- Contributed by听
- Mike Hazell
- People in story:听
- Doris Hazell (Nee Andrews)
- Location of story:听
- London & Staines (Middlesex)
- Background to story:听
- Civilian
- Article ID:听
- A3085030
- Contributed on:听
- 04 October 2004
CHAPTER SIX
STAINES GARAGE
Despite my long absence, London Transport insisted on treating me as an old hand and sent me off to Chiswick for my new uniform and just one day鈥檚 training at the school. London Country Bus and Green Line uniforms were dark green and, therefore, quite distinctive. There were still dozens of sizes on the shelves to choose from, but fitting me up this time wasn鈥檛 nearly so easy. I had gradually got heavier over the years and by 1955 weighed in at just over fifteen stone. Eventually the clothing stores assistant unearthed a uniform specially made for another conductor who had left the job just before a new issue was due. It wasn鈥檛 a perfect fit but I assured the stores lady that I could do the necessary alterations myself and was measured for a new issue which arrived at the Garage a couple of weeks later. Every year since that time my uniform has been made to measure and I hate to think of when I鈥檝e gone on different diets in an attempt to lose weight only to put it all back (and the rest) a few months later. My size card at the clothing stores has so many alteration references clipped to it that it must be a filing clerk鈥檚 nightmare! I also received my equipment 鈥 a Gibson harness, an old cash bag and clippers.
The one day鈥檚 refresher class was merely to introduce the Gibson Ticket Issuing Machine that had taken the place of the Bell Punch and ticket rack and the new two-day waybill. A glance at my fare charts showed me that the fares had increased over the years but so had the wages. In fact my wage would be almost double that which I had earned on the trams 鈥 being just over eight pounds a week, and this was for less hours too. I was now to begin working the eleven day fortnight which lasted quite a few years till it finally became the five day week it is at present.
And so, on November 16th 1955, I reported to Staines Garage for the first time, and I confess to being somewhat shattered to realise I have now reported for duty here in the region of five thousand times! At a rough guess I should think that on about four thousand five hundred occasions I have arrived breathless and with only enough time to grab my box and dash out to take over my bus as it left the garage. I鈥檝e been lectured, bullied, threatened and scolded by the nicest bunch of depot inspectors in the entire fleet. I鈥檝e made the same New Year鈥檚 Resolution for umpteenth time and promised myself that I really will arrive neat, tidy, composed and lady-like with plenty of time to spare like the rest of the staff, but two days later the door of the conductors鈥 room slams open and a hurricane blows in 鈥 hair like a crow鈥檚 nest, eyes streaming from cycling against the wind or soaked by rain, uniform looking as though it has been thrown on while cycling up the road and gasping for breath like a stranded whale 鈥 Doris has arrived to report for duty, pushed for time again!
In the early years doing a job involving shift work, running a house and raising four children meant being on the go for about sixteen hours a day and it was nothing for me to sign on duty at 5.30 a.m. after doing a load of washing or polishing the downstairs rooms. I would allow myself eight minutes to cycle to work, which was only sufficient if the road was clear, the weather fine and a good wind behind me. I鈥檝e sustained a puncture twice (which meant a hasty call from the nearest phone box), fallen off several times on icy roads, gone over the handlebars and knocked myself out trying to avoid a cat (what idiot said it was lucky for a black cat to cross your path?) and taken over an hour to plough through knee-deep snow on Boxing Day morning 1962 when I was so busy tidying up after the festivities on Christmas Day that I didn鈥檛 realise that two feet of snow had fallen during the night until I opened my front door eight minutes from signing on time. Nowadays, with the children all grown up and a grandmother six times over, my excuse for reporting at the last moment is that I can鈥檛 get it into my thick head that I am not as young as I used to be and the journey to the garage takes nearer fifteen minutes instead of eight 鈥 sheer vanity.
Of course, when I started here at Staines in 1955, I imagined I would only be working here till the house was nicely furnished and the children properly kitted up with school uniforms. For reasons of economy I had always made most of our clothing but school uniform was just a little bit beyond my dressmaking skills, even if I had been able to buy exactly the right materials in the precise colours. So I told myself that I would try to hold the job for about ten years, by which time young Andrew would be leaving school. I did feel a little bit guilty at being away from home for eight hours of every day but I loved the work so much and so many things happened that gave me a good excuse to stay on. Michael decided he wanted to become a schoolteacher and won a place at grammar school, then entered Shoreditch College at Englefield Green and finally started work at twenty-one. We were very proud of his progress and he is now married with two children of his own and assistant headmaster at a school in Harrow (well 鈥 no, not that one but I shouldn鈥檛 be surprised if one day ____!)
Just when Michael was launched into his career Andrew left school with a burning ambition to become a top ladies hairdresser so we managed to get him an apprenticeship at 鈥淛onards鈥 in exclusive Virginia Water. A great number of celebrities live in the neighbourhood and the manager sent Andrew to college twice a week to learn the profession 鈥 from the roots, so to speak. Guess who became the tame guinea pig when bleaching, dyeing and tinting lessons began? That year I went from brunette to platinum blonde through every shade in the colour chart. My hair was tapered, permed, striped, bleached, tinted, conditioned and dyed till it finally protested and came out on strike! I survived the onslaught, Andrew finished his course and I settled down to going grey and becoming old gracefully 鈥 or as gracefully as I am ever likely to become, which isn鈥檛 much.
Frances and Barbara, the two girls, couldn鈥檛 leave school quickly enough. They went into office and hotel reception work, furthering their education at night school and both holding down very good jobs too. Bill and I are very proud of all our children so maybe being a working mother didn鈥檛 do them any harm after all 鈥 I certainly hope not.
