大象传媒

I relied on the local bus service to get to college every day in Plymouth whilst I was studying a secretarial course, at the age of seventeen. Usually it was full with eight or so people standing, having left Dartmouth at either 7.30am approx to pick me up at 9.15am. There was an earlier bus, that I didn't take, that left Kingsbridge at 5.30am to take the dock yard workers to Plymouth at Devonport. I would get to College at about 10am to study from 10-12 and 2-4pm, which I chose so I didnt have to get there for 9am, which the book-keepers had to. During April and May, 1941 the buses were so full, on the way home, that I remember having to queue for three hours, from 4.30-7.30pm just to get home. Even then, I frequently had to stand all the way for the fifteen mile journey. A day return ticket was half a crown but I had a season ticket which meant they had to pick me up every morning even if they were full. There were two or three times when they drove on and left me standing on a main road 2 miles out of town. I complained to the local bus office and they then promised to pick me up every time and they did stick to their promise. I got used to knowing exactly where I was even in the dark and the bus conductor used a torch on a sliding strip to see the tickets. The driver's must have had difficulty seeing where they were going because the lights were partially covered with a shield and only three strips of light showing ahead. The idea was that no light would shine upwards. People whose homes were in the city used to travel to friends and relatives in the country to sleep because of the threat of bombing, as Plymouth had been badly blitzed in April and May. Those who didn't have close relatives or friends in the country still took 'out of service' buses, in the evenings from about 7pm onwards, to travel to spend the night away from the threat of the city bombing. They would spend the night on the bus together with the driver. I remember the queues of people at the bus stop from the top of Alexandra Road, Plymouth waiting to get a seat for the night on the bus. The City Council buses weren't involved, it was the Western National whose drivers appeared to volunteer to spend the night, maybe with their families beside them on the bus. I was lucky because I had a home and a bed to go to.

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