Come on old farts,who remembers?

I don’t remember them from that long back, I wasn’t even a twinkling in my father’s eye for another decade, but I do remember them being dusted off when pretty much everyone was out on strike at the end of the seventies.

Who knows, give it a year of this next inevitable Labour government and we may see them again. ☹️
 
I think the price says it all, probably been worth the same for it's whole life. Seen one converted and used as a gun bus on a shoot.
 
I believe they were all kept in an estate of Nissan huts in Steventon Oxfordshire the huts are still there as warehouses but the goddesses have long gone
 
I have been to a couple of jobs where the Green Godesses were used by the military to cover Fire Service disputes a house fire and a plane crash come to mind.
 
Funnily enough, I drove one of these, in 1977 the first National Fireman’s strike in the UK. I collected mine from Staffordshire somewhere or other definitely not Oxfordshire. The were a pig when fully loaded with water, ok when empty.
The RAF modernised theirs with indicators and air horns 🤩
Ours has the flick out indicators and a small brass bell rang with a bit of leather strap.
Passed my HGV test in a Bedford RL, these were modified from them.

The Goverment gave us £10 each at the end. Our Brigadier MJ Short decided our tenner was better spent with each of us getting one of these:

It was a bit of fun at the time. Originally we didn’t have foam equipment, when it was fitted before we could be trained on its use, we were called out to a car fire in Shifnal iirc. I got lost as I had only returned from Germany a few weeks before. When we arrived the car had just about burned itself out. We spent some time figuring out how it worked and filled it full of foam 😂😂😂

Some of my mates were less lucky and one guy earned PTSD in Birmingham City centre after a bad fire involve a few very young children, sadly they kicked him out🙀
 

Attachments

  • IMG_0680.webp
    IMG_0680.webp
    174.2 KB · Views: 6
  • IMG_0681.webp
    IMG_0681.webp
    239.6 KB · Views: 6
Ours has the flick out indicators
I can remember some early cars my old dad drove had those and can remember trucks with a steel hand silhoutte that was 'waved' out the window as an indictaor.

Indicators are not needed these days as no **** uses them anyway lol.
 
I can remember when the county of Avon was formed they inherited a huge amount of Petrol Bedford gritting/snowplough lorries.Spent many a night out in the freezing cold starting and repairing them. The local garage loved them as the council had a fuel account there.
 
I am old enough the Bedford RL was still in British Military service when I was a Cadet at School. Our rifle was the Enfield Mk4, the main issue rifle was the SLR.

I remember us all being loaded into the back of a Bedford with all our kit and being driven all the way from Oxford up to Capel Curig training camp in North Wales. Capt Bond who ran the Cadets had one way of driving - foot flat on the floor and no stopping. Those things did 45 mph flat out downhill and I still remember the stink of Petrol and hum of the tyres like it was yesterday. Shag Bond, as he was called - he used “shag” as punctuation - had been a paratrooper in the war, been captured by the Germans and then gone on to rise to rank of Sgt Major before being commissioned. His last job before retiring was running the Cadet Force. He was about 6ft 6” tall, shouted a lot, took no fools and would push us 15 and 16 year old kids out into the cold and snow for a couple of days under poncho’s, but we would return to camp to be treated with trays of warm rock buns that he had baked for us all.
 
Back
Top