Category Archives: The story of my life!

Questions, Answers, and the Wild One

Posted on by Steve Higgins

quotescover-JPG-88I don’t know if you ever used to watch that classic TV show The Prisoner. Number 6 played by Patrick McGoohan was trapped in a mysterious village and those who ran the place wanted to know the answer to one question: why did number 6 resign?
Prisoner_smThey had a saying in the village-‘Questions are a burden to others, answers a prison to one’s self’. The village was a surreal place and number 6 became increasingly paranoid in that sinister, almost sci-fi world and although he came close to answering the resignation question a few times, ultimately, he never did.
The thing is, as we go innocently about our business, there are plenty of people wanting to upset us by asking questions.

There was a time, just after I left school when I thought great; exams over, won’t be answering any more questions like that again. The thing is though, exams of one form or another are sent to try us throughout our life. Trying for a new job is a form of examination, there’s the application form to fill in which is always pretty hard work and if you get through that then there’s the interview to contend with.

Just recently I applied for a job as a team manager and while I wasn’t totally successful I did end up with a temporary promotion, filling in as team manager for two months. Sounded great at first but then there was a whole lot of people management and paperwork that I didn’t realise would be so hard, or so time consuming. No more quiet moments in which to churn out my blogs!

Still, this recent promotion got me thinking about interviews in the past and where I’d gone wrong. One was an Inspector’s job when I worked for GM Buses. The job I wanted was a post at Hyde road depot which was only ten minutes away from my home. I didn’t have a car but there was a great bus service so it would have been perfect. There were two Inspector posts available, one at Hyde road and another at our Tameside depot in Rochdale.
During the interview in which I thought I’d done pretty well, the three interviewers asked me to step outside. I returned a few minutes later and they asked me, “Steve, what would you say if we offered you the Rochdale Inspectors job?”
Well, that was the job I didn’t want. I wanted the other one, the one that was only ten minutes away and another thing, at the time I didn’t have a car so how could I get to Rochdale? So what did I do? Well, I’m sure you can guess. As usual I took the worst possible option: I turned them down!
Even as I walked away I knew I’d done the wrong thing and every time I have an interview I think of that moment. Still, in a way that’s a good thing. Remember the mistakes you’ve made and move on. Do the right thing next time. Be positive.

Another time I applied for a job at Manchester Airport. It wasn’t a great job but it looked interesting and I hoped I might have passed the interview but it floundered when the interview veered off into an odd direction.
“How will you get to work?” asked the interviewer.
“By car.”
“But what if your car breaks down?”
“Well, I could always use the wife’s car.”
“But what if she needs it for work?”
“Well, I could get the bus.”
“But you might have to start work at 5 in the morning.”
“Well the first bus from Stockport is 04:15 in the morning.”
“The buses don’t run that early.”
“Yes they do, I know as I currently work in bus timetable enquiries.”
“Well suppose they are on strike?”
“Well I’d have to go on my bicycle.”
“What would happen if you had a flat tyre?”
I paused for a moment then asked: “Are you joking?”
Needless to say, I didn’t get that job either. I didn’t understand the interviewer’s line of questioning at all and a little frustration had crept in to my answers.

Now, in the 21st century questions are a part of life. They come at you when you are least expecting them. This morning, I was trying to get ready for work and the phone started ringing so I ran through to the lounge to pick it up. The caller said, “Good morning? Is that Mr Higgins?”
“Yes, speaking.”
“Mr Higgins, do you own your own home?”
“Excuse me?” I ask.
“Do you own your own home?”
“None of your business” I answered as I put the phone down, rather offended at this intrusion into my private life and not only that, I’d put my toast back in the toaster as it wasn’t quite done enough and when I legged it back to the kitchen it popped up black and burnt! Not happy!

When I was younger and working in city centre Manchester I used to spend my lunchtimes either in a pub somewhere down Oxford road or sometimes I’d sit in St Peter’s Square if it was nice and sunny and eat my sandwiches there. The annoying thing was I’d usually have to run a gauntlet of canvassers asking me questions.
“Excuse me, if I told you of a new bank account that would save you money would you change accounts?”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“You wouldn’t? Why not?”
Nowadays I’d just say ‘none of your business’ but back then when I was young and polite I’d tend to try and justify myself and say why I was happy with my bank and why I didn’t want to change and so on. If I had been number 6 I’d have probably said ‘I will not be pushed, filed, briefed, debriefed or numbered!’
As it was, by the time I’d got rid of the interviewer that would be half of my dinner break gone!

marlon-brando-392902_640Perhaps my old school friend Clive Hornchurch (once again, names have been changed to protect the innocent!) felt a certain amount of frustration too. He was by far the brainiest lad in the school and was constantly upheld as an example to other pupils. I remember once Miss Tyass, our history teacher telling me how hard I would have to work to pass the History O-level and perhaps I should use Clive’s notebook to revise from because he himself wouldn’t need it!
Yes Clive was the man; every teacher knew he would pass with flying colours and perhaps be off to university, if such a thing was possible from our urban jungle roughhouse comprehensive school.
On the day of our O -level examinations Clive added his name to the top of his paper, and then put down his pen. His blank test paper was passed in and naturally he failed. I often wonder what became of him and why he did what he did. Perhaps he was frustrated; perhaps he was tired of being held up as a shining example of all that is brilliant in a school boy. I sometimes wonder if I had asked him what he was rebelling against would he have answered, like Marlon Brando in The Wild One; “What have you got?”

