Midland Red

Cars being scarce, everything had to be lugged home the hard way, with the help of the jolly old Midland Red. Nothing in Redditch was on the level, you either went up for Headless Cross, or down for the others. Every bus carried a big brass scotch. This shining brass wedge looking for all it was worth like a wedge of cheese, was carried inside the luggage hole. On occasions such as struggling up Back Hill at the top of Ipsley Street, the bus would run out of steam and all the passengers would alight on the instruction of the conductress. She invariably resembled a tub of lard from which sprouted stunted thick bristly legs. Wearing a peaked cap and an abundance of facial hair, ticket machine under her arm, she stood all of four feet tall on a milk crate. The supple curled leather straps going diagonally across her chest were there both to hold her together and to attach her sword to during times of rebellion and unrest. Having cleared the bus of passengers who would now walk for a hundred yards or so, she would blow her whistle and the with much revving and jerking the bus would grind away in bottom gear in clouds of smoke and burning clutch material. Drivers in those days were invariably big people with a shock of greying hair and a red blotchy face. I suppose that sitting next to a clattering Gardener Diesel all day, crunching gears and wrenching that huge great steering wheel was bound to make them look miserable and bloated! The thick acrid fug of cigarette smoke which filled their cab, usually knocked a dirty great hole in their life expectancy

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