Routemaster Bus Sale!

As you know, Mishmash Bookshop's home is on the ground floor of Transport for London's headquarters building. Consequently we spend a fair amount of time chatting to the various boffins visiting 'from upstairs'. And what a nice bunch they are too, generally.

About two years ago rumours started circulating that the world-famous Routemaster buses were to be finally and irretrievably decommissioned. And when the noise of weepin' and wailin' settled, one of my friends at TfL gave me the contact details to buy one - "change out of three grand" he said. Sounds like a bargain!

Now, the cloakroom girl at my favourite style-bar, who used to be Hell's Angel Property in New Jersey [and you don't skimp on her tip], said all the patches used to buy decommissioned police Harley D's two at a time so you could cannibalise them. Or Frankenstein them. Dude, whatever.

So we thought about buying a pair, cut-and-shut them, kitting the result out as a rolling bookshop, and taking it round book-free bits of London on a huge grant from Bookstart, followed by a summer tour of the West of Scotland, Cliff Richard style. Sadly 'tho, we realised that, living in London, it would cost a king's ransom to stable them for January and February. I even suggested to my sister that she could have the grooviest greenhouse in all Falkirk, but she was having none of it. Too bad - we'll just have to stay static in St. James's Park Station.

But while we were researching the possible changeover to bookselling by bus, we discovered the following amazing facts;

1. Strictly speaking, Routemasters are only those buses entering service from summer 1959 - spring 1968.
2. All the windows are the same size, thereby effecting much speedier repairs.
3. You don't need a PSV licence to drive one [as a mobile bookshop]. Or for that matter an HGV licence.
4. The brakes were left over from RAF Halifax bombers from WW2. Which is why you used to get thrown forward every time the driver slowed down.
5. Routemasters don't have a chassis - an astonishing innovation in the 50's
6. The last Routemaster ran on 9th December 2005, on route 159 from Streatham Hill to Marble Arch via Westminster. I was on it and can report it was uncomfortably slow and stuffy, and everyone’s damp coats smelled of mothballs. Lovely.

You have my full permission to recycle these trivia jewels as your own; but beware any groups of associates who might feel the repetition thereof lowers you in their estimation. But for those of you genuinely interested in the history of London Buses [and not just the Routemaster] I should point out that we are down to our last few dozen copies of John Reed's classic book [see top], and it's still only £2. Once it's gone, as they say, rather tautologously, it's gone.

So get down to Mishmash Bookshop as soon as you can – “Hold tight please!”

Andrew Mishmash