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Breakfast TV and The Apollo Moon Landing.

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I’ve always been a sci-fi fan but when I was a child growing up in the 1960’s I was probably more interested in science fact. The sixties was the time of the space race and the Gemini and Apollo missions were covered in great detail on TV and when I say covered I mean full features and bulletins and not just a one minute item on the news.

I don’t know if you can imagine the excitement of a twelve year old boy, getting up for school one morning to find the TV on and Neil Armstrong walking on the moon when the usual TV broadcast at that time would have been the test card! Those black and white ghostlike TV images enthralled me that July morning and how my Mother eventually managed to pack me off to school I do not know.

The moon landing was covered on UK TV by both the BBC and ITV although in our house we watched the BBC coverage exclusively. Cliff Michelmore was the main presenter but it was James Burke who explained all the technical stuff.
The launch of the Apollo missions was always a highlight for me. Although I enjoyed all the other elements too like the crew broadcasts from space, and those from Mission Control in Houston especially when a major decision had to be taken, for instance, ‘are we ok for lunar trajectory insertion?’ And the answers would come from the experts around the control room:

Mission_Control_Celebrates_After_Conclusion_of_the_Apollo_11_Lunar_-_GPN-2002-000033

Mission Control: Image courtesy wikipedia.

Capcom? (Capsule communications)Go!
Retro? (Retrofire officer)Go!
Fido? (Flight Dynamics Officer)Go!
Guidance? (Flight Guidance Officer)Go!
Booster? (Booster Systems Engineer) Go!
And so on round the room.

Now the Space Shuttle has been mothballed there are very few launches from Cape Canaveral. (Originally I had written Cape Kennedy but as usual after finishing writing I did a quick search on the internet to check my facts and found, surprisingly, that Cape Kennedy reverted back to its original name of Cape Canaveral in 1973. I never knew that!) But another highlight of TV space coverage was in 1968 when Apollo 8 made the first manned trip to the Moon. Apollo 8’s mission was not to land but to fly to the Moon, orbit and return to Earth. The three crew members were Commander Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders.

There were numerous broadcasts from the crew, especially during their orbits of the moon and they sent back to mission control their impressions of the lunar surface, Lovell commenting that “the Moon looks like plaster of Paris or sort of a greyish beach sand.”
Every time the spacecraft passed behind the Moon radio transmissions were blacked out and the crew and ground control were relieved to hear each other’s voices once again when they came back, unscathed, from the far side of the Moon.

The crew of Apollo 8 were the first in history to see ‘earthrise,’ the Earth emerging from the lunar horizon. The crew all scrambled for their cameras but it was Anders who took the famous colour photo seen here.

297755main_gpn-2001-000009_full_0The most moving broadcast ever was when the crew read lines from the book of Genesis and Borman finished by saying “and from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas and God bless all of you – all of you on the good Earth.”
Every time I see a documentary about the Apollo programme that includes that transmission, I can feel myself taken back to Christmas of 1968 and once again I become that same small boy, glued to our old black and white TV set. Incredibly, NASA was hit by a lawsuit because of this by an atheist who objected to astronauts broadcasting religious activities while in space.

Back to 1969 though as the Eagle, Apollo 11’s lunar module piloted by Neil Armstrong dropped down towards the Moon an alarm sounded in the spacecraft. Ed Aldrin passed the information back to earth; “Alarm 1201”.
Armstrong carried on, dropping the craft ever so closer to the Moon’s surface but again that alarm sounded. What was it? Well believe it or not, the Eagle’s on-board computer, which had a memory less than that of your mobile phone had locked up with an overload of data. Armstrong switched over to manual control and landed the Eagle, dodging an area in the Sea Of Tranquillity littered with boulders without computer assistance. His remaining fuel supply when Eagle touched down was just 30 seconds!

Armstrong was the first man to step out of the hatch and to drop down onto the lunar surface and I should imagine everyone is familiar with his famous words: ‘That’s one small step for man and one giant leap for mankind.’ However Armstrong’s first step out onto the Moon wasn’t small at all, because the Lunar Module landed so gently that the shock absorbers hadn’t compressed. His first step out onto the Moon was almost a four foot jump onto the lunar surface. TV cameras beamed the event to viewers back on Earth and along with myself, almost 600 million people watched Neil Armstrong walk on the Moon. It seems incredible to me even now, that back then in 1969, I was getting ready for school, eating my porridge or cornflakes and watching science fiction become science fact.

I must remember to ask my Mum though, how did she manage to get me off to school on the day Neil Armstrong walked on the moon?

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The Trials and Tribulations of a Coach driver

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Quite a few times travelling on the motorway I’ve seen some really nice looking futuristic coaches. Back in the early eighties I had a short spell as a coach driver working for National Travel but the coaches we drove were not quite so exotic.

picture courtesy wikipedia

picture courtesy wikipedia

Today’s coaches are limited to seventy mph but back then our coaches could do eighty or even ninety miles per hour. The job for us drivers on the Manchester to London route was all about getting down to Victoria Coach Station as quickly as possible, parking up at Battersea coach park then getting down to the pub. One of the problems of running at high speeds, especially in the summer, was that engine temperatures soared and we had to slow down. One day when, once again, I was the last to arrive in London and consequently got the worst hotel room, the one that nobody wanted, one of my fellow drivers asked me if I had used the heaters.

