Martin Harbottle's Appreciation of Time by Dominic Utton Page B
Authors: Dominic Utton
Tags: British Transport, Train delays, Panorama, News of the World, First Great Western, Commuting, Network Rail
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about catching a taxi together (I think I caught them arguing about whether to get it as far as Reading or to take a chance on Didcot). There was no sign of Train Girl or Guilty New Mum: they must have bailed even earlier.
Don’t get me wrong. Obviously I didn’t have to catch a coach. I could have stuck it out and stuck around. A nice man at the station did tell me things were likely to get moving by about 8.30, but he couldn’t promise. He confessed that he didn’t know what was going on either.
Which sort of begs the question: who did know? Somebody must have known! Why didn’t the person or people who knew why those three normally packed commuter trains had been apparently inexplicably cancelled, tell some other people, so they could tell the rest of the people in your company, so that those charged with keeping the passengers who pay to use your trains informed about where their trains might be could actually do so?
It’s not rocket surgery, is it? It’s not brain science.
So, yes, I could have stuck around and taken my chances on things getting moving again by 8.30, but the thing is, even if the nice man at the station was right, the platform was by then already full of (at least) three trains’ worth of passengers anyway. The chance of getting a seat would be less than zero. To be honest, I didn’t rate my chances of even getting on the thing at all. If it came at all.
So I left. I made like a Tom and cruised. I got me up and got me out. I got the coach, and arrived to work about an hour and a half late.
Do you have any idea how angry that made my boss? We’re not talking about the most stable of men at the best of times. We’re not talking about the most level-headed, hear-both-sides, judge-not-hastily, slow-to-react kind of man in even the most favourable circumstances. We are, in fact, talking about someone who was always borderline unhinged. A man who was close to the precipice even before all the current legal unpleasantness.
We call my boss Goebbels. That’s his nickname. He’s proud of it too. He has a reputation for unreasonable behaviour. He once sacked the entire graduate trainee intake (eight fresh-faced kids eager to work 14-hour days for minimal pay for two years just for a shot of a job at the end of it) because one of them refused to strip to her knickers and streak at an England v Sweden match (it was for a story, obviously – the girl in question bore a striking resemblance to an A-level student the England manager had been rumoured to have had an affair with. We couldn’t persuade the actual girl herself to do it – the fact that she was 17 made things a bit tricky – but Goebbels thought it would still make a good page lead with a lookalike).
Of course she refused. I’d have refused too, and walked before he could sack me. But it was a bit harsh to sack all the other grad trainees just because of her unwillingness to whip her top off in front of millions and play ball.
He’s been known to throw books, telephones, fax machines, computer monitors, once even a chair, at reporters failing to file good copy. He infamously made one of the sub-editors stand all day on a table in the canteen with a dunce’s cap on, because he had used a split infinitive in a headline.
He is not, in short, a reasonable man.
And now his job’s threatened. Now the police and the Crown Prosecution Service and even hacks from other newspapers are questioning his means, motives and methods – well, now he’s gone full-blown psycho.
Turning up an hour and a half late with nothing but some phoned-in excuses about cancelled trains? It cost me a thwack around the head with a 1988 edition of Who’s Who (a particularly fat year, that year, too. Just thank God it wasn’t a hardback copy) and a promise that I would work at least an hour and a half late every night for the rest of the week.
I got off lightly. But my card’s marked. There’s a blot on the old escutcheon, as Harry the Dog might
Don’t get me wrong. Obviously I didn’t have to catch a coach. I could have stuck it out and stuck around. A nice man at the station did tell me things were likely to get moving by about 8.30, but he couldn’t promise. He confessed that he didn’t know what was going on either.
Which sort of begs the question: who did know? Somebody must have known! Why didn’t the person or people who knew why those three normally packed commuter trains had been apparently inexplicably cancelled, tell some other people, so they could tell the rest of the people in your company, so that those charged with keeping the passengers who pay to use your trains informed about where their trains might be could actually do so?
It’s not rocket surgery, is it? It’s not brain science.
So, yes, I could have stuck around and taken my chances on things getting moving again by 8.30, but the thing is, even if the nice man at the station was right, the platform was by then already full of (at least) three trains’ worth of passengers anyway. The chance of getting a seat would be less than zero. To be honest, I didn’t rate my chances of even getting on the thing at all. If it came at all.
So I left. I made like a Tom and cruised. I got me up and got me out. I got the coach, and arrived to work about an hour and a half late.
Do you have any idea how angry that made my boss? We’re not talking about the most stable of men at the best of times. We’re not talking about the most level-headed, hear-both-sides, judge-not-hastily, slow-to-react kind of man in even the most favourable circumstances. We are, in fact, talking about someone who was always borderline unhinged. A man who was close to the precipice even before all the current legal unpleasantness.
We call my boss Goebbels. That’s his nickname. He’s proud of it too. He has a reputation for unreasonable behaviour. He once sacked the entire graduate trainee intake (eight fresh-faced kids eager to work 14-hour days for minimal pay for two years just for a shot of a job at the end of it) because one of them refused to strip to her knickers and streak at an England v Sweden match (it was for a story, obviously – the girl in question bore a striking resemblance to an A-level student the England manager had been rumoured to have had an affair with. We couldn’t persuade the actual girl herself to do it – the fact that she was 17 made things a bit tricky – but Goebbels thought it would still make a good page lead with a lookalike).
Of course she refused. I’d have refused too, and walked before he could sack me. But it was a bit harsh to sack all the other grad trainees just because of her unwillingness to whip her top off in front of millions and play ball.
He’s been known to throw books, telephones, fax machines, computer monitors, once even a chair, at reporters failing to file good copy. He infamously made one of the sub-editors stand all day on a table in the canteen with a dunce’s cap on, because he had used a split infinitive in a headline.
He is not, in short, a reasonable man.
And now his job’s threatened. Now the police and the Crown Prosecution Service and even hacks from other newspapers are questioning his means, motives and methods – well, now he’s gone full-blown psycho.
Turning up an hour and a half late with nothing but some phoned-in excuses about cancelled trains? It cost me a thwack around the head with a 1988 edition of Who’s Who (a particularly fat year, that year, too. Just thank God it wasn’t a hardback copy) and a promise that I would work at least an hour and a half late every night for the rest of the week.
I got off lightly. But my card’s marked. There’s a blot on the old escutcheon, as Harry the Dog might
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