Reset the Clock.

Greetings, folks.

Don’t worry – I’ve not come over all Joey Boswell (children of the 80’s stand up and take your bow), but it seems that I have taken a longer break from the blogging job than I had thought. I notice that none of you said that you missed me, you disloyal buggers, but I forgive you. Spring is well and truly sprung. There is ale to be drunk, food to be eaten and members of the same or opposite sex to seduce and do naughty things with in the long grass. I salute your drunken, overfed and over-sexed debauchery. Rest assured that while you diet, recover from your hangovers and smear creams on strange and worrying rashes, Potter has been busy playing trains. Well, all except for a fortnight.

You see, Potter was off track. Oh yes, I was hauled away from the driving cab. Real Life mugged me, folks. As some people do when worrying about things, I found myself not sleeping. Not sleeping isn’t fun at the best of times, and not sleeping when you know you have early turns upcoming is double portions of No Fun with a side order of Professional Anxiety. Railway work is Potter’s pride and pleasure, and when you’re in charge of 800-odd lives & 300 tons of heavy machinery moving at 75mph you should be on top of your game. I wasn’t. In fact, I was about as far from the top of my game as I’ve ever been since I joined the railway. In the days of British Rail telling your supervisor “I’m not up to this, chief: I’m not fit to drive” because you were tired was likely to illicit many reactions, but I’m told most of them either started or ended with “don’t be a tart and get on with it.” Fortunately for me that isn’t the case any more. Rose-tinted specs may be the order of the day for enthusiasts, but the private railway has a lot to be said for it and one of the best things is that it understands how to look after its staff. I found this out quickly. I knew I wasn’t fit to drive, so after some soul-searching I plucked up the courage to speak to my Driver Standards Manager. It was a serious talk,  so serious in fact that I made almost no remarks of an “oh look, a driver in a Primark suit” nature. That chat boiled down to one decision – do I remove myself from the cab, or do I risk an incident?

I chose the grown up path – pride will only get you so far before it gets you into trouble, and in this job trouble tends to come in lots of unpleasant flavours. I took a deep breath: I asked to be removed from the driving cab. After that, things moved quickly. An appointment with the occupational health folks up at head office was arranged and I found myself before the doctor. The interview seemed to go quite well after I had persuaded him to come out from under the desk and shown him my piece of paper, signed by Desmond Morris, that reads “yes, it probably is human.” The doctor and I chatted. He scribbled things. A period away from the cab was agreed upon – 3 weeks. I went home, and braced myself for the return to work on Monday morning. Walking into the Park without a driving duty that day was an odd feeling; if anything I was more nervous about what they were going to find me to do instead of driving than I was about driving itself. I was put to work on what are termed ‘Light Duties”, which inexplicably didn’t involve neon tubes, a study of Thomas Edison, filament bulbs or how to use wall switches. What it did involve was…, well, lets just say I am glad I’m back on-track and driving. Lets also say that at the moment every time I see a set of car park gates I tend to scream slightly. I was away from the cab for two weeks. I could have had the full three, but in the end I wanted to get back to driving. During those fourteen days I felt a bit of a fraud. Was being tired enough of an excuse?, I asked myself. Was I wasting everyone’s time? The short answer was of course “No.” The railway is never short of an illustrative story, and I was told by an ex-mainline man of a time when he had spent a sleepless night after an argument with his then girlfriend. “We had a proper tear-up”, he told me seriously. “I booked on early and drove an express from London to Oxford, and when I arrived I couldn’t remember a thing about the journey. Where we had stopped, whether we had stopped – none of it. It’s not a nice feeling.” So while I might have felt a fraud, I made the right decision.

Now, though, all is once again roses in the Professional Garden of Potter. From the first day back in the cab, when I must confess I was more nervous than I ever felt on my first day as a newly-qualified driver, everything felt suddenly fresh and novel again. The sun shone, the signals always seemed to be green (except on the last gantry into Waterloo – if you ever get a green there, tell someone) and there was that “all is right with the world” feeling that I had been missing for weeks. The clock has been reset. For the sake of a fortnight and admitting that something was amiss, my love affair with the driving cab is renewed. In The Pleasures of Railways, Brian Hollingsworth wrote “there can be few industries which include among their staff such a high percentage of people for whom going to work is just another opportunity to indulge in their favourite pastime and who go home after every shift secure in the knowledge that they have earned real folding money by doing what they like doing best.” I had heard that quote before, and liked it. For a while I was worried that it didn’t apply to me any more. I think my worry was baseless. It’s good to be back in the cab.* 455s are making nice howly noises in Full Parallel, I’m wave to colleagues, I don’t have to look at car park gates any more, the sun rises earlier and earlier each morning which make my cycle rides into Wimbledon ever more tolerable and of course the female passengers are wearing fewer and fewer clothes. But life is not quite so rosy outside of work, I’m sorry to say. There will be a death in the Upton family before too long, which is not a nice thing to have hanging over you. It weighs less on me than my parents, since it is my mothers Dad who is not long for this world. He suffered a serious stroke a few days ago and the doctors tell us that “it’s just a matter of time.” What else is there to say? These things happen. My brother and I will be there to lend support when it’s needed, but for now we play a waiting game. Grandad is visited daily by Mum and Dad, and by my Aunty Lorraine and her family. His room is bright and airy. They chat to him. He doesn’t answer. He hasn’t woken since the stroke. We hope the sounds of voices does him good. The nurses and doctors are gentle with him, and he gets the best care they can give. I hope for his sake that he simply falls asleep.

Life goes on. I’ve reset my clock.

Count your blessings, dear reader.

 

* A gentleman by the name of Micheal Williams was kind enough to apply that very quote to me. To my surprise, I am mentioned in his new book “On The Slow Train Again.” It’s nice to be mentioned in such high praise, and I would like to say “thank you” to him publicly. Partly because it’s polite, and partly because if I put a link to his book on here then he might buy me a pint.

Click Here To See Micheal’s Fine Work – with added Potter.