“The heaters? What, in this heat?”

“Yes,” said my colleague. “When your temperature goes up slap the heaters on and you’ll see that temperature dial drop right down.”

Well, anything’s worth a try I thought so the next time I was on the London route I was hurtling along, way ahead of everyone and the temperature dial rose up into the red. Instead of slowing down I popped on the heaters and like magic the temperature gauge dropped down from the red into the black.

When I finally pulled up into the coach station in London I looked up into the mirror and there were my assembled passengers looking as though they had spent the trip in a steam room.

Hey, at least I got the pick of the hotel rooms though!

My fellow drivers and I were booked in at a hotel not far from Battersea coach park and in the evening we would assemble in a pub called the Drum for drinks. Some of the guys had told me about a group of ladies there who used to favour the coach drivers. They were known as ‘the heavy gang’ and for some reason I got the impression of them as being movie starlets, or fashion models. Big mistake! When I was first introduced to one of these ladies with, I might add, the whispered comment ‘she’s a right goer’ I was, well, let’s say disappointed. The epithet ‘heavy gang’ was clearly a reference to the ladies weight rather than their passionate nature as I had mistakenly believed. The Drum was not for me and from then on I rarely frequented its portals.

On one particular London trip I fell into the age old trick of thinking I had begun to actually know London. We were diverted down a different route because of road works and just as I thought we were back on the normal road I looked about and realised to my horror that I didn’t recognise any of the roads. Just then a young girl came down to the front and told me I was going the wrong way and I would have to turn back somewhere. I turned off the main road into a housing estate and just after completing a difficult three point turn (it was a 57 seater coach after all!) the same girl came back and asked if she could get off. I said sorry, no, I could only stop at authorised stops. She looked at me and pointed to the door of a house only yards away, “but that’s where I live!” She gave me that sad imploring look she must have used on many a coach driver so I opened the doors and let her off. Perhaps she wasn’t used to kindly northern coach drivers but whatever the reason she planted a huge kiss on my astonished lips, told me I was wonderful, and nipped off the coach. As I was finishing the three point turn and straightening the coach up she went into her front door and waved back with a huge smile. The rest of the passengers, subjected to this untimely diversion were not so happy.

After meeting the ‘heavy gang’ I tended to drink in the pub next door to the Drum. They had a pool table and I used to put a marker down and have a game. On this particular night a driver called Freddie came in (not his real name!) He was a really over the top friendly guy and seemed to be very concerned that I was on my own playing pool. He brought a few of the other National Travel drivers in and we all had a chat and a nice evening. Later on he asked me if I fancied going on to a club. Great stuff I thought. Here I am, a northern lad, clubbing down in London. I even imagined mydelf bumping into the girl I had dropped off earlier!

One of the other guys said to me quietly “Are you going to this club?”

“Yes,” I replied. “You fellas up for it too?”

“Well, not really, “they said. “Do you know what sort of a club it is?”

“What sort of a club? Well, I assume it’s a nightclub.”

“Yes, it is. But it’s a gay club.”

“What?” I said.

If you don’t believe it they said, ask Freddie.

Well, I asked Freddie and it was a gay club and Freddie turned out to be the resident gay driver at National Express. He was a really nice guy but I was unable to return his affections. It’s nice to be wanted of course, especially when you are the new guy but it was hard work making Freddie understand that gay clubs weren’t my scene.

The next day when I arrived back in Manchester the Boss called me over. Apparently he had been inundated with complaints about my conduct on the trip down to London.

“What?” I asked, incredulously, “me?”

“Yes,” he said. “What’s all this about you going off route and dropping your girlfriend off at her front door in London?”

That one took some explaining!

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Be nice to people on your way up, because you’ll meet them on your way down!

Posted on by Steve Higgins

quotescover-jpg-771

I’m not totally sure of the origin of that quote. I personally remember it from one of David Niven’s classic books about the golden age of Hollywood but when I looked it up it is attributed to quite a few people, Walter Winchell, Jimmy Durante or even George Raft for instance so who really said it first I can’t say.

Many years ago I used to be a bus driver. In fact I started work on the buses at the very tail end of the driver and conductor years and one of my colleagues was a guy called Neil. Now Neil was a nice fella but he was also a very rum turkey indeed. Way back then there were conductors like me who were honest, well reasonably honest. There was always the passenger who paid right at the last minute as he was getting off the bus and there wouldn’t be time to snap off a ticket. Those few pence went into the drivers’ and conductors’ brew fund and when we stopped at the next canteen (back in the late seventies and early eighties there was always another canteen on the horizon) I’d get the brews in with those few pence. Of course there were conductors who made a habit of approaching customers who were just getting off the bus and they made a regular brew fund out of those last minute bus fares. Others, those more dishonest ones, and I am sad to say Neil fell into that category, went out of their way not to give out tickets or even issued blank tickets. 

One day Neil got his hands burned. He’d issued a blank ticket to a customer and who should board the bus but the fraud squad. They checked the tickets and pulled Neil up regarding the blank ticket. Neil went to a tribunal where he was accused and faced the sack but an incredible stroke of luck came his way. The fraud squad lost the evidence. They’d misplaced the offending blank ticket and Neil managed to hang onto his job with a stern warning. The fraud squad Inspector, a not very pleasant chap nicknamed Himmler, came up to Neil and told him in no uncertain terms, he had him in his sights and one day he’d get him.

