{"id":9826,"date":"2021-05-25T13:51:05","date_gmt":"2021-05-25T13:51:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xislblogs.xtreamlab.net\/slwoods\/?p=9826"},"modified":"2021-05-25T13:51:05","modified_gmt":"2021-05-25T13:51:05","slug":"bristol-on-the-buses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/?p=9826","title":{"rendered":"Bristol on the buses"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>Buses are Bristol&#8217;s major mode of public transport and as your &#8216;umble scribe is now in possession of a geriatric&#8217;s bus pass, he might actually get around to exploring their possibilities.<\/p>\r\n<p>One linguistic peculiarity of using the city&#8217;s buses which must be perplexing to outsiders and visitors is the use of the term <em>drive<\/em> to denote the person in charge of the vehicle. This normally takes the form of the grateful form of address &#8220;<em>Cheers Drive<\/em>&#8221; as passengers get off at their intended stops.<\/p>\r\n<p>This phrase was last year used to name a new street in the BS5 postcode area, as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-england-bristol-51501412\">reported at the time by BBC News<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-9835 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/xislblogs.xtreamlab.net\/slwoods\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/sites\/23\/2021\/05\/abus_babbers-e1621949844110.jpg\" alt=\"Bus destination board sign reads: Sorry me babbers. I'm not in service\" width=\"450\" height=\"741\" \/>It now seems that the buses themselves have also taken to addressing potential passengers in dialect, as per this photo courtesy of the <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/welovekeynsham\/\">WeLoveKeynsham Twitter account<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n<p>Of course, it&#8217;s not always been a smooth ride on the city&#8217;s buses.<\/p>\r\n<p>Back in 1963, there was a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.blackhistorymonth.org.uk\/article\/section\/bhm-heroes\/the-bristol-bus-boycott-of-1963\/\">boycott of the city&#8217;s buses<\/a> led by youth worker Paul Stephenson and others over the Bristol Omnibus Company&#8217;s shameful and discriminatory refusal to employ black or Asian people.<\/p>\r\n<p>Furthermore, the reliability of quality of services has been a perennial problem and formed the subject of Fred Wedlock&#8217;s song, Bristol Buses.<\/p>\r\n<div class=\"epyt-video-wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\"  style=\"display: block; margin: 0px auto;\"  id=\"_ytid_18577\"  width=\"600\" height=\"450\"  data-origwidth=\"600\" data-origheight=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/uOfPwBxpmjc?enablejsapi=1&autoplay=0&cc_load_policy=0&cc_lang_pref=&iv_load_policy=1&loop=0&rel=0&fs=1&playsinline=0&autohide=2&theme=dark&color=red&controls=1&disablekb=0&\" class=\"__youtube_prefs__  no-lazyload\" title=\"Bristol Buses\"  allow=\"fullscreen; accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen data-no-lazy=\"1\" data-skipgform_ajax_framebjll=\"\"><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n<p>Cheers drive!<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Buses are Bristol&#8217;s major mode of public transport and as your &#8216;umble scribe is now in possession of a geriatric&#8217;s bus pass, he might actually get around to exploring their possibilities. One linguistic peculiarity of using the city&#8217;s buses which must be perplexing to outsiders and visitors is the use of the term drive to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,3,15,34],"tags":[14,16,22,20,35],"class_list":["post-9826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bristol","category-translation-and-language-related-matters","category-politics","category-social-media","tag-dialect","tag-english-usage","tag-language","tag-politics-2","tag-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9826"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9840,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9826\/revisions\/9840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}