I also remember funny cars in those days, that had got coal underneath and, and it was spitting out water and we used to run along the side because they couldn’t go very fast. We could run as fast as they could go along the Coventry Road. [Laughing] And we thought it was fun.
At that time the trams used to run up the middle of, er, Coventry Road, but the, there was two, there was like a, a road each side of the centre, you know, for the ordinary traffic. Um, it used to go up as far as Tiger’s Island, I think, after a bit, which was up in Sheldon, but they used to turn round at the Swan, a lot of them did, and all the rails… The old Swan. There wasn’t an island there. I remember that. There was, oh god, builders and all sorts. Hemming’s the builders was up there at the top where the island is now. There was no post office, you see. There was, um… The doctor’s was there… but, um, just past there, there was a builder’s, Hemming’s, and there was, um, a saddlers for horses that did saddles and on the corner was Robinson’s, which was a sort of chemist and everything shop, and there was a post box there. Then across the road there was Harding’s the bakers.
Well, before that we had trolleybuses. Now that was marvellous. Why they got rid of the trolleybuses I don’t only know because if they … they could have kept those. It was marvellous. I’ve never known such a service. If you went… You could… If you walked onto the Coventry Road you could look down the Coventry Road and you’d see probably one, two, three, maybe four trolleybuses going on, and then there’s another one coming and you’d get on the next one. They were coming all the time.
