Dear LPG

I have been retired for some time now but I spent a lot of my working life as a London bus conductor and then a driver.  I always enjoyed writing stories and got many of my colleagues to tell me some of their funniest.  I had Planned to write a book but it never happened.  I hope that LPG will print some of them and offer this as my first bit of nostalgia. 

The little story that I am offering today was written in the good old days; before oyster cards and when every bus driver had a conductor to deal with the passengers on the bus, and each story is signed with the Driver badge number of its teller.   

 The grooming accessory.

I had not been a bus driver for very long – about 5 months - in fact I was one of the first batch of drivers who had to pass a BTEC qualification in customer relations when training – but enough of that for now. I did not think that in just 5 short months there would be a tale to tell but I do have one.

There I was, driving along at about 20:00 one evening not so long ago on a 36 bus.  We had been issued with an NV type bus for that journey.  This was one of the types of bus that took over after the Rout Master which meant that the driver’s cab was not separated from the passengers or the conductor.  It was a light sunny summer’s evening.  As I approached this particular bus stop there was just one passenger who flagged the bus down and I stopped as was expected of me.  I operated the mechanism that opened the front door so that the young man could enter the bus but to my surprise he took the first step, turned to the rear-view mirror just in front of the open door and began to fix his hair and check his face, teeth and shirt collar.  Well, this preening session continued for about half a minute, while I looked at the conductor and the conductor looked at me, and the passengers began to look a little puzzled as well.  Finally, when he had finished, the man shrugged his shoulders in the same way that the Fonze would have done in ‘Happy days’, turned to me and said “Thank you driver”.  He then made a gesture suggesting that he was not planning to travel on the bus.  So I said, “You are welcome” and we continued the journey.

Driver Number...13796

My hope is that, for us older members of Lewisham society this will provoke a smile.

JB, Lewisham.