The 5A bus from Twiverton did not take you to any foreign country. It got as far as the
fountain by the Abbey with a "Water Is Best" inscription carved in stone. From there
members of the leisure class would make their way to the walled garden with exotic plants in Victoria Park, or the eerie echoing canal tunnels in Sydney Gardens, or to a secret path which winds its way up to Sham Castle. If the rain is pouring down they head for the cafe in the Market (where the play-things-close-to-your-chest Yorkshireman presides over the games and toys stall) or to one of the city's four cinemas where - in the early 1960s - there would be a chance of seeing the famous Peter Stuyvessant cigarette advertisement.
Hospital wards have been filled with inmates who chuckle at the recollection of the
advertisement's ersartz glamour! Peter Stuyvessant opened up with zappy fast-paced music and dazzling panoramic shots of beaming faces from glitzy boulevards and smart restaurants in London, Paris, New York and Rome. Pleasure seekers in the cinema's back row would prick up
their ears on hearing the words: "From city after city, people are smoking Peter Stuyvessant!" Lines of leather-clad bikers who remained rooted to their seats when the national anthem was being played would stand solemnly to attention on hearing the Peter Stuyvessant theme music explode from the screen.
'Ossie' Oster - resident of prefab number seventeen - was so taken by this advertisement that he bought three bumper-sized cellophane-wrapped packets of Peter Stuyvessant cigarettes to help light up his family's Christmas festivities. He had no way of knowing that the intended recipient had made a New Year's resolution to give up smoking for good (and that fate had decreed this resolution would be kept.)
For Peter Stuyvessant the future - like the past - had to be a foreign country.