Going Nowhere

I'm in Newcastle station having just caught a train here from Northallerton. I'm on my way to collect a lorry from a BT depot near Gateshead and have less than ten minutes to get outside and locate the appropriate bus stop. However, I drunk a large cup of coffee on the train and am therefore also trying to cram a visit to the toilet into this timeframe.

I locate the toilets, and discover that they are closed. A printed notice on the door advises people to use the 'night toilet' instead. At the bottom of the notice a line of printed arrows points to the left. However above these a larger arrow drawn in pink marker pen points to the right. The sign is rendered even more confusing by the fact that the door is located in the side of an archway between two platforms, so none of the arrows points along the length of a platform, but instead they point across them towards the railway lines. There is no-one within hearing distance so I treat myself to a 'for fuck's sake!' and then opt for the platform indicated by the pink arrow. I walk to one end, unsure exactly what I'm looking for. I've never seen any door in any train station marked as a 'night toilet' before.

I still haven't.

There is nothing at that end of the platform and no staff to ask. I give up and make my way out of the station, where I catch the bus with less than five minutes to spare.

I sit looking out of the bus window as we cross the Tyne and head south wondering what, if anything, was going through the mind of the person who put the sign up, and feeling thankful that the road is not too bumpy.

The Lure of the Totem Pole

Walking through the East India Dock Basin, in London, on my way to collect a vehicle from a company based in one of the wharfs.

I've walked about halfway along the relevant wharf when I come to an old, boarded up brick building - not an uncommon sight in this ungentrified part of the Docklands. However, the pieces of glass still remaining in the smashed windows have been painted in red, yellow and green. The crude brush strokes seem to follow the jagged edges, suggesting that they were painted after the windows were broken.

Next to the building a wooden telephone pole has been painted in a similarly determined but amateurish fashion, all the way to the top, to resemble a totem pole - colourful stripes interspaced with cartoon faces. Here and there are other small bits of stenciled graffitti, mostly symbols that are meaningless to me, with only an Antifa sticker on a lamppost having any overt political message.

Was the building formerly a squat? We are within walking distance of the ExCel centre, whose arms fairs have attracted protesters in the recent past, so perhaps there is a connection there?

I ponder these things as I make my way along the wharf, looking for the company from whom I'm due to collect the car that will take me home. I am still trying to locate them when my controller phones to tell me the job has been cancelled and I now have to make my way to Uxbridge, on the other side of the city, to collect a different vehicle.

I walk back past the totem pole and the painted smashed windows, their implicit rejection of the everyday world of work and wages seeming suddenly to have more merit.

Safe Enough

I've just descended the steps into the gloom of Walsall train station and have less than five minutes to wait for a train to Birmingham.

At the bottom of the stairs a portly, officious man in a grey uniform eyes me up before venturing an 'excuse me sir,' in my direction.

'Yeah?'

'We're doing a quick survey on security at the station. Can I ask you four very quick questions?'

'Ok.'

He walks over, clipboard and pen at the ready.

'Do you use the trains every day?'

'Erm... most days.'

He writes 'daily' in the box.

'At this particular station have you ever felt that your security was at risk?'

'No,' I answer emphatically.

He asks my age and postcode and then we are done and he moves off in search of more volunteers.

The thing is, even if I had ever felt at risk here for any reason, I still would have answered 'no' through a vague suspicion that too many affirmative responses might be used as justification for some new security measures that would turn out to be more intrusive than effective.

These days if you are sitting on a station platform trying to read, or write or just think your own thoughts, you are far less likely to be disturbed by the threatening behaviour of other passengers than by the steady stream of loud security and safety announcements from the station tannoys.

These range from the standard advice about keeping all personal belongings with you at all times, to unintentionally sinister reminders that you are being watched on CCTV, to nannying warnings that platforms are slippery when they have been rained upon, to absurd pronouncements about the illegality of skateboarding and rollerblading in the station.

This last warning is now prevalent across the whole country, despite the fact that even before its introduction I had never seen a single person engaged in either of these activities in any train station.

Even when there is no genuine security risk there seems to be a dismal determination to keep on warning us about something.

To my mind there was room for a fifth question at the end of that survey -

'Do you ever wish that we would just leave you in peace?'

Looking Up

Waiting at a bus stop in Kingswinford, in the Black Country, for a bus to Wolverhampton.

It is just after half past eight in the morning, and since it is the school holidays the streets that would normally be sprinkled with groups of overly energetic children are instead peacefully empty. I've been standing alone at the stop for about ten minutes when I hear brisk footsteps approaching behind me, and then a hand grabs my forearm. The grip is not hard enough to be painful, but moves and squeezes in and out in a way that instead seems to suggest an excess of affection.

The owner of the hand turns out to be a small slim guy, probably in his fifties, who lets go and then momentarily turns to look at me as he passes and says -

'Gonna be nice again today!'

'Looks like it,' I reply to the back of his head as he hurries on his way.

