A BRITISH husband has bought his wife the same type of double-decker on which they met 60 years ago. Now Ken and Shirley Morgan enjoy romantic spins around their old haunts in the 1947 Guy Arab bus. It was love at first sight when airman Ken, then 22, saw 18-year-old conductress Shirley on the Red and White Route One service between Gloucester and Cardiff in 1956. He said, “That journey changed my life. Shirley was a trainee conductress. She had blue eyes and she was beautiful. “I wondered if she had a boyfriend but didn’t dare ask. We chatted all the way of my 60-mile (96-km) trip.” For the next few weeks Ken paid half a crown for the same 60-mile trip and finally plucked up the courage to ask Shirley out. He said, “Shirley was my first and only girlfriend. I asked if I could take her to the cinema and she said yes. “Funnily, she missed her last bus home and had to walk a mile in high heels to get home!” Ken could not bear to be away from his new love and gave up the RAF to become a bus driver and work with Shirley. He went on to become an aircraft engineer with Pan Am, working on jobs around the world. But he never quite forgot the old Red and White Route One. And when he spotted one of their restored buses in a transport museum he decided he and Shirley would have to have one. He found a collector who had saved another one from the scrapyard. And after a year of restoration the owner offered to sell it for £12,000 (US$15,601). Ken said, “It was just wonderful and took us right back down memory lane to the days when we first met.” Now the pair from Ashford, near Staines, Middlesex, regularly put on vintage uniforms and take nostalgic trips in their bus — registration HWO 343 — which is kept in a heritage collection in Barry, South Wales. Ken said, “We are a good team and it’s been so nice in our retirement years to play driver and conductor again. “It reminds us of our courting days. We had such great times. I still adore Shirley as much as I did back then.” (SD-Agencies) | 