Peoples Millions

[cessna152towser]

I've been out all day working with the filming of a forthcoming feature about Teviot Wheels which will be shown in the Peoples Millions section of the ITV Lookaround programme. A day's work will be edited to a three minute newsreel feature to be screened in the ITV Borders and Tyne Tees regions on Tuesday 23rd November at 6pm. In the programme we go head to head with another community project as we seek £46,000 for a new community minibus for the town of Hawick. The project which gets the most votes gets the money.

This was the only shot I managed to get today which shows me in my Teviotdale tartan kilt which I was wearing, taken at the garage. I was busy all day being the kilted driver loading and unloading passengers and wheelchairs at various locations around Hawick.

Fiona Armstrong holds the reflector for the ITV cameraman while interviewing Heather Batsch, Area Manager, on the Millers Knowes, Hawick, with John Chick, Transport Co-ordinator looking on.

Heather Batsch rests on the Frank Scott memorial seat on the Millers Knowes between filming. The large building with the red roof is Teviotdale Leisure Centre. You can just make out Stirches House, where Ann now lives and which was the early nineteenth century home of the Scott-Chisholmes, which is the cream coloured building up in the hills surrounded by trees.

Fiona Armstrong of ITV's Carlisle studio interviews Rosie Capper of Borders Chest Heart and Stroke group outside the office in Jedburgh. The houses in the background were built in the seventeenth century and form the ends of two of Jedburgh's many closes, similar to the closes off Edinburgh's Royal Mile. These buildings were re-furbished in the nineteen sixties to provide domestic and office accommodation.

[Chas]

Good luck with your bid, Alex. Your project is just as worthy as any other I've heard about and more than some.

Regards

Chas

[Ozark Ridge Rider]

Best of luck on your project, Alex. Great to see some pix around Hawick.

Best to you and Ann
Dan

[NewEnglander]

Good work for a good cause. Cheers, Alex!

[cessna152towser]

The demise of the Pringle Bus

In the days before Scotland's textile industry was decimated by competition from cheap imported clothing from the far east, Pringle of Scotland donated two community buses to the town of Hawick. L290KSH was the first of these buses and lived in the now demolished former fire engine garage at the burgh yard in Commercial Road. The other bus was an "N" reg and was operated from Hawick High School. L290KSH was a fifteen seat Ford Transit minibus (driver plus fourteen passengers). This was in the days when class D1 minibuses were included in a car driver's licence and to drive a community minibus all you needed to do besides holding a car licence was to take an annual proficiency test through the local council's transport department for which you gained the "minibus permit". Nowadays the professional driver Certificate of Professional Competence is required from the DVLA in addition to the appropriate driving licence for driving class D1 minibuses or class D buses for hire or reward, though drivers who already had class D1 included on their car licence can continue to drive them for voluntary work and private use. My job as the Senior Legal/Admin Officer in our local town hall introduced me to minibus driving. L290KSH was the first minibus which I drove and I was occasionally called upon to drive people around in L290KSH between 1993 and 1996. Happy hours in the driving seat led me to the idea that some day in the future I would quit the legal profession and become a bus driver. An uncanny co-incidence indeed that on my way home from a driver assessment with a prospective employer something distracted me from watching the road ahead and made me momentarily glance sideways into a scrapyard which I was driving past and there I immediately spotted a familiar numberplate L290KSH. Seeing my old driver's seat now exposed to the rain was particularly poignant and I regret never having photographed this bus in its heyday. Happy memories, whether of driving a departmental staff outing in summer to Ullswater in the Lake District, or of taking Councillors to the English Border at Carter Bar on a bitterly cold Hogmanay night to light the beacon with their English counterparts from Northumberland County Council to celebrate the start of a new year. This is a last chance photo opportunity in the scrapyard with the engine and wheels already removed and the bodywork partly cut down. The rear doors were still in place at the date of the photo, 17th November 2010, and these give an idea of the original height of the bus. Behind it a similar bus formerly operated by Glendinning of Selkirk awaits its turn to be demolished. For you the viewer this is just another hideous photo of a pile of scrap metal but for me I have to confess to weeping a few tears over seeing the sad remains of L290KSH, the first bus which I drove, reduced to this condition. Ah well, seventeen years is probably a creditable life expectancy for a Ford Transit Minibus. Being trashed by vandals while parked overnight in Liverpool from which she never fully recovered probably accelerated L290KSH's journey to the great bus depots of heaven or hell. Sadly there is no fairy godmother textile manufacturer with the spare cash to buy a much needed community minibus for Hawick to replace L290KSH, so I hope you can vote for Teviot Wheels for a Hawick Community Minibus on ITV Borders on Tuesday 23rd November on the Lookaround programme at 6pm or in the Daily Mirror for funding for a new community minibus.

[tripleblessed]

Consider extended to you all the spare commiseration in the house.
Indeed sad. Congratulations, though, on being aware enough to
know to glance aside at that precise moment. Most don't pay
attention enough to do that.

[MacMillans son]

Is there an opportunity for any of us over here to vote on-line Alex? If so, provide a link or page and we can help out!

Best of luck !!

Brooke

[cessna152towser]

Today, Tuesday 23rd November, Teviot Wheels will feature on Peoples Millions on ITV Lookaround on ITV Borders area in our bid for a new Community Minibus for the town of Hawick. If you are anywhere in the British Isles please vote for us. The telephone number is 0871 626 8811 and you can vote up to ten times per phone line. Line is open till midnight tonight, Tuesday 23rd November. I think it may be possible to vote from outside the British Isles but you would need to dial 0044 871 626 8811.

[cessna152towser]

Well the kilted driver appeared briefly on television on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday evenings but, absolutely bummer, at the end of the series tonight the community of Hawick was awarded precisely £0 towards our much needed new minibus which will cost £46,900.

[tripleblessed]

Agreed. Total bummer. Those of us on the forum will just need to
continue to see you in our our mental eyes behind the wheel of a
new bus. It'll happen, just a different process.