change the destination blind and route number as the handles are on the outside. This should be fun I thinks. I was used to operating the same route all day every day in London. The difference being, these routes only took about half an hour to get from A –B. I guess doing that all day would send you loopy.
I actually got to enjoy this spell. Being a small town you got used to many of the passengers and apart from being called a dook (Duck) in English. That was their way of greeting you. I would imagine if you said ‘watcha cock’ the fellas would look down.
Generally speaking the folk up here are quite a friendly bunch. I suppose they’re getting used to us “foreigners”.
After a few months of this I was told to report for driver training on Monday. Driver training?? I’ve been doing that in the busiest parts of London imaginable for 6 years and they want to train me!. Well actually they had to get my licence upgraded. In London they only gave you a semi auto licence and up here in the wilderness these relics, Yep! They were older than the LT RT’s and they had crash Gearboxes. Bloody hell what have I got myself into. Here we go then, and once you get the feel of the double de clutch it was quite easy. Bit heavy on the poor old left leg, but then it hadn’t been used for a while. Anyway, a couple of weeks of driving around Peterborough we get the test day. Passed that and off we go again. Route learning and believe me it’s still necessary even after going round as a conductor, but off we go. I feel like Butler.
Conductors came and went, but one guy (Remember Chapter 3) Lee was the son of our Inspector at Shoreditch on the 47’s. He stayed with me until he got his turn for driving. We are still good friends. Then I was offered my turn on the One Man Operation. Grab it quick. The buses were much easier and I like the idea of being on my own again. Like I said earlier, most of the folk up here are really nice and on a couple of routes there were local characters who had their nicknames. The first one I came across was the Jam lady. She made her own and every now and then she would give you a jar of jam or marmalade, so we gave her a ticket but didn’t charge her. Then there was the Bag lady. She always carried about 4 carrier bags, god knows what she had in them but she was never without these bags.
Oh yes, Wanderbus Lil. We had a ticket called a Wanderbus and this lass of about 25 always had one of these tickets and would follow certain drivers around. Fortunately for me I was never one of her targets. Bloody hell! What a state.
There were quite a few of us guys from London Transport here and 2 of them had been at Catford with me. I wondered where they went. As changes went, we couldn’t believe these locals were not interested in making the job better, especially the wages which I said earlier were crap. They would work double shifts for extra cash and at flat rate and didn’t want it changed. What!! We said, that aint right. We all needed extra cash by working rest days and a little overtime but double shifts? No way!
That was the start of a long battle between the union and Eastern Counties which eventually gave us something like a 36 hour week and extra for overtime. It still wasn’t great by a long way, but it was an improvement. Over the next few years They became among the better paid bus drivers in the country.
During this time I had moved on again.
This time I turned my hand to Coach driving with a local family operator. Most of the work was local with school contracts taking up most of the day. With private hire trips to the coast and day & weekend tours to many parts of the UK. Eventually they got wind of the fact that Holiday tours were becoming popular and decided that was the way to go. This meant some of the drivers who were deemed suitable for this work would now be away from home for a week at a time but as they didn’t have many tours to start with, we would only have 4 or 5 tours a year each.
This was a huge change for me and the family. I had 2 girls growing up and my dear wife who had to look after them all the time I was away. This would eventually put a huge strain on us as while I was away having a whale of a time, Dee was stuck at home. Being a selfish sod (I now realise) I was all over the UK into Europe, Belgium Holland Germany France Italy Austria What a great job this is. Yeh! It is for a single bloke. Eventually Dee had enough and I came back to earth and rejoined the local Buses. Almost too late, but we survived, Just.
There are many stories I could add to the coaching chapter, but I don’t feel it appropriate to make a point of my enjoying myself when those I loved were going through a bad time because of my stupidity.
Thankfully we put it behind us, though when I think about it, I still shed a tear over the time I lost with my girls growing up and putting my dear Dee through 6 years of grief. If she ever gets to read this I hope she will realise how bad I still feel even though it was some 23 years ago.
Ok, so back to the buses. It has now changed from Eastern Counties to Cambus. Bought out by a couple of guys running services in Peterborough and Cambridge. I returned as a Mini Bus driver. Not quite what I had in mind but it got me home every night. It didn’t take long to realise that there was a huge gap between the OPO drivers and Mini Bus and they were going to protect it no matter what.
All wage negotiations were carried out with total disregard for the lot of us Mini’s which, as you can imagine caused a lot of discomfort among all of the drivers.
I managed to wind up the Big Bus boys a few times as having a full PSV licence I could help out occasionally. Rustled a few feathers I did, hahaha. I was often asked to operate National Express to London (Victoria) as they had a couple of unreliable drivers and couldn’t afford to let the service run late. Great I thought, get away from those bread van buses and on the road. But home at night.
I was asked to take a tour to the Isle of Wight by the coach division of the company. I wasn’t at all keen on this having just got away from that type of work but they were desperate for a tour driver and only had 2 days before departure.
I had a word with the missus and promised I would never do another. As I had negotiated a good pay day for the week with expenses up front, we agreed that one week wouldn’t hurt.
To say it was a week of total chaos would be an understatement. I arrived at the ferry in Southampton to be told the company hadn’t paid enough for the number of passengers. Ok, a phone call sorted that one out. Then when we got to the hotel there were more passengers than rooms available. Should have sussed that one out at the ferry. I managed to get the remaining people into a guest house not far from the hotel. Not happy and I don’t blame them, but not much choice. Informing the company of the situation they asked if I could pay for it on a Bank Card. ‘You gotta be jokin’ d’you know how much this is gonna cost?, get a cheque sent out today or I bring them all home’.
That my friends was the very last coach tour I ever operated. Sod ‘em.

I know this chapter hasn’t been much of a laugh but it is all part of my story and it cannot be fun all the way. It almost cost me my marriage. Thankfully we came out of it ok.

So now I stick to buses and the odd National Express. Triffic, that’s all I need.

‘That’s all for now folks’