| One
of the biggest causes of problems were pushchairs.
And big was the operative word. When I started
on the buses, buggies were very new and definitely
the exception. Most pushchairs were heavy,
caked in mud and rusty. Many were simply small
prams. All would trap an unwary finger or
draw blood with a sharp edge. |
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| Pushchairs
under the stairs behaved like paper clips,
no matter how carefully you stacked them they
became entangled. The first one in was always
the first one out and passengers with bags
or cases would always place them on top of
the pushchairs rather than at the side. On
the front doored buses we had the front off-side
seat adapted so that it folded down to provide
more storage. Passengers invariably returned
the seat to its original position so they
could sit on it. |
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| Sometimes
we had so many pushchairs on board we had
to leave others behind. They could cause other
problems too, such as putting the wrong one
off at a bus stop or seeing one roll off the
platform as we went round a bend. One mother
left her pushchair by the bus in Winchester
bus station and assumed I would see it and
load it onto the bus. I didn't and when we
arrived at Andover she was most abusive. |
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| Also
at Andover, I left the bus to collect parcels
and when I returned I found a baby on the
platform. The mother had left him there when
she realised she had forgotten to go to a
shop. She assumed, correctly, that I would
not pull away with a baby in such a dangerous
position. I had taken the child to the office
by the time she returned to the bus, but she
was quite unconcerned about the risk she had
taken. Another woman, this time in Romsey
Square, swung her child onto the platform
to stop the bus as we pulled away. I rang
the bell to stop the driver. She complained
that I had rung the bell to start the bus,
not to stop it. Some mothers! |
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| Incidently,
and nothing to do with buses, one of my earliest
memories of television is a news item on the
Hungarian uprising in 1956 when I was seven
years old. There was a shop full of prams
with its windows shattered and a Russian tank
pointing its gun at the building. The meek
may inherit the earth but not if the Red Army
gets there first! |
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