The Bus Shelter

For as long as I can remember, the bus shelter in the square has been a focal point of village life. As our older readers will remember the current bus shelter is a cut down version of the earlier structure that occupied the same site for decades. The earlier version was larger and squarer with a flat roof and a small window in the Tiverton road end. The bus shelter was always in my lifetime the gathering place for the youth of the village and as a very young boy, below the age at which you would be part of the bus shelter crowd, seeing the older teenagers in their Teddy boy gear hanging out there. By the time I reached the age at which you joined the bus shelter crowd, this would be the mid sixties, the fashions had moved on and it would mainly be the kids in the leather jackets who hung out there. They usually had, if they were old enough, somewhat battered secondhand motorcycles which they would ride around the village before returning to base. I expect that the pollution created by thousands of likeminded souls in villages across the country has played no small part in creating global warming but that was something on no ones horizon back then. Mods never really took off here so the ubiquitous Lambretta was rarely seen.

In the summer the main hangout shifted to the wall beside the war memorial but in the winter it was back to the bus shelter to discuss whatever the young discussed back then and the obligatory cigarette. The phone box next door was also much in demand as the youth of the village phoned their peers in far flung locations such as Thorverton and Bradninch shooting the breeze and organising assignations. The phone box became even more popular when some bright spark discovered that by pressing the number buttons in a certain way you could make free phone calls. A better option then you would get these days with a mobile. One problem ypou did not get then was the consumption of alcohol by the underage, mainly because there were no off licence outlets in the local shops.

As reported in an earlier post the bus shelter was also the meeting place for many of the village worthies during the day and in general, the old and the young coexisted together without major problems. Sometimes it was even used by passing tramps as a night shelter and sometimes even by peoplev waiting for buses.

And so it is today, even in its much reduced state the bus shelter remains a meeting place for old and young. Sometimes neighbours complain about the noise made by its younger clientele, and sometimes its litter makes it an unattractive place to stand but it remains at the centre of village life. Perhaps some of those who complain about the activities of its younger users should reflect on whether its better to have the village youth gathering in full view of the community, with the obvious constraints that places on their activities, or lurking about in the darker parts of places like the car park, the bury or the big rec with the obvious temptations that such places provide for them to indulge in considerably less acceptable forms of behaviour.