Well, Neil went on to become a driver and then a one man driver and by then, as far as I know, he had left his nefarious past behind him. Still, you never could tell. Some busmen took fare fiddling to a fine art form and it wasn’t always the ones like Neil who were the perpetrators. One guy, I’ll call him Arthur, spent a pretty uneventful life working for the bus company. He never upset anyone, was always on time and was rarely off sick. He was very good with money, and apparently invested his bus driving pay packet well. Of course he was one of the first one man drivers and on a good wage. Anyway, he did really well for himself and owned a nice holiday home in Prestatyn. Good on him you might think. Then he dropped dead one day of a heart attack and a few weeks later his widow came into the depot with Arthur’s spare ticket machine. Spare ticket machine? What spare ticket machine? Nobody had a spare ticket machine! Has the penny has dropped yet? Arthur was issuing tickets and taking fares for himself! Somewhere along the way Arthur had ‘acquired’ another ticket machine. Nice scam. No wonder he had a holiday home in Prestatyn! At least the Depot Inspectors didn’t tell the wife.

Anyway, back to Neil although before going completely to Neil I have to tell you this, Just on the A6 in Levenshulme, we had a small busmen’s canteen. The thing about this canteen was that if you were on the Manchester to Hazel Grove or Stockport route you usually stopped here for your breakfast or lunch. Now if you were going towards Stockport the canteen was actually just by two double yellow lines. Just past the canteen was a turn in to the bus parking bays but if you were due for a meal break and your bus was carrying on to Stockport you had to go through the traffic lights and stop in the lay by, leave your bus and then walk back to the canteen. Now, what most people did was stop on the double yellows then shout into the canteen for the new crew. It was wrong but that’s what we did and no one made a fuss. Anyway, one day an Inspector’s job came available. Various people applied but the guy who got the job was Neil and he decided that his first order of business as an Inspector was to stop buses parking on those double yellow lines! He did so and made himself a very unpopular fellow indeed. He’d wait by the canteen door and ‘book’ any driver stopping on the yellow lines and plenty of times myself and other crews would be coming along, ready to stop and we’d see Neil waving us on so we’d carry on, through the lights and on to the layby.

Now here’s where Neil’s past caught up with him. In those days a new appointment was probationary for six months and Neil went along to an Inspectors’ meeting chaired by one of the senior Inspectors who just happened to be, yes you’ve guessed it, it was Himmler. Now Himmler took Neil to one side. Asked what he was doing in Inspector’s uniform and by the end of the week Neil was back driving his bus and someone else was in charge at Lloyd road.

Neil of course, had upset many people in his short term as an Inspector and he had forgotten the golden rule: Be nice to people on the way up because, well, you know the rest. No one ever spoke to Neil again and he cut a sad figure, shunned by his workmates and always sitting alone in the canteen. Shortly after he packed the job in.

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David Cassidy and a Haircut in 1975

Posted on by Steve Higgins

quotescover-JPG-61Take a look at the photo just below. You wouldn’t think a young lad with all that hair would one day, well, not have it. Especially if that lad had really thick luxuriant hair. Well, you just wouldn’t would you? steve 1970sThe fact of the matter is, that picture is me, my former self, a painfully shy teenage youth who would one day discover, to his utter shock and horror, that he was losing his hair! It actually happened when I was nineteen and I was working in city centre Manchester and decided I was going to have a really top notch hair cut and try a proper salon: Not the usual barber’s shop I used to go to, so one day back in . . 1975, I think it was, I went to a place called Paul Brendon’s hair design on Oxford road and asked for a haircut that was pretty popular at the time. It was the hairstyle favoured by David Cassidy who was a seventies female heart throb and although I wouldn’t have admitted it then, well, I thought he looked pretty cool. David had long hair –hey, it was 1975! – parted in the middle, so that was what I asked for. I went for the full monty; shampoo, cut and blow dry, and at the end of it I thought it looked pretty good, but as I was leaving, the barber (sorry, hair stylist) said to me, “better watch out, your hair’s getting a little thin on top!”

image courtesy wikipedia

image courtesy wikipedia

Well I paid up and left the salon and tried to get my head round that last statement. ‘My hair’s going a little thin on top’ the stylist had said. A little thin? Wonder what he meant? Of course, with such a luxuriant growth of hair (take another look at the picture) he couldn’t really mean I was losing my hair, could he? So, what on earth did he mean? After a while it came to me, he meant the individual strands of hair were thin rather than thick! I had heard talk of products like volumisers and stuff, maybe that is what I needed. Looking back it’s sad to see how I was unable to face the obvious truth; that I had begun to lose my hair. It took me a lot of years to get used to it but now, over thirty years later, well I suppose I finally have, I think!

Nowadays hair salons are a distant dream to me. Once every six weeks or so, I pop down into St Annes, and go into whichever barbers has no one waiting. (Believe me, when you have hair like mine that can be cut in ten minutes flat or less, you do not want to wait half an hour while some long haired nerd has his hair trimmed and blow dried and God knows what else done to it!) I ask for a number 2, the barber gets stuck in and then five to ten minutes later I am good to go, all neat and trimmed and with hair that does not need a drier or even a comb for that matter.

