Goodbye to an old friend

If you look very carefully at the photo, you will not see a Routemaster bus, nobody will anymore. Today the last of the Routemaster buses were taken out of service.

They were the classic double decker London bus, with a conductor to take the fares and a platform at the rear that you could jump on or off when the bus was moving. Well, OK, that is why they have finally been laid to rest, but it is a sad moment. In the future, you will only be able to see them on a site like this.

I remember the journeys I had on them as a child - over an hour each way to school - and the dreams I dreamt. It was on these buses I first thought that I would like to take photographs (OK, if you want to be technical it was photographs of naked women), it was on these buses I dreamt the dreams of my life to come - and now they are gone. It is especially poignant tonight, when we have a freezing fog in London, that I can remember the thick London fogs which are no more, where the conductor walked in front of the bus because you could see no more than six feet.

The skill learned over many years of how to drop nochalently off the bus at speed no has no relevance in our modern world. Requisat In Pace, old friend.