TMStimetable

9:04am Thursday 12th October 2006

IN the days when pigs were kept on the allotment, or even in the yard out the back, slaughtering had still to be carried out in a registered abattoir.

Thus the Ministry of Agriculture had its pound of flesh, too. Since the average Durham miner's perception was that it was the government which was making the real killing, he still went about the bloody business himself.

Thus, some time in the 1940s, a Trimdon lad was heading homewards on the bus, the freshly jointed pig wrapped up on the luggage rack, when blood began seeping down on to a fellow passenger below.

Thinking that it was a human body, and quite possibly screaming blue murder, the poor woman got off at the next stop and immediately called the constabulary.

The polliss arrived, cased the joint, and in exchange for saying nothing more took home the bacon himself.

It happened, we're assured, on Trimdon Motor Services, one of those independently operated bus services once so colourfully familiar in the North-East.

Universally it was known as the TMS. Some said it stood for Trimdon Muck Shifters, others - a little unfairly - for Too Many Seats.

Now a reunion of TMS staff is planned for December 1, to coincide with publication of Peter Cardno's history of that transport of delight.

The gathering, at Trimdon Labour Club, will be hosted by Bob and Norma Lewis who bought TMS in 1959.

"It was a fantastic company to work for," says Margaret Girvin, one of the organisers. "I was only in the offices after leaving school, but everyone knew one another and everyone looked out for one another."

Others, like Vi Cook - still in Quarrington Hill - worked for 36 years as a conductress, retired, and then came back as a cleaner. "There'd never be any trouble on one of Vi's buses," says Peter Cardno. "Not unless she started it anyway."

Another employee is said to have been so fond of the bus depot in Trimdon Grange that, after retiring, he'd gaze upon it wistfully, every day, through a pair of binoculars.

They still talk, too, of the huge Christmas hampers given to every member of staff after Norma had taken a bus to the cash and carry and all but filled it with provender.

For Peter, a retired teacher from Stockton who's chairman of the northern branch of the Omnibus Society, it will be his sixth bus company history.

Others have included Crow Brothers of Osmotherley, Wilkinson's of Sedgefield and Scurr's of Stillington, each a richly anecdotal journey back in time.

Just what they say about buses, a seventh - about Stockton Corporation Transport - will be along at the same time. The TMS history is co-written with Philip Kirk, originally from Wheatley Hill.

It was Peter who told of the Wilkinson's driver demoted to night cleaner - a particular problem because he was frightened of the dark - and who recalled Athelstan Pollitt Bennison, a Crow employee who may have been the only bus conductor with a science degree from Durham University, or to entertain the passengers on comb and paper.

"Athel" to all, he lived in a country cottage called Calumet, named for some reason after a North American Indian peace pipe.

"I've interviewed a lot of former TMS people and have a lot of wonderful stories, not all of them printable," says Peter.

Founded in the 1920s, the company really gathered speed in 1959 after being taken over by the entrepreneurial Bob Lewis, who'd never even heard of Trimdon, much less its bus service.

It became, the authors claim, Britain's most profitable independent bus company, the first into Peterlee, diversifying into coach travel and holidays before being bought in 1990.

TMS also ferried hundreds of miners to work; Tommy's Mucky Shirt was another explanation for the initials.

Born in Hebburn, Bob Lewis embarked on his first money making venture - sawing, bagging and selling firewood door to door - when just 12. He met Norma, Stockton lass, when both worked at Butlin's holiday camp in Filey. They married in 1952, the year that they began Bestway Cleaners.

By the mid-50s, Norma had a shop in Middlesbrough. Bob noticed that the new estates had no shops, bought a second hand bus, turned it into a mobile shop and toured the Park End estate. Soon the mobile was making more than the original; before long he bought a second.

Now 81, he lives with his wife in Eaglescliffe, which may explain why Egglescliffe Gardening Club still presents the TMS Cup for most points at its annual show.

By keying TMS into The Northern Echo's electronic archive it's also possible to learn quite a bit about Test Match Special and about Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, a procedure for non-invasive examination of the brain upon which a learned paper was recently delivered at Durham University.

Peter Cardno's own TMSay will be most his lavish yet, a £25 hardback in A4 size. Bob Lewis has already bought 100 copies to present to former staff at the reunion. "He was just that sort of man," says Bob. "TMS was that sort of company."

* All former TMS employees, each with a guest, are invited to the reunion in Trimdon Labour Club from 7pm on Friday, December 1, but are asked to contact Margaret Girvin on 01429-882352 before November 16. More details about Peter Cardno's book on its publication.

Best of British

IT'S three years since last we visited British West Hartlepool - or at least, the debate over that puzzling prefix. Bob Harbron in Norton-on-Tees reopens it. Until their marriage of inconvenience in 1967, there were two towns - West Hartlepool and what became known as "old" Hartlepool. "British" West Hartlepool was by then familiar.

Some blamed the comedian Jimmy Edwards, a 1950s radio sketch supposedly called Night Train to British West Hartlepool. Others supposed the culprit to be the band leader and request programme presenter Victor Sylvester - "British Honduras, British East Africa and British West Hartlepool."

The column concluded, however, that the originator was probably Benny Hill, with a line about Fred Clockenlocker of British West Hartlepool in an unsung record called Transistor Radio.

Bob Harbron gives talks to schools. Visiting a "Victorian" day at Stranton school in Hartlepool last week he again stumbled upon the famous phrase. His mother was born in Hartlepool in the late 1890s. It was there that he first heard it in the 1930s, he says, when Benny Hill was but a bairn.

"The only theory I can offer is that a lot of Lascar and Chinese seamen lived in the Middleton area, alongside the then-busy docks," says Bob.

Wouldn't that have made it Oriental West Hartlepool? The best of British may yet be to come.

MONDAY'S classified obituaries recorded the passing at 88 of Reg Pamler of Darlington, father - among others listed - of Jungle. Remember Jungle? Christened George, he was the high profile leader of Darlington's Hell's Angels chapter in the 1970s, a hirsute figure on a powerful motorbike.

That he changed his name by deed poll simply to Jungle did the newspapers a favour. Most of us misspelled Pamler, anyway.

Perhaps the best story (though the red nosed court appearance comes close second) is of the time he inadvertently - accidentally, it might be said - bumped into the elderly Lady Starmer, Darlington's favourite citizen.

The splendid Lady Starmer may not (shall we say) have been the town's best driver. When her Rover was in collision with Jungle's Kawasaki at the junction of Duke Street and Larchfield Street, few doubted who was culpable.

Jungle lay there dazed, Lady Starmer characteristically solicitous. It was the start of a friendship which brought him many visits to Danby Lodge, her smart home in the west end.He was there one afternoon when her GP also called by. "Ah doctor," said Lady Starmer, "I don't believe you've met my good friend Mr Jungle." He joined them for afternoon tea.

... and finally, a note from Mr Arthur Pickering, that great champion of the British pork pie, advises getting the teeth into a new website - www.pie-man.com - run by a feller from Gateshead.

It is not as good, says Arthur, as myweb.tiscali.co.uk/piesrule - which he himself runs from Hartlepool.

Pie-man also sells T-shirts. "Buy one for your mad aunt who washes down her pills with Cinzano and smells a bit like the Jorvik Viking Centre," he says. There may be more of the gentleman's crust quite shortly.