My father used tell me stories

Of his love for London buses

And how aged eight or nine

He was considered mature enough

To travel around London

Using only a Red Rover ticket

This is not the London

We know today as it was paler

And this did not strike me straight away

Homosexuality was a criminal offence

Punishable by a prison sentence

And do not get me started

About a bus mad nine year old

Travelling around the city

In search of the mythical route thirty three

My father felt himself above

Any inherent dangers

Even if they existed at all

But that was not how

The kind people

At Canning Town Bus Garage

Saw things differently

As most had lived through the war

A young boy although tall for his age

Had arrived keen but unannounced

Distant from Scotch Common in Ealing

Two of the clippies took him to the canteen

Where he was given tea and an iced bun

Followed by a tour of the bus garage

It was them arranged by one of the drivers

That he should travel on Route 33

And be dropped off at a Central Line tube station

My father was also given a number of souvenirs

To commemorate his visit to Canning Town

Although I am not sure of the exact date of my fathers visit

It would have been after August 1962 when the thirty three

Began to pass through Canning Town and September 1964

When he moved to Bath with his family

If I took an educated guess I would have said late 1963

My father returned to London in 1970 and found

That London had changed beyond memory

The innocent streets were darker and menacing

And certain areas were best avoided

Another thing he noticed was that because

Of a change in the law in 1967 that pederasts

Had become in emboldened and whilst not common

Could be seen at mainline railway stations and other haunts

It is not something that I would

Have let my nine year old today

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