I wonder though if some miracle cure came out that would restore my hair and I mean really restore my hair, fully guaranteed, not some rip off product that doesn’t deliver, would I pay a fortune for it? Well, would I sell the car and take out a loan to get it?

Are you joking? Do you want a serious answer? Of course I would!

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7 Crazy Calls to the Bus Information Line!

Posted on by Steve Higgins
Original image courtesy pixabay.com

Original image courtesy pixabay.com

I’ve written before about my friend and colleague Mister Nasty. We worked in the GM buses control room years ago and Nasty was the man to pass your calls to if your had any problem callers, he’d soon sort them out!

Photo Credit: North Wales Police via Compfight cc

Photo Credit: North Wales Police via Compfight cc

I was rummaging through a box of old stuff ages ago and I found a list he’d made of silly calls! Scroll down to find some of the better ones! I should add firstly that the picture to the right came from a web page that provides royalty free pictures and in no way resembles the GM Buses enquiry room. Imagine a scruffy office full of cigarette smoke, old newspapers and discarded tea cups and you’re on the way to getting the general idea!  We worked with a bunch of timetables clipped into big files and all in alphabetical order and a big bus route map on our desks then one day you’d get a call asking for a bus to Rochdale so you’d open the R for Rochdale folder and find B for Bolton because someone, usually the person sat killing themselves laughing opposite, had re-arranged your timetables during your tea break!

Seated next to me was Dave with a perpetual cigarette in his mouth. (As you can tell this was the early nineties, just before all this politically correct non smoking stuff!) Across from me was Mister Nasty and then Angela and Katie who spent most of the shift chatting to either each other or their friends. On the other side was Camilla whose nickname was PMT and could easily go off on a complete wobbler depending on the time of the month. Jeff, a pleasant enough chap who had lost his job as a driver due to some unexplained medical condition was next. Last of all and sat at the end next to Jeff was Norm, my best friend on the team. Norm was a nice guy but you had to be on the ball with him because if you weren’t he’d pull some trick on you like dialling in on an outside line and pretend to be a customer and then start an argument with you or, like he once did, pretend to be a member of the public who had put a carpet on a bus then followed on a bicycle but the bus was too fast and got away from him! Yes, you had me going then Norm, where ever you are these days!

Dave, the perpetual smoker, was a dour, straight to the point sort of guy. He’d get a call about a bus to Stockport from Manchester and he’d quickly reply, “The 192 service from Piccadilly sir, every ten minutes starting from 07.30 in the morning.” Then if you had nothing else to ask he’d give you the chop, job done and was ready for the next call.

PMT was slightly different. She’d answer the call by saying, “nice day for a trip to Stockport. Are you going to the market? Oh it’s a really good market there, and it’s all under cover in case the weather turns bad . .” And she’d go on and on.

One day, after a really busy session, I think it was a bank holiday or something, PMT must have been feeling really pleased with herself because she asked the inspector who had taken the most calls. The inspector that day was a really nice guy called ‘leave it wi’ me’ because if you ever asked him to sort anything out for you, he’d reply ‘leave it wi’ me’ and of course, never do anything. On this day he asked us all to hang about for a minute while he asked the ancient computer to throw up the figures. PMT was sure she had taken the most calls but it turned out to be Dave, yes dour Dave who answered the question then cut straight to the next call while PMT was still chatting. Well, PMT let off the most fearsome screaming wobbler, told ‘leave it wi’ me’ he didn’t know his ‘arse from his elbow’ and stormed off leaving the rest of us in a fit of laughter. I didn’t stop laughing until Normy got the beers in at the pub over the road!

GN BusesAnyway, as promised, here’s a few snippets from Nasty’s list:

 

GM operator: “Hello GM Buses.”

Caller: “Can you speak up? I’m partially sighted.”

–

GM operator: “Hello GM Buses.”

Caller: “My dog got on the 192 at Stockport. Has he got off at Hazel Grove yet?”

–

GM operator: “Hello GM Buses.”

Caller: “Can I use a birthday card as proof of age?”

–

GM operator: “Hello GM Buses.”

Caller: “My boyfriend has left his trousers and underpants on one of your buses!”

–

GM operator: “Hello GM Buses.”

Caller: “What time are the buses to Manchester from Roe Green on a Sunday?”

GM Operator: “They are 15 minutes past the hour at Roe Green post office.”

Caller: “They can’t be!”

GM Operator: “Why not?”

Caller: “The post office is closed on Sundays!”

–

GM operator: “Hello GM Buses.”

Caller: “What time is the night bus to Pilsworth?”

GM Operator: “Sorry, we don’t do a night bus to Pilsworth.”

Caller: Well, how much is the fare then?

–

GM operator: “Hello GM Buses.”

Caller: “What’s the fare to Oldham for a normal person?”

