Routemaster

Photo Credit: Simon Elson. A Routemaster (and my son) at Aldridge Transport Museum. 

Recently I was involved in a poetry event at Aldridge Transport Museum, I wrote a poem about the iconic Routemaster bus, later I was asked to write a bit of a blurb for a forthcoming book including all the poems performed at the event.

When I scanned down the manifest of vehicles at the museum and read 'Routemaster' nothing else stood a chance. On the day of the event as a family enjoyed a cracking afternoon, boarding the vintage buses and lorries, listening to some fantastic poems and stories. All for a very reasonable entrance fee. Here's the blurb I wrote.

21st October 1977 

We travelled down to London on the train to meet for the first time my Mum's longtime American pen-friend Thelma and her husband Sam. Our two families spent the day chatting and travelling around London in Black Cabs and..... Routemasters. It also happened to be my ninth birthday, When Thelma and Sam learnt this they insisted on buying me a present, for reasons now known only to my nine year old self I chose a Routemaster Mug. The mug has long gone but forty years later the vivid memories of my ninth birthday dashing around London on big red buses with Mum's glamorous American friends haven't.

 Here's my poem Routemaster.

Routemaster

Oooohhh Betty he yelled

As the pole on the routemaster held

Every ounce of Franks weight

As he followed its route on Rollerskates

Lenin ran quickly down the street

Chased by Tom on his own two feet

Lenin saw his chance and boarded with a hop

Tom asks for one and a cockerel to the next stop

For a decade nearly three thousand were made

Over the next thirty years on the roads they stayed

Mainly red but some were green

over a thousand still exist to be seen

Ken Livingstone removed them from our streets

Boris brought hybrids to the fleets

Electric motors provides the motion

But do they evoke the same devotion