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About a month later I was having a drink in a local pub
one Saturday afternoon and who should I meet but Bumper,
I reminded him of our previous meeting and asked him if
he was prepared to play a joke on my brother. He was really
keen to have a bit of fun, so we drank up and I took him
home with me. Bumper stayed outside looking very grim which
was not hard for him, and I went in and told our Bob that
I had met Bumper. We had had a bit of a set too and he was
outside and wanted a word with him, well Bob went drip white
and had a look out of the window, Bumper growled at him,
Bob swelled up to his full height and went out to take his
punishment. Well Bumper turned out to be a real sport, he
gave Bob a slap on the back nearly knocking him to the floor
and burst out into a roar of laughter, we then all went
in and had a drink to Bobs great relief.
The winter of 1947 was one of freezing snow, snow ploughs
cut a road between Batley and Morley it was single track
with some passing points, I remember driving a bus on this
route, the bus was just able to get between the walls of
snow standing more than six feet high.
The people in the Heckmondwike district well known for
their friendliness helped to make the job bearable in this
period of extreme weather, bringing out warm drinks and
often helping to push and dig out stranded buses.
Getting a meal when working on the buses meant grabbing
a bite at the turn round point, this could be as little
as ten minutes. Leeds Queen St. was well served with a little
cafe at the bottom of the street. These workers cafe's which
were to be found in every town in those days gave first
class service to bus crews. There was a secret one in Batley
at the top of Branch Road, it was in a bakers shop, from
six in the morning bus crews were allowed to go down into
the bakehouse in the cellar and to sit round a big table
surrounded by new bread and cakes straight from the ovens.
The baker and his wife served up mugs of steaming tea and
new bread cakes with lashings of best butter. On a winters
morning it was better than the Ritz.
There used to be young ladies who liked to travel round
with the conductors and sometimes would send little letters
to the driver. There was also travelling dogs, they used
to stand at a bus stop and get on the first bus to arrive,
it was really odd, they seemed to know when to get off.
There was a mongrel terrier that used to turn up at our
terminal at Huddersfield each morning and welcome each bus
as it arrived, the crew used to bring tit bits for it, now
and again it used to take a round trip on one of the buses,
it seemed to know the last bus and after seeing it off make
its way home where ever that might be, rumour had it that
the dog used the local buses to get too and from the terminus.
After I left the buses I got a job as a signalmen on the
railway. My first job was at Ossett station. Railway stations
in those days were like the hub of the town, the Station
Master was one of the towns leading citizens. Goods trains
even in a small town like Ossett were in and out of the
yard all day long. There was coal and wheat, sheep and pigs,
news papers and parcels, horses and cattle, and one day
they had to load a frisky bull who did not wish to leave
home by the look of him and the time it took to load him
in the van. We had a spur line which used to run to a pit
at Shaw Cross which had been closed down, and we had a train
and heavy gang taking up the lines and loading them up to
haul away. Well the driver rang me from a I phone we had
at the junction and said he was loaded up and wanted to
run to Wakefield, I had the London express due in thirty
mins but judged that I had time to run him, I cleared the
forward line for him and pulled off the signal. It was an
up hill pull from the junction, the train just cleared the
junction and came to a stand, the engine unable to pull
the load.
I rang control and requested an engine be sent to assist,
and by the time one left Wakefield I had the express standing
down the line waiting for me to clear. When the engine arrived
I issued a wrong line order and sent it down the line to
assist in pulling the stranded train. When engine no two
arrived on the scene engine no one had run out of water
so they had to uncouple it from the train and tow it up
to Ossett. The engine was topped up with water then they
had a cup of tea while they got up steam. Meanwhile I had
the Station Master in my cabin and control on the 'phone
every five minutes, people were getting upset and I felt
they were looking for someone to blame. I sent the two engines
back down to couple up and hopefully bring the train out.
It had started to rain and when the two engines tried to
pull what turned out to be a grossly over loaded train their
wheels started slipping and they were not able to make any
progress. They reported to me on the telephone and I instructed
engine no two to uncouple and return to Ossett, on his arrival
I sent him to the cabin down the line and he crossed him
over so that he could get behind the stranded train and
push. It worked, I heard the whistle of the engines in the
distance. the control were still ringing, the express was
still waiting, and the Station Master was looking a bit
sick. I intended to put the train in our goods yard and
let the express go by. But alas when I saw the train approaching
I realised it was too long for the yard and we had to give
it a run to the main yard near Wakefield.
Because of its load it was only doing five miles an hour
so the poor express had to follow it in to Wakefield at
a snails pace. So if by any chance you were on a London
express sometime in 1950 and were delayed for four hours
now you know why.
I was later promoted to a larger cabin at Batley but I
then left the Railway and got myself a job at the Post Office.
My main reason was that I discovered the Post Office offered
much better conditions of service and pensions, I did not
know at that time but I was starting on what was to be my
last job that would last for thirty years. I started as
a Postman at Dewsbury and then a Postman driver at Batley.
I then moved on to Leeds and started work in the Catering
Department and ended up as the Group Catering Manager at
Bradford HPO with restaurants at Bradford, Huddersfield,
and Keighley. I later became a national executive member
of the Post Officers Management Union, for which I had full
time release from the Post Office and spent most of my time
travelling round the country including Northern Ireland
on union business.
It was an interesting and sometimes stressful life. Some
weeks I went up and down to London three times with a trip
to say Cardiff thrown in. At the age of fifty seven I had
a heart attack and this together with thrombosis of the
legs and chronic bronchitis as a result of a life time of
smoking resulted in me being given a medical discharge from
the Post Office.
I am now sixty eight. On retirement I took up water colour
painting with some minor success, joined a drama workshop
and although I was not up to much with scripted work was
happy doing improvisation and did some role play work for
Leeds university Medical school, I ran a painting class
for the Yorkshire Playhouse and now after all these years
I have written this account of my early life and hope you
have enjoyed it.
By the way before my dad and step mother died they had
two more children, two girls, so when I got married to Barbara
Hill a Station Masters daughter by the way, I had a father,
a mother, a step farther, a step mother, a brother, a sister,
a half brother, three half sisters, and a step sister. But
then did say my dad was fertile.
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