Bill's book is fascinating because
it mirrors the hours in the canteen when the old hands would gather to swap
stories. That these stories related to life on the trams as much as the buses
may seem very dating now, but it also reflects the undying quality of the stories.
It does make me feel old, though, knowing that Liverpool's last tram ran only
three years before I joined the buses. It is an indication of Bill Peters' interest
in the job that he wangled a one-off duty guarding a tram before they finished.
It's that sort of interest in the job that shines through the pages of his book.
It seems ironic that Liverpool is now hitching its transportation future not
only to a new breed of tram,
but intends to crew it with a two-man team. The conductor returns.
Bill Peters' story of life on the buses is both poignantly familiar to me and,
at the same time, new and informative. As I say, Bill took a real interest in
what he did and in the broader aspects of the job and his book shows it. It
recalls for me many things I had forgotten and tells me very much more that
I never knew. I must confess to the enthusiasts that I didn't have that sort
of interest. To me, being on the buses was just a means to an end, the end being
to get a good deal of money quickly. Surprising as it may seem, that was quite
easy at Speke depot, provided you were prepared to work all the overtime that
God and the desk inspector provided. I needed to raise the deposit for a house
quickly and virtually from scratch.
At the Labour Exchange in Garston there was a notice advertising vacancies for
bus conductors at a basic weekly wage of £9 3s 9d (£9.18).
"That's not much," was my initial response to the clerk.
"But you can easily double that with overtime," he replied, pointing
out that: "Speke depot is twenty five per cent under strength, so there's
plenty of overtime."
"What about Garston?"
Garston depot would have been very much more convenient, as I lived just off
Long Lane.
"No, Speke's the place to be." So Speke it was.
The first thing I found there was that nearly everyone was working a seven-day
week. We were booked in on our off-duty days unless we specifically asked for
the time off. The same applied to the overtime extras that were attached to
normal duties. Again, anyone not wanting to work such an extra was expected
to give the desk advance notice. So I became a buck king.
One week I took home £27, three times my nominal gross basic pay. That
was quite a week. It included one day on which I worked not only two full shifts,
an early and a late, but also squeezed in an afternoon extra. I didn't mean
to, but the extra was offered and I found I could do it, so I did. I think that
was actually illegal, even for a guard, and I did it only once.
But one young guard outdid me by working a full-blown triple day. He was booked
to take out an early 81. Before he left the shed at a little after four o'clock
in the morning he accepted an offer to do a late—another 81 duty and, by coincidence,
on the very same bus. When he finished his early duty he found that his relief
hadn't turned up. So he carried on for another trip, still no relief, then another.
Soon he had done the entire middle. Now, having already done a double day, he
was his own relief for the late. So he topped the day off by doing the late
as well and accomplishing what surely must have been a record, a triple day.
He had taken the bus out at four in the morning and stayed on it all day before
running it in after midnight. Some going! I'd like to have seen his wage slip
for that week, or the faces of the pay clerks who worked it out. He was philosophical
about it. "It saved me lugging my box around," he told me.