The Old Bus: a true story

When I was teaching at the High School, someone in authority decided that, rather than always having to shell out money to Bassett’s Coaches for our outings, it would make sense to buy our own transport; and so we obtained The Bus. It was a truly awe-inspiring motor; the year’s latest model - the year in question being somewhere round about 1948. Truly it would have graced any museum of the history of transport; but this did not make it any easier to drive. There was no power-assisted steering, and no synchromesh on any of the gears, which quickly led to one of the geography teachers acquiring the nickname of “Captain Crunch” for his efforts behind the wheel. Max, my head of department, who was a keen motorist, described changing gear as like stirring a cricket stump in a bucket of marbles. He was a little chap, and sometimes he had to employ both hands wrestling with it. “Christ!! Bloody hell!!” he would exclaim as he did battle with the gears amidst heavy traffic in the middle of Stoke. Once, when he was having a particularly bad time on the way back from a trip to the Gladstone pottery, one boy foolishly made some sarcastic comment on his driving. “If you think you can do any better, then come and have a go!” snarled Max, still sweating in his attempts to find third gear. The boy was rash enough to answer, “Okay then!” Max was so enraged that he stopped the bus and charged up the central aisle, with every intention of thumping the wretched youth, but before the blow could land, the handbrake started to slip and Max had to race back to the controls. And by the time we arrived back at the school, Max was far too occupied with the tricky problem of parking the bus (which could only be done in reverse, after first edging the bonnet up the drive of the house opposite, at the risk of doing irreparable damage to the flowering cherry) to take any further action.
The worst journey I experienced came near the end of the one summer term, when we took the first formers on the annual history trip into Shropshire. The first stop was Ludlow, which we reached without mishap; but when we stopped at the entrance to the castle, we were approached by a policeman. “You can’t park here”, he told us, “You’ll have to go to the coach park”. Mark, who was driving, pleaded with him: we’d come a long way and we shouldn’t be there for more than an hour. The policeman eyed the bus narrowly. “I wouldn’t like to have to give a full roadworthiness check to this vehicle, sir”, he said meaningfully. We went to the coach park. The stop for lunch at Stokesay castle passed without mishap, although Nick, our youngest teacher, had with typical disorganisation forgotten to bring any sandwiches, and was reduced to begging for contributions from the pupils (fortunately one boy had been provided by his mother with no fewer than nine chicken legs, and was able to come to the rescue). But then there was an untoward incident in the grounds of Buildwas Abbey, when one of the boys had his shoe subjected to a sexual assault by a randy little puppy. “Sir, it’s weed on me!” he said, inaccurately. The crowning moment of the day came as we drove back through Hodnet. One of the boys complained that he felt sick. We were travelling along narrow, twisty roads unsuitable for stopping, and we were in any case late, so I passed him a plastic waste-bucket already half full of bent coke tines and screwed-up crisp bags. He chundered voluminously into this receptacle, and then a little later approached me again, in some distress. “Sir“, he said, “the brace from my teeth fell in!” I said that if he thought I was going to start fishing for it, he was mistaken. “But the dentist’ll be mad at me sir!” he moaned. When we finally arrived back at school, I made him and another boy who had annoyed me empty the bucket into one of the vast grunions by the gate. During the course of this operation, I observed they both contrived to get it all over their jackets, but I decided I had done quite enough for the day, and went home.
The old bus was still there when I left the school, and I never found out what happened to it. Presumably it has long since left this life for that great multi-storey carpark in the sky - assuming, of course that it was permitted to enter.