Thursday 3rd march 2011 The end of an era

Well I have been hearing rumours that my former employer has gone bust, so has ended another chapter of my life, well not just come to an end, but book firmly shut, put on the shelf and on to the next volume.

Lots of the other firms are covering the work at short notice, So the once familar double deckers that buzzed in and out of the uni campus at night are no more, the only reminders are the pictures I took over the years.

I am in the process of making a new life for myself, I am settling in at my new employer, then I can look at everything else.

This has happened only weeks after Veolia, sold its Nottingham operation to Premiere Travel, and pulled out of Nottingham altogether, The Veolia operation had been running down for several years. They were losing lots of contracts, and the mix was not right. Maybe had the wrong calibre of drivers, I dont know

So 2 operators have closed the doors, but with the cut backbacks in council contracts, maybe alot more will fall by the wayside, or have to move with the times to survive. Only time will tell and there are lots of legislation changes coming up, the day when everything has to be accessible to all, are fast approaching, and I can see a day when second hand low floor buses will command a high price. I also heard it muted that someone wanted to bring in to make it law that all school buses would have to be yellow. I hope not as to me this presents the wrong image, yes the buses are easy to see, but yellow is the natural colour for danger.

My life book is progressing, I have been writing about events of last year, while they are still fresh in my mind, but I have gone back to my long term memory and covered my last year at school.

Events will get interesting after that, and I hope the number of subjects and pages will increase. The it will be time to go through my photographic archive to pick some photographs to include. My intention is to have a manuscript to work to, and send some copies to a select band of people to have read, check how the book reads, iron out any grammatical errors. Then it will be time to get it published and hopefully sell some copies.

My intention is to tell my story and show how I see the world, how my interest in transport and lots of other things developed. I also intend to show how I have formed alot of my opinions. It should be an interesting project. We all have a story to tell, but how many actually think about putting down those experiences.

Anyway going back to the bus companies, it is a case of see how things develope, I know the list of casualties is likely to rise, so putting my photographers hat on, I should record as much of the current scene as posssible, before it all quickly becomes the past. TTFN