We recall buses as rounders or squares

“IT’S a rounder, Dad, a rounder!” The excited voices were those of my sister, Kathleen, and myself, as we saw the single-decker green Corporation bus, coming down Littleover Lane.

Dad was in the garden. Our vantage point was the front gate of Brunton House, a semi-detached house on the right going down the lane. We lived there with our parents, Edward and Eleanor Highton.

We had noticed that everything about this particular type of bus was round, from the driver’s half-cab to the air extractor which spun merrily in the breeze on the roof.

There was another type of bus which was all square, from the driver’s cab to the air vent which was also square.

As well as admiring the driver we looked up to the conductor who pencilled in important numbers, while standing nonchalantly at the back of the bus. Occasionally he would stroll forward to say something important to the driver by pulling open a flap.

The conductor had a ticket board on which the tickets were held in place by elastic which slotted into the board.

The tickets were all the colours of the rainbow. One destination needed a crimson ticket. A return would be a crimson ticket with a purple stripe down the middle. Boys who collected discarded tickets regarded this return as the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Each collector had his own board, elasticated, of course.

Besides the Corporation buses, there were the blue Trent buses which served places like Allestree. They were made by a different firm and had different engines from the Corporation buses. Even the ticket boards were different, the tickets being held in place by a spring. Collectors never tried to copy these boards

Once in London my dad asked a conductor to let the family off the bus at Selfridges as he wanted to buy me a conductor’s outfit. Quick as a flash, the Cockney conductor’s response was “Don’t buy him a real one, Governor. This bleedin’ job is no good!”

Michael Highton, Sunderland