Comments on: John Gillman’s Bus Tickets

By: Frances Bevan

Frances Bevan — Tue, 17 Jan 2023 21:51:49 +0000

I can remember writing pages of those same curly S on the cover. Were they 1960s handwriting practice? I can’t remember now.

By: Jan

Jan — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 19:17:32 +0000

the boy who lived next door to us also collected bus tickets, and had a ticket machine, so we used to play bus rides. With red hair and freckles he looked not unalike John T…. but wasn’t

By: Marcia Howard

Marcia Howard — Thu, 12 Jan 2023 16:18:41 +0000

Wow! These brought back some memories. One of my older brothers also saved bus tickets and had a wonderful collection. In the 1950s after passing his 11+ he started at Westminster City School in London SW1. One day he took his ticket collection to school despite my mother advising him not to. The collection was sadly ‘pinched’ that same day. He was very upset about that; and a hard lesson learned!

By: Michael West

Michael West — Mon, 09 Jan 2023 14:31:43 +0000

Also I like the woodgrain Winfield exercise book (a Woolworth brand) dated 4th April 1964 A.D.

By: Michael West

Michael West — Mon, 09 Jan 2023 13:59:04 +0000

As a schoolboy plane-spotter I used the Green Rover ticket from Staines to Biggin Hill via Gatwick and Redhill airfields. Didn’t the Red Rover tickets have to be purchased from Tube stations (not on the actual bus?) But the Green Rover must have been bought on the bus?

By: Cherub

Cherub — Sun, 08 Jan 2023 21:42:01 +0000

I found this very interesting as my husband has often spoken of Red Rover tickets when he was a boy in East London. We love going to transport museums and went to a fantastic tram museum run by volunteers in Zurich recently (the volunteers were all retired tram drivers and engineers). One attraction was how ticket machines and tickets styles had evolved in Zurich over a period of about 70 years, also uniforms. There was even a little wooden tram you could drive by turning a wheel which was fun.

On another note, I’ve been struggling with a flu virus since 23rd December, but a daily visit here has cheered me up no end!

By: Stephen

Stephen — Sun, 08 Jan 2023 18:02:35 +0000

Thank you, a lovely tale. I am from Bolton, Lancashire. I remember as a schoolboy counting the numbers on bus tickets and 21 being the lucky number. I think there were other meanings in certain numbers but I cannot remember them.

By: Thea Fiore Bloom

Thea Fiore Bloom — Sun, 08 Jan 2023 16:26:32 +0000

What a wonderful thing to eyeball; thanks for creating this and I thank the Gentle Author for publishing this. The best bit for me was the story around Pratt’s Bottom. Still smiling. Humor and curiosity are both such strong forces in my kind of adventures and adventurers. Speaking of adventures…
I lived in Sydney, Australia, in 1999 for a year or two, and some airline, I think it was Qantas, had a wild year-long or more promotion called “Mystery Flights.” It was a seat-filling program, I think. For ninety-nine bucks or so, you could get a round-trip plane ticket that would fly out of Sydney and return the same evening, but you didn’t know what city you’d be departing for until the morning of the flight. I loved it. I went on all kinds of adventures to places I would never normally have planned on seeing. For example, I met fascinating folks at a bizarre shooting range on the Gold Coast one day or walked a garden designed by Walter Burley Griffin in Canberra on another- and- was home for dinner. But I would have loved it if Pratt’s Bottom was on the destination list. 🙂

By: Lynne Perrella

Lynne Perrella — Sun, 08 Jan 2023 11:48:32 +0000

All of us “of a certain age” will resonate to Mr. Gillman’s amazement that this delightful artefact has survived so many moves, transitions, down-sizing, and clear-outs. And we applaud that such a special, unique collection is still in circulation! — delighting all the Readers this morning. I think this post is probably one of my favorites. Not only because we get to peek into this hand-crafted book of fascinations, but because we all have ephemeral things in our lives that have slipped away but are lovingly remembered. Seeing John Gillman’s miraculously-preserved book makes up for the loss of…………..all my scribbled adolescent diaries, a landfill of hand-made paper dolls that I worked on throughout childhood, a Girl Scout album full of pressed leaves that my mother helped with, and heart-shaped Valentine candy boxes brimming with love notes from my first boyfriend.

Happy New Year.

By: Gee Farrow

Gee Farrow — Sun, 08 Jan 2023 10:45:21 +0000

Great work John – as always we will say ‘if only I’d thought of doing that!’

Used to love the 60s buses with their conductors, and although I lived in rural Essex they were always plentiful. The conductors were usually jolly chaps with their ‘hold very tight now!’ and ding/ding on the bell. They would always want a chat, and in their way provided a great social service …talking time to listen to those who lived a lonely rural life with not many people to talk to and often knowing their passengers by their first names.

There have been great improvements but also great losses over the last 50 years.