The 44 Bus
One of my most abiding and life-affirming memories of life at SA was the habit of boys showering their bus passes from the top deck of the 44, so that those still wrestling to get on could do so without having to pay. Even at the time I recognised this to be a act of collective solidarity. The first part of the journey home therefore invariably involved the distribution of passes back to their rightful owners! As I recall, this was especially upsetting to the bus conductor, who was a particularly surly and bad tempered so and so who always went out of his way to give us a hard time. Nice to remember times when we looked after each other.
Whilst on the subject of the 44 bus, does anyone remember a mass strip on the upper deck, after having been caught in the famous torrential downpour of summer '76?
An incident on the 44 bus going home, where the
upper deck were being particularly rowdy, and the driver rang
ahead for an Inspector to get on to sort us out.
To be fair, the inspector initially tried to take the names only
of those boys the driver thought had been naughty, but the first
two boys he took the names of were (genuinely):
Michael Smith,
Ivan Jones.
On hearing "Smith and Jones", the Inspector thought he
was being conned, blew his stack, and ended up reporting the
whole of the upper deck to the head the following day. (I think
this was at the time when Moody was the Head, after Spike).
The window being pushed out of the top deck of the 44 in Northenden
Trips to the bus depot to be reprimanded by the inspector for appalling behaviour