It was really fortunate that, despite my size, I had plenty of energy in those early years. I used to get up at 4 a.m. every morning to see Bill off to work by 4.45 and then do my washing and as much housework as possible before re-setting the alarm clock for the children and dashing off to do an early turn. When I was late turn I would get the children off to school, do the day鈥檚 shopping and have a meal ready for Bill at 12.30. If I was on a late duty, which finished after 12.30 a.m., I would creep around doing the housework until it was time to get Bill up, stay up washing or ironing till after the children were off to school and then snatch a few hours sleep till just before Bill came home. Looking back, I wonder how I managed it but, at the time, it all seemed to fit in easily enough.
All the buses were double deck and crew operated then so busy that my hours at work seemed to fly. The new Gibson ticket machines were certainly faster to operate than the Bell Punch and loose tickets. We needed to be able to work fast too 鈥 almost everyone used Public Transport then 鈥 the old workman鈥檚 returns had been replaced by an Early Morning Single which was cheaper than the ordinary fare which started at 8.30 a.m. Despite the fact that the cheap midday had been discontinued, the housewives still crowded the buses to go to the nearest town for shopping and the worker鈥檚 rush hours would be replaced by the shopper鈥檚 rush, then the dinner hour dash and a more leisurely but still quite busy afternoon shopping stint till the evening rush began and lasted till about 6.30 p.m. The next few hours would be spent taking people to the cinemas and pubs and then the last rush would come about 10.30 when the cinemas and pubs closed and everyone went home. Our very last journeys served those other night workers 鈥 late duty policemen, night sorters at the Post Office, barmaids and cinema managers, restaurant waiters, late duty nurses, railwaymen and passengers returning home from London on the last trains. When we had served all these and the last of the buses and coaches were safely tucked away in the garage we would cycle or walk home ourselves through the empty streets.
Although I spent two years on the Spare List when I was on the trams I found myself on the bus rota at Staines within a very few weeks of my arrival. Bus work was no longer top of the pay scale for unskilled labour, especially in the Staines area. There were three big factories calling out for workers 鈥 Petters had taken over the old Lagonda works at the top of the Causeway and were extending in all directions at one end of the town, Sykes Engineering was rebuilding and taking on more labour at the other end of Staines and the Lino factory was also going full blast in the centre. The new London Airport was also expanding rapidly 鈥 permanent brick buildings replacing what had been little more than two groups of huts, Airport North and Airport Central, and finally being renamed Heathrow. All these projects attracted workers away from the buses while increasing the need for them till overtime and rest day working became necessary and the crews became overworked, tired and irritable and the inevitable downward spiral slowly began. Discipline was relaxed and standards slightly lowered at the Recruiting Centre in a desperate attempt to hold the existing staff and attract newcomers. London Transport even opened a Recruiting Centre in the West Indies offering to pay the fares and supply hostels and other living accommodation to any West Indian families willing to work on London Transport buses and Underground stations for a period of at least two years. Unfortunately the powers that be had not reckoned on the effect that this influx of coloured workers would have on the existing staff, many of which resigned, until it appeared that passenger transport was being run almost exclusively in London by coloured crews. In time, of course, the two year contracts came to an end and the overseas recruits left for higher paid jobs with more sociable hours and London Transport were left with the same problem as before.
It is very easy to criticise after the event, of course, but I do feel that if London Transport had raised the wages in the first place and put bus work back in the top pay bracket where it used to be it would have cost no more than the millions of pounds they must have needed to run the Overseas Recruiting Scheme and public transport would have been in a much healthier condition than it is today.
Situated, as we are in Staines, eighteen miles from London we had no coloured staff at this time until the later waves of immigrants from Pakistan, India and the new African states arrived and a few settled among us quite happily for a while 鈥 none of them stayed more than a year or two, though, before moving on to better jobs. However, the London Transport hostel at Windsor caused a lot of jealousy and upset in the Windsor Garage and the local busmen, many of whom were still waiting for Council houses themselves, were incensed by the free living accommodation supplied to their coloured work-mates. We began to hear rumours that inspectors were having to haul the newcomers out of bed in the mornings and ferry them to work in buses in a desperate attempt to get them to work on time and discipline was relaxed among local men in an attempt to avoid open revolt. Rumours are invariably exaggerated, of course, but Windsor Garage certainly became a happier place when the immigrants moved on and the hostel closed down.
Meantime, life went on much the same at Staines and I soon became familiar with all the bus routes. The 441 bus to High Wycombe left Staines Station at eight and thirty-eight minutes past every hour with extra journeys to Beaconsfield and Hedgerly in between. The 460 route via Wraysbury and Datchet to Slough ran every twenty minutes, seven days a week, and the 466 to Knowle Hill and the 469 to Virginia Water Station were half hourly runs. There was also a 441D from Staines via the Causeway and Egham and over Egham Hill to the Wheatsheaf at Virginia Water every hour. This service has now been discontinued and only a skeleton is left on the other roads. There is no service on Sundays on the 466, 469 or 460 and all are hourly services on weekdays.
We had three Green Line Coach roads at Staines Garage in 1955, two going to Gravesend. The 701 went hourly from Ascot, joining the 702 from Sunningdale at Virginia Water so that, from Gravesend to Virginia Water there was a half hourly service all day. The last vehicle (the 701 from Ascot) arrived in the garage at 01.22 hours. This was known as the 鈥淕host Train鈥 as are all the last buses and coaches throughout the fleet. Cycling home after half past one in the morning was rather a ghostly experience and I was always glad to see the back of that duty till it came round again. The other coach road was the 725 that ran from Windsor, leaving the Castle at four and thirty-four minutes past every hour. The last one into Staines left at Midnight. The 725 that left on the half hour went to Dartford (Kent) and the coach leaving Windsor on the hour went through to Gravesend.
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