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What your Mother never told you about Jason King’s tie

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Like many people I’ve got reminders and bookmarks all over my digital life both on and off the internet. I got hooked on e-bay some years ago, had a big buying spree then gradually settled down and instead of buying anything and everything began to for look for things I’m interested in. I get e-mail alerts about many things; books, motor sport memorabilia, and so on and a while ago I got an alert about a DVD box set I’d fancied for a long while. It was Department ‘S’, the TV series that introduced Jason King (remember him?) to the world. Department S was made in 1969 and was produced by ITC, a company founded by TV mogul Lew Grade and the show was the brainchild of Monty Berman and Dennis Spooner who together made a string of action and adventure series in the sixties and seventies like The Saint, Randall and Hopkirk, The Baron, The Champions and a spin-off from Department S, Jason King. All these series were shot like feature films on 35mm film and that is the reason why they look shiny and new today, available on DVD box sets.

Jason King

Jason King

Jason King was played by Peter Wyngarde and Wyngarde used all his own clothes in his portrayal of the character. In the late sixties and early seventies ties were becoming bigger, trousers and jacket lapels were flaring and Peter Wyngarde brought this all to the TV screen with his characterisation.

I was a school kid in 1969 and we kids all loved Jason King and his flamboyant outfits and we went out of our way to get a giant tie knot, just like the one Jason had in ‘Department S.’ Most of the kids got the big knot by tying their ties way down at the fat end of the tie making their ties short but at least with a big knot. I got some help with my tie from an unexpected source: my Mum!

We were watching Department S one day and I was wishing out loud for a big fat tie like that and she said to me “You could make one yourself. It’s easy.”

“Easy?” I said. “How?”

“Well, all you need is another tie to go inside the first one and make it bigger.” Sounds good I thought but how do you get one tie inside another? My Mum showed me how with a big safety-pin! What you had to do was get your second tie, the one that needs to go inside the other, pin the safety-pin to it and then you can thread it through the other one, manipulating it along with the safety-pin which you can feel through the material.

I dug out an old tie and threaded it through my school tie, took out the safety-pin and then tied my tie in the usual way. Result; one huge knot that Jason King himself would be pleased with.

The next day I went into school wearing my new fashionable tie and half the school –or so it seemed to me- were stunned by my trendy new school tie. Where did I get it from? How did I get such a knot? Did I tie it in a special way?

I remember once after games, getting changed in the changing rooms and everyone turned to watch as I fastened my tie. There was me, fastening the tie in the mirror with all my school mates watching. I had become a sort of mini school celebrity: The kid with the trendy tie!

“Here it comes,” said someone as I made the final tie of the knot, “Super knot!”

Well, my fifteen minutes of fame came, went, and vanished as other people worked out how to make their own special ‘super knots.’ Jason King went on to star in his own spin-off TV series then he too vanished into TV’s Golden past. Fashion moved on and in the eighties ties went the other way; narrow thin ties were the norm. Trousers lost their flares, jacket lapels slimmed down once again. ‘Penny round’ shirts were forgotten but then, that’s the great thing about DVDs: pop your disc into the machine and you can experience it all again!

If you liked this nostalgic look at Jason King you’re sure to like my book. Look out for Floating in Space at amazon!

Floating in Space

Three School Teachers Who Changed My Life!

Posted on by Steve Higgins

quotescover-JPG-62Decisions. There’s a thing. Some decisions can change your whole life. Generally speaking there’s not a lot I would change about my past decisions, except for maybe some earlier crucial ones; some of the ones I made at school. Way back then, my two top subjects were English language and art. In fact, now I think of it, I was the toast of the art class. People loved my paintings and drawings and I loved art. Our art teacher was a guy called Mr Markland. He wasn’t a man with a great affinity for people. In fact he was a rather cool customer but I always liked him and got on well with him.

Another teacher, probably the most disliked teacher in the school was Mr Ashton, the metalwork teacher. He had a rather bad habit of getting very angry at his students and throwing whatever was handy at them. As this was the metalwork class that would be something metal, and heavy. Many a time a hammer or a chunk of metal flew past my head towards some offending pupil. What would have happened had he hit someone well I don’t know. Maybe he had a good aim and was choosing to deliberately miss students. Of course, that was an age free of the health and safety restraints that we currently endure.

Mr Markland was a superb artist. I remember one day sketching something. I think we had to produce some kind of large human figure, I had chosen a cowboy for some reason and Mr Markland took my pencil and started to make some gentle curves on the paper. He held the pencil not like someone would hold a pencil to write but in the way someone would hold a paintbrush, holding it lightly at the top and making these confident curves on the paper.  After a few moments the shape of the cowboy became apparent: The waistcoat, the bandana tied around the neck, the gun belt at an angle. The hat and so on. I have always wished I could draw like that.

One day there came the moment when we had to choose. Choose which subjects we wanted to study and to take forward to O level or beyond. When I look back now my thinking then was just, well, bonkers!

My number one love in those days was motor racing and I harboured some kind of distant idea of working in motor sport, of perhaps even being a racing driver. Problem number 1: we had no family car and my Dad couldn’t drive so any idea of doing what Jensen Button and his Dad later did in Karts went out of the window. Anyway, that’s why I chose metalwork because I thought I could become a mechanic, get work with some motor sporting garage and maybe break into motorsport like that. The thing was that when we came to choose our subjects it wasn’t just ‘I want to study this’ and ‘I want to study that’, it was a case of this OR that. Chemistry or biology for instance, you couldn’t do both. I wasn’t happy and it had come to a straight choice of metalwork or art. Foolishly, metalwork won. After all, a metalwork O level would help me get a job whereas an art O level, well, what could that do for me? (What a fool I was!)

