In last week’s blog I was speaking about how London’s buses are a great place to see Londoners in action: You have people from all walks of life sitting together and sometimes funny or lovely things can happen. This week I want to pay tribute to the Routemaster.

You don’t see many Routemaster buses these days:they have been replaced by the more modern double-deckers. So what’s the difference between these two types of buses? Well, when boarding a double decker bus you must enter at the front and pay the driver or swipe your Oyster card at the front. On the Routemaster, there were no doors at the back: you just jumped on and the conductor would come to check your ticket or sell you one. This, of course, is why Transport for London replaced them: it costs less to run them as you only have to pay one person rather than two.

I think this is a terrible pity, because the Routemaster was a much more ‘Old-world,’ vehicle and as a result had a lot more charm. In films made in London in the 60s, 70s and 80s you would see characters jumping on and off, like the trams in San Francisco and it just looked, well, cool.

Routemasters were so cool they were even mentioned in a Beatles song. Paul McCartney’s section of the classic A day in the Life includes the lines,

Found my coat and grabbed my hat

Made the bus in seconds flat

Found my way upstairs and had a smoke (Ah, the good old days!)

Somebody spoke and I went into a dream.

There was something so romantic about jumping on a Routemaster while it was already moving:it was illegal , but everybody did it anyway. I remember a few years ago, I’d just gone on a very first date with a girl I really fancied and she was waiting at the bus stop with me. My bus arrived. She kissed me goodbye. The kiss went on a bit longer than  expected and the bus started to pull away. I ran like crazy, timed my jump perfectly and said to myself,’If she’s still looking when I turn around and wave in ten seconds, then this could be the beginning of something.’ I turned. She was still looking. We’re now very happily married.

If you want to recapture the magic and romance of the Routemaster days, you can still jump aboard the Number 8 bus which runs through Knightsbridge, past Hyde Park Corner and on to Piccadilly. Mayor Boris Johnson says he plans to re-introduce these buses on to the streets of London. I, for one, fervently hope this happens.

Mike

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 20th, 2008 at 6:38 pm and is filed under The English Studio news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.