I study his receding figure, looking for anything that might confirm my suspicion of mental illness - an unkempt appearance or discordant clothing. But a gold watch glints on his wrist and he is wearing smart grey trousers and a crisp clean shirt with fewer creases in it than mine.

Perhaps he is just one of life's undauntable optimists, never stopping to think about the advisability of grabbing strangers from behind, or of predicting the weather on a morning when the sky contains as much grey as blue.

I hope he managed to avoid the downpour that ensued in the afternoon.

No Time to Stand and Stare?

It's just after nine in the morning and I'm on a bus from Pensnett to Merry Hill, in the Black Country.

In between Merry Hill itself and the shopping centre we pass a cluster of old, council tower blocks. On a second floor balcony of one of these a very white man leans against the railing smoking a cigarette. He is middle aged with short greying hair and has no top on to cover his protruding gut. Beneath the railing the balcony is enclosed by thick glass, and through this I can see his bare legs, and white shorts of a similar enough shade to his fishbelly skin to momentarily give the alarming impression that he is entirely naked.

This is a summer morning in name only. There is a cold breeze blowing, which must be colder still up there. The sky is dark and it has only recently stopped raining. The rest of the world is in jackets and coats.

There is nothing about the man's appearance that suggests the kind of pride in his physique which might lead to him to consider the cold to be a price worth paying in order to have his body on display. From the way he leans, puffing on his cigarette and idly contemplating the world below him it is easy to believe that instead he considers the cold is worth enduring in order to avoid the effort of getting dressed.

Did you know that Ambition used to be one of the Seven Deadly Sins? The list was originally part of the ancient religion of Mithraism before being adopted by Christianity where Ambition was rehabilitated and replaced with Gluttony.

My man on the balcony seems almost immorally out of step in a capitalist society, but I can't help thinking that he would have made a good Mithraic

Just so They Know I Know

Most of the vehicles I deliver are company cars or leased cars which are one or two years old at most.

Lately though I have had a flurry of old British Telecom lorries to move. These have been declared surplus to requirements at their current depots and need to be taken to new ones. Because these lorries have been standing idle for a while their batteries are inevitably utterly flat.

However, if you turn the key in the ignition of a lorry and nothing happens then there is also another possible explanation - the vehicle may be fitted with an isolator switch. If this switch is pressed once it will disconnect the battery from the vehicle's electrics, preventing it from being drained during long periods of inactivity. A second press will reconnect the battery.

Isolator switches are sometimes located on the dashboard, sometimes elsewhere in the cab, and sometimes even on the outside of the vehicle.

When I collected the first of this series of surplus vehicles, from a depot in North London, I hunted around for the switch, couldn't find it, and then double checked that there wasn't one via the following functional conversation with the guy in the workshop -

'There an isolator switch on it mate?'

'Not on them.'

'Gonna need a jump then.'

'I'll send someone round to it in a minute.'

And here's the thing - that brief exchange made me feel like a proper lorry driver, someone who not only knew that isolator switches existed but also knew their propensity for being hidden away in unlikely places.

Compared to most HGV drivers I don't have a great deal of experience, and my licence only covers me to drive the smaller (Class 2) types. In most situations I have to grudgingly regard myself as a novice, but at that moment I felt like an old hand.

So here I am now in Cardiff, a couple of weeks later, picking up the sixth or seventh of these lifeless lorries, by now fully aware that the problem is always a flat battery and yet still casually asking, as I do every single time -

'No isolator switch in it is there mate?'

Roadside History

It's early afternoon and I've just attempted to deliver a shiny new red Vauxhall Astra estate to an address in Leek, Staffordshire. The attempt failed due to the customer having ordered a saloon. I've driven away in search of something to eat, and am now waiting for the office to tell me what to do with the vehicle.

When I studied my street map on the way here my eye was caught by something called the 'Plague Stone', whose name stood out in bold italics on the page, denoting it to be an antiquity of some kind. I ought to be within a mile of it and have decided to seek it out while I wait.

It turns out to be more visible on the map than in the reality, and I drive past it three times before I spot it, a small upright stone about three feet high at the side of one of the entrances to a playing field.

It is topped with green and streaked with a single white line left by a bird that obviously had no respect for history. A small plaque at its base explains that it is the bottom part of a medieval wayside cross, and derives its name from the local belief that it was here that supplies were left for the town when it was isolated by the Bubonic Plague during the seventeenth century. The plaque also explains that the payment for these supplies would be left in bowls of vinegar to prevent the spread of the disease, a small strange detail that seems to make that long gone scene come to life in my imagination.

I wonder how many other diminutive but enthralling relics lurk along the sides of our roads, not quite capable of catching the eye of passers by? The Plague Stone could certainly use a sign to tell people it is there, preferably one written in bold italics, or better still, in a font borrowed from the opening credits of an old black and white horror film.

[caption id="attachment_37" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Plague Stone"][/caption]