TODAY FILMED BUSES AT BIRKENHEAD AND LIVERPOOL

We enjoyed what is probably the end of our early summer weather but fingers crossed we catch some of the rain passing south through Britain. Today I'd had down for Birkenhead particularly as Stagecoach at least had said they were operating 70% of normal pre pandemic services. There were certainly more buses than there would have been but I'm sure that the total of Arriva and Stagecoach must have fallen short of this figure. I did see my first' Bus Full Social Distancing' screen on a single decker which had what would look at first glance an almost empty bus but they only seat 11 at the moment. I only saw one bus with no passengers so ridership is going up. The weather was superb and I doubt if I get to see another day so fine on Merseyside for a while. There were road works causing diversions and giving a lot of background noise. Birkenhead is about as bottom of the pit you can get in many ways but there is an upside , any change and it just has to be better and this was reflected in an almost sedate side to the near empty town. The bus drivers ( and police!) were very friendly , the thumbs up works wonders these days.

It was obvious that sticking it out at Birkenhead for an hour of film would just result in the same buses going round and round and as I was but seconds away from the Mersey tunnel I decided to head through and sample Liverpool in lock down. A lot of people strolling around aimlessly and a few wide boys in sunglasses and car radios blaring through open windows plus the latest Liverpool fashions for hot weather, don't even think about it! Anyway there was a sighting of the PTE retro heritage bus but a taxi parked in the way so prevented a quality shot. No hassles really other than noisy little school kids playing clunking roller boards on empty concrete, the architecture looked quite splendid in the sun and with quiet pavements. The traffic getting out of the city back to the M62 was quite intense and the M56 going to Birkenhead blighted by miles of road works, new barriers going in.

I have to go on to my Youtube site sometimes to delete comments and block users, new films have as most know been blocked to comments for some time due to the very hurtful, incredibly violent and nauseating comments on older films, you can't back track to ban comments. I know many of you loved leaving comments and they were really nice but this chap was one of the 'England' flag brigade and skull and crossbones on it, seeing what he listened to and posted on his own site explained a lot and the reason I have no intention of allowing comments and if you give the nicest and best comment ever on an old film you still get blocked from the channel as I want to eliminate this form of communication. Youtube themselves do nothing tom prevent this type of abuse just lip service when someone important mentions them. They are run by the country that produces racist killers and arms the population with automatic weapons, it is now presided over by the most dangerous bigot around , I just hope that we can remove our own puppet prime minister before his henchmen let in the USA to clean up any remnants of our country left over.

Here are some shots from todays trip to Birkenhead, Liverpool follows tomorrow. Loads og DVD covers to make over next two days plus 5 DVDs to edit as well and lots to get uploaded as digital versions. Online orders have finally dried up today so perhaps we have a bit of a rest albeit there was a lot in snail mail.