Half past three and half past four the last one, kew – Ada Towler<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The buses went to King’s Lynn and Bury.\u00a0 There were also loads of excursions.\u00a0 They went to Bury on Wednesdays and Saturdays, Lynn on Saturdays and probably Tuesdays for the market.\u00a0 I used to go to Bury with my friends when I was still at school and later with Colin. All the Towler men drove buses and along with many others – Freddie Shinn<\/span>, Derek Newell<\/span> and Stan Burlingham<\/span> to name a few.\u00a0 The office was in the front room of the house by the Methodist Chapel and Bob Smith<\/span> was in the office.\u00a0 He was married to Madge Towler<\/span> and they lived at the top of Towlers Lane.\u00a0 There was a parrot in the office, which shouted stuff like “Taxi Sir<\/em>” and “Book tickets<\/em>“, it made a ringing noise like the phone and if you knocked on the door to go to book excursions it hollered “Come in<\/em>“.<\/p>\n We used to go on loads of excursions.\u00a0 In the year before we married, when we couldn\u2019t afford a holiday, we went on an excursion every day for a week.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t do that now, I would be shattered.\u00a0 We went on a day trip to Heathrow Airport, to stand on the roof and view the planes.\u00a0 I think the terminal was only one small building.\u00a0 Can you imagine that now?\u00a0 It\u2019s a place to get through as soon as possible.\u00a0 We also went on mystery tours on a Sunday evening.<\/p>\n Towlers was also used for the Sunday school outings.\u00a0 You had a savings card and paid in a few pence every week, saving all year for it.\u00a0 It was really looked forward to.\u00a0 The money was paid out the week before the outing so you had your spending money.\u00a0 The Methodist had two buses, one for the adults and one for the children.\u00a0 I had to fight to get on the one with the kids.\u00a0 Nana and mum used to like to know what I was doing.\u00a0 I loved it when I got on the kid\u2019s bus, you had a bottle of pop and a packet of crisps and you could eat and drink them before you got to Thetford.\u00a0 There was always a comfort stop at Wymondham and all the kids who were travel sick before we got to Wymondham were cleaned up and returned to their mums on the adults bus.\u00a0 I used to ask Mum for a sandwich at Wymondham because I had eaten my Smiths crisps by that time.\u00a0 We used to fly about, jumping up and down, and generally keep raving, “Are we nearly there?”\u00a0 Oh, the excitement when someone shouted, “I CAN SEE THE SEA!<\/em>”\u00a0 Everybody flew over to that side of the bus and climbed over each other to see.<\/p>\n When we got there, we had a walk on the beach and a paddle.\u00a0 Nana and mum had a deck chair and we sat eating egg sandwiches, which crunched with bits of sand in them.\u00a0 They were taken in an oxo tin with a rubber band round it.\u00a0 Everyone had an oxo tin for taking to work etc.\u00a0 Nana\u2019s sandwiches were wrapped in a clean damp linen cloth inside the tin to keep the sandwiches moist.\u00a0 My mum\u2019s were in a bit of greaseproof and hurled in the tin minutes before we left.\u00a0 I loved my mum, she was funny.\u00a0 After lunch, we had a go on the snails and the Noah\u2019s Ark, then a walk along Regent Road, bought a stick of rock, had some fish and chips and came home tired and happy.\u00a0 Usually having a sing song on the way home.\u00a0 My mum once had a whelk and chewed it all the way home!\u00a0 She was as daft as a brush.<\/p>\n ‘Tip outing was a mass exodus, about five buses and Colin said when he went with the Church there was once seven buses.\u00a0 It took ages to load all the buses and ages to drive home.\u00a0 Today we get there in just over an hour and we can go any time we want to.<\/p>\n Below – Bill and Gwen Rogers with the family at Yarmouth.\u00a0 Brian is pushing the pushchair, Ivan beside his dad, Colin beside mum and Alan in the pushchair.\u00a0 No idea where Jean was.<\/p>\n Cherry Rogers recalls Towler’s buses in Brandon. When I was growing up everybody used Towler’s buses.\u00a0 My first memory, or it could be what I have been told rather than being a memory, was being taken to Bury St. Edmunds to have my photo taken.\u00a0 I would have been coming up for two years old<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":566,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[94,104,208,215,255,262,271,285,287],"class_list":["post-564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-quote","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-memories","tag-burlingham","tag-cherry-rogers","tag-methodist","tag-newell","tag-shinn","tag-smith","tag-sunday-school","tag-tip-outing","tag-towler","post_format-post-format-quote"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAda Towler<\/span> was the conductor on the Bury route and she did it for years.\u00a0 I am ashamed to say we asked her the times the buses returned every single time we went, because she said in a very sing song voice, \u201cHalf past three and half past four the last one, kew\u201d.\u00a0 We loved to hear her say “kew”, she said it when she took your money or gave you your change or when you got on or off the bus.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.brandonheritage.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/18582630_798854210280289_1829397897902982784_n.jpg\")