The bus driver is the first in a series of ‘Other People’s Jobs’ focussing on local people’s occupations. It ran weekly in The Stamford Mercury from 1934 to 1935.
“Friend of Kiddies and Older Folk.
And Messenger of all!
How would you like to be a bus driver? Leaving apart the purely technical side of driving, his knowledge of the engine and of what to do when things go wrong, or the arm-aching job of ‘swinging it’ on a cold morning, he has one of the most fascinating occupations of any of us.
A least, that’s how it seems after a run to Oundle and back, chosen haphazardly from the many services operating from Stamford by Mr. W. H. Patch’s Cream Buses.
All along the route the Cream bus is a familiar thing, and the driver a man respected. It may be Tom Helstrip one day, or Joe Colston another, but either is a well-known figure behind the wheel – the friend of kiddies and older folk and messenger of all!
These fellows have some queer jobs commissioned from, say, either Wittering, Wansford, Yarwell, Nassington, Fotheringhay or Tansor, through which they pass four times a day on their journeys to and from Oundle. When they set out from opposite the George Hotel, Stamford, they never know what they may be asked to do during the day or who they may be carrying.
Of course, they do know that each week-day morning of the year there is a parcel for Wansford, and a morning paper for Thornhaugh. There they have found that, by driving the bus near the cabin – simply by leaning out, unlatching a window, and passing the paper through to a table!
QUEER CARGO
Sometimes, their passengers a people who enjoy a remarkably pretty run who like to learn of Mary Queen of Scots at Fotheringhay, or of the old church at Tansor, with its original pews from Fotheringhay church. Then your driver becomes a historian.
At other times, an anxious parent entrusts an inrfant to their care – ‘and be sure he gets off at so and so!’
Sometimes there are jolly fishing or picnic parties aboard, or passengers to the Burghley gold course, sightseers to Wittering aerodrome, visitors to the Wansford riding school, or schoolboys for Stamford.
But it is in dealing with messages and parcels that these drivers excel. Often they are asked to fetch cigarettes, and accumulators from the charging depot. In the summer-time they bring as many as 70 or 80 cream cheeses from Thornhaugh to Stamford, and, frequently, for a Wansford hostelry, they get requests to fetch a barrel of beer from an Oundle brewery.
It is quite a common thing, too, for housewives to ask them to bring their groceries, to order the Sunday joint, to visit the doctor’s surgery for a bottle of medicine or to call at the veterinary surgeon’s for something to cure an animal.
And all the time they have between entering and leaving Oundle in which to undertake these tasks is 15 minutes! Here, at least, is one of those ‘other people’s jobs’ nicely spiced with the spirit of adventure.”
The Stamford Mercury, 7th December, 1934.