One day I met Mr Markland in the corridor and he stopped me and said “Steve, you’re going the wrong way. We’ve moved to the new art room on the first floor.”

It was then I had to tell him. “Mr Markland, I’m going to the metalwork class.”

“Metalwork?”

“Yes. I’m in the metalwork class.” Clearly he didn’t understand. “I chose metalwork.”

Mr Markland looked as though he had been slapped in the face by a wet kipper. “You chose metalwork instead of art?”

“Yes,” I said meekly.

Mr Markland thought for a moment and then said, “I see,” and walked on. He never spoke to me again.

It would be nice to record that I excelled in metalwork, left school and became a mechanic for a formula one team. The fact is I hated metalwork although the hated Mr Ashton became a much nicer teacher now he knew (well, thought he knew) that I actually liked his class. After many years of hard graft I produced a metal bolt that was rather stiff. I thought I could attach it to the back door but when it was screwed to the door it proved rather difficult to open. One day my Mum told my Dad, “Get that bloody bolt off that door. I can’t get the door open in a morning!”

I gave up the idea of working in a formula one team. Instead I had a new vocation. I would become a journalist. I went to my careers teacher, Mr Sherrif and told him.

“So how are you going to do that then?” he said.

Wasn’t he the one who was supposed to tell me what to do?

“I’m not sure,” I answered.

“Ever thought of going to the Manchester Evening News?”

Now, that’s more like it. “That’s a good idea,” I said.

“Only they don’t take trainees.”

“I see.”

“Anyway, I’ve got just the thing for you.”

Mr Sherrif rummaged around on his desk, produced various papers, flicked through a notebook and dialled a number. After some idle chit chat he seemed to be arranging an appointment, I could hear my name mentioned and something about ‘nine thirty’ tomorrow. Of course, He’s onto the evening news. He’s got me a job interview, and to think people say Mr Sherrif is rubbish and all he ever does is get people interviews at Barclays Bank!

“There you are,” said Mr Sherrif when he put down the phone. He scribbled something on a slip of paper.

“Tomorrow at nine thirty. You know where Barclays bank is don’t you?”

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The Day the Cat War Started.

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Theday the car war started

Neighbours! Well, there’s a subject! Some years ago I moved into a place called Newton le-Willows. A nice enough friendly place, I thought, but it was a black cat that caused the end of our neighbourhood harmony.

Okay, here’s how it started; My neighbour was a guy called Tony and he and his wife were going on holiday and he asked me to look after his cat Blackie. It needed to be fed once a day, in the morning, for a week. OK, not a big deal and it put me right where I wanted to be with my neighbour: him owing me a big favour so ‘no problem’ I told him.

Day1

I’m up and showered and all ready for work and so I nip into next door’s and sort out the cat food. Tony has shown me where it’s all kept, which bowl to use and so on. I sort it all out, set it down on the mat and who is there waiting and purring? Not one but two cats. I thought there was only supposed to be one so do I do two bowls? No, he specified the cat food and showed me the bowl (the one bowl) so OK it’s sharing time for the cats and I’m off to work.

I jump in my van and I’m off and as I drive away there are the cats giving me a little catty wave from the kitchen window. Happy days.

Day 2

I mention sort of randomly as I’m off to work that there were two cats in next door’s house and my wife (now my former wife) says, ‘What!’ in a big sort of screamy, scary way and I’m thinking, ‘here we go, what have I done?’ The thing is there is only one cat living next door so I’m tasked to throw out the intruder cat and just to feed the main cat. So, in I goes and I don’t really know which is the proper cat and which is the cheeky intruder cat. Neither of them seemed to respond to the name ‘Blackie’ so sod it I thought. Cat food sorted -I’m off.

Once again as I drive off there are the two cats happily washing themselves in the kitchen window and as I passed by a revolutionary thought occurred to me. One of the cats was actually a black cat so it could be (sound of penny dropping) that he was Blackie and the other cat, the ginger cat was the cat interloper.

Day 3

Feeling a little bit like Sherlock Holmes and armed with this new deduction about ‘Blackie’ I popped into next door and chucked out ‘Ginger’, sorted out the cat food and then left for work. Was I dreaming or did I really see the two cats once again at the kitchen window? Did Ginger have a sort of ‘you’ll have to do better than that’ look on his face? Surely not!

Day 4

According to my (former) wife it was a major criminal offence to have a strange cat enter your neighbours’ house and scoff half the cat food, so once again I chucked out the ginger cat. I did think about locking the cat flap but feeling this could have repercussions in case Blackie wanted to exit the property I left it open. Driving off as usual I spied the two cats smiling happily from the kitchen window engaged in their morning feline ritual of washing themselves, only this time they seemed to have been joined by a third cat! Christ, I thought, hope the neighbours get back soon before a cat colony starts up in their house!

Day 8

Our neighbours returned from their break in foreign climes. I wasn’t sure about mentioning the intruding cat but what the heck; I told them anyway and they said not to bother, ‘that cat comes in all the time anyway. We’re sure its owners don’t feed it properly.’

Day 9

I was outside washing my van and had a chat with my neighbour Elaine, the lady who ran our neighbourhood watch group. I told her about the cat caper thinking it was a pretty funny story but she seemed rather shocked by it all. Well, humour wasn’t one of her strong points I thought as she marched off to see Stella, another neighbour from further up the avenue who I have to admit I wasn’t too fond off. As the afternoon wore on I noticed Stella storm past me and knock on next door’s and have something of a minor row with the occupants. She stormed off fuming and gave me a pretty black look when I offered a cheery “afternoon!”

