‘Hold Very Tight Please! Ding Ding’

British readers will recognise the allusion to the Flanders and Swann ‘A Transport of Delight’, celebrating the good old London bus. These specimens aren’t from London, but to be found transporting visitors round the vast site which is the museum at Beamish. This is a marvellous place celebrating the day-to-day life of working men and women in the North East of England, mainly from 1900 to the 1950s, but with glances back to earlier times too.

By the way, this is the last day for sending your 100 word story: ‘But What if She Says Yes?’ suggested in my post last Saturday. Only two of you (well, three, counting me) have been brave enough so far.

For Becky’s #SimplyRed.

and Debbie’s Six Word Saturday.

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Author: margaret21

I'm retired and live in North Yorkshire, where I walk , write, volunteer and travel as often as I can.

52 thoughts on “‘Hold Very Tight Please! Ding Ding’”

  10. Happy to see Beamish is still thriving. When I was working at the Ironbridge Gorge Museum in the 70s-80s there was quite a sense of rivalry between the two ‘living museum’ enterprises.

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  11. It’s always lovely to see images of Beamish – I love it there! And I remember well the days when a conductor would call out ‘Hold Very Tight Please!’ before snapping the cord to tell the driver it was safe to go. Ding ding meant ‘driver go’ while a single ‘Ding’ would ask him to stop at the next bus stop. And I think the conductor would use three ‘Dings’ if he needed the driver to stop immediately?

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    1. You’re very well versed. I didn’t know that. We’re part of a dying generation that remembers conductors on buses. They can’t have been in use for – what? 60 odd years?

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      1. Or I’m misremembering! But it can’t be quite 60 years. There were still conductors when I used to take the bus to school as they always told us off for jumping off the platform when we weren’t at a proper stop. If we leapt off at the traffic lights just before the bus station we had a better chance of catching the second bus needed to get us home. That would have been in the late 60’s / very early 70s as we moved in the summer of 1971 and after that I only needed the one bus – but I have a feeling there were conductors still for a while after that?

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  12. It’s always lovely to see images of Beamish – I love it there! And I remember well the days when a conductor would call out ‘Hold Very Tight Please!’ before snapping the cord to tell the driver it was safe to go. Ding ding meant ‘driver go’ while a single ‘Ding’ would ask him to stop at the next bus stop. And I think the conductor would use three ‘Dings’ if he needed the driver to stop immediately?

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    1. I was wondering whether to post this image on that account. It does indeed have many visitors, but the site is so huge it an easily absorb them. The bus stops can get crowded, but everywhere else, you’re not aware of being crowded at all. Trust me, I’m crowd-phobic and avoid busy places like the plague!

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  18. Oi! Aussie readers, of a certain age, also recognise A Transport of Delight! I still have the original “At The Drop of a Hat” LP (33 1/3 RPM) of same. Have some madeira, m’dear?

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  20. ah Flanders and Swann – brings back memories of my sister singing Glorious Mud, and Robert tempting me with More Maderia, my dear!! Fab squaring and music

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