BIRD'S EYE VIEW
Page 69
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By The Hawk
Although it was shining when this happy photograph was taken, the sun was notably absent—in fact the rain "fell like stairrods"—during the finals of the English China Clays own lorry drirer of the year competition which was held at Par Harbour recently. Here, with equally sunny faces, are the class winners. Reading left to right, W. R. Matthews, A. Bennett, G. Yeoman,J. d. Menear,J. McMartin ( front), W. Niles (rear) and R. Yelland. The first three mentioned, by the way, were successful in the Torquay round of the national GDO Y competition and go fOrwurd to the finals at Nuneaton in September.
Design Medal Award London Transport's new chairman, Mr. Maurice Holmes, was the recipient of the Royal Society of Arts Presidential Medal for Design Management last week at a ceremony presided over by HRH The Duke of Edinburgh.
Thanking the Society for the award, Mr. Holmes paid tribute to his design-conscious predecessors at London Transport. He felt the Board's efforts to supply an efficient public transport service had been much influenced by the favourable public image created by its engineering design, its architecture and its publicity. "In short, good design creates goodwill."
Mr. Holmes referred to London Transport's Design Panel set up by Sir Alec Valentine, which "stimulates, encourages and criticizes" as necessary, to ensure that the Board's good design tradition was kept vigorously alive.
LA Revisits Calais I hear that among the 1965
contingent of British visitors who descended on the town of Calais recently on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the evacuation of that port was Charles Hodgson, chairman of the North Western Traffic Commissioners and that area's Licensing Authority.
During the town's evacuation by the British in 1940, Captain Hodgson, as he then was, was Town Major, and he left the French shores on the last boat with several souvenirs, among which was the Town Major's official sign which had stood outside his headquarters.
Hearing that a war museum had been opened in Calais, Mr. Hodgson was determined that the board should take its place among other reminders of the conflict. And so, the official 25th anniversary ceremony over, the one-time Commandant de Ville went along to the Maine and presented his sign to a representative of the town.
I have it on good authority that Mr. Hodgson has another sign. which once belonged to the LNER company. He keeps this in his office in Manchester!
Another Howler After reading in last week's issue about the applicant from Denmead who had applied to the South Eastern LA to carry "Lice stock within 40 miles ", I was reminded of the applicant who, a few weeks previously, had asked another area's LA for a licence to carry "Flat race horses ". Providing they don't weigh too much I suppose you could pack a heck of a lot of those into a horsebox. Nice Singing During his recent trip by
Mercedes 0302 coach to the Nice Coach Rally (see pages 74-76) colleague Dick Ross tells me that the passengers were entertained to a " fruits of the sea lunch at Villefranche—a famed seafood village on the coast near Nice. Strolling players, who frequent the quayside cafes in this village, provided pleasant background music.
Dick recalls an incident which occurred on the descent into one of the towns on the way to Nice. A nasty smell of burning was noticed. There was much frantic pacing up and down of the coach, inspection of clothing, talk of brake fade and the usual comment about French cigarettes —until someone realized that they were in the area of the perfume distilleries of Grasse. Not a very flattering compliment to the superior perfumes of "La Belle France "!
Postcards? After each coach had com pleted the smoke test on the Col d'Eze during the Rally, a gentleman was observed stealthily approaching certain drivers, and one of the Dutch journalists present was heard to comment: "1 think he's selling dirty postcards ". But to the disappointment of some of the boys who approached him, it turned out that the man was trying to induce drivers —those whose vehicles showed excessive smoke—to buy a diesel additive!