Day 9, later.

Tony gave me something of a black look too and didn’t respond to my friendly wave. I did wonder if this was vaguely connected to the cat saga. No, surely not I thought. Later, Tony’s wife came round and told me through a veil of tears that Stella had knocked on their door and accused her and Tony of being ‘A pair of f**king catnappers!‘ It turned out that Stella owned the ginger cat and Tony’s wife wanted to know why I had even mentioned it to Stella. Well, I don’t even really know Stella I said, the only person I mentioned it to was Elaine. “What!’ fumed Tony’s wife. (Wish I could remember her name!) The next thing you know she storms across the road, bangs on the door and appears to be having it out with Elaine. I couldn’t hear what was said but there was a lot of finger pointing, some at my house, some at Blackie wandering innocently along the avenue, some at her house and some, in fact quite a lot now I think of it, at Stella’s house.

Day 10

A chance encounter at Tesco’s with Elaine. I’m scooting through the store, not really looking where I’m going as shopping is not high on my list of favourite activities and as I scoot along I’m throwing bread and milk and all sorts of stuff in my trolley when who should I bump into but Elaine.

“It wasn’t my fu**ing fault you know!” she said.

“That’s OK,” I told her, “I never look where I’m going with a shopping trolley!”

“I meant about the cat!” Elaine gave me a mean look and was gone, never to speak to me again.

Good job I didn’t mention that the third cat I saw in next door’s was hers!

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Flying, Technology, and British Summer Time.

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I really don’t like flying. I’ll tell you that straight out. The actual flying isn’t too bad, in fact some years ago I took some flying lessons so you can see that deep down I actually like flying but the thing I don’t like is, well, everything else:! Here’s a quick list: The airport is full of people. Crowds. The constant queuing. The checking in, the passport control. The boarding. When you finally get aboard the aircraft the small, cramped seats are even worse when you happen to be a big lump, like me. The pathetic microwaved ‘meals’ that are foisted upon us, and the scrum to leave the aircraft when you finally land. Yes, I think I’ve made myself clear on flying.

Picture courtesy wikipedia

Picture courtesy wikipedia

It’s a pity really about all the negatives because the invention of flying is something that is really wonderful and has enabled many people to travel the globe and see places they would otherwise never have even dreamt of seeing. Technology can bring great benefits. Take time for instance. The recording and controlling of time is so important in the modern world and it’s something we probably don’t even think about. Time is important in flying too. Flying schedules and timetables. Timings at busy airports; returning to Manchester last Sunday from Portugal, the airport was so busy we spent ten minutes circling around the sky while waiting for a spot to actually land. You could just imagine the poor guy in the control tower with a stack of aircraft wanting to land and him trying to time it all to perfection.

Here’s another thing about time: Greenwich Mean Time. Great, a world-wide standard for time but here’s another thing that sort of messes with that, it’s British Summer Time. Now, maybe you’ve started to see what I’m getting at, that bi-annual messing with our clocks and the hour going forward and then backward. I don’t get it, OK it means that we don’t have to go to work in the dark or come home in the dark or whatever but personally I’m willing to put up with that if it means not messing about with the time!

It just so happened that flying back from Portugal on Sunday to the UK coincided with the hour going back. Now, I know we’re mad enough to do this in the UK but as Sunday approached I started thinking, what about Portugal? Does the hour go back there? Yes it does actually. So, it’s stressful enough situation anyway but now we had to deal with another issue, putting the clocks back! Anyway, what time did we need to get up? First of all, we have to factor all the various problems in:

(1) Breakfast.

(2) Getting washed and dressed.

(3) Driving to the airport.

(4) Handing over the hire car and dealing with the actual people in the car hire place, and we know that this is not easy because it was pretty hard work getting the car in the first place.

(5) Checking in, finding our gate and going through security and all that stuff.

Now setting my alarm becomes a much bigger issue than it was before; do I put my phone back an hour and set the time I actually need to get up at, or do I leave the time on the phone and set the time an hour later? Now this is where technology tries to fox us. My mobile phone has a gimmick on it which automatically changes the time when the hour goes back! Great -but is it? Would it work? Could I trust this new technology? No, was the answer and so I disabled it, after all, I wasn’t going to chance missing my flight home.

The next morning when I awoke Liz’s alarm was going off but mine wasn’t. It all seemed kind of early and when I checked my phone to see what the problem was I saw that the time had gone back an hour -even though that option was supposed to be disabled! I checked with my Blackberry playbook and it had gone back an hour automatically also. Wait a minute! Had they both gone back automatically or was I an hour early? What time was it? I hated to admit it but Liz’s ancient old slider phone had actually woken us up at the correct time! Anyway, the good thing is that we made it to the airport pretty early and the people at the car hire place seemed to be pretty much on the ball, perhaps because I was bringing their car back safely despite all their horror stories of crashing and uninsured drivers and me not having enough insurance cover and so on. Anyway, I wasn’t expecting efficient service at that time in the morning so consequently we were even earlier than expected at the check in.

Pity about that extra-long wait in the packed departure lounge though! Personally I blame the car hire people.

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