He shoots... he scores
by Angus Shoor Caan
Genre: Memoir
Swearwords: None.
Description: A memoir where revenge is oh so sweet.
Swearwords: None.
Description: A memoir where revenge is oh so sweet.
A child offered me a Mint Imperial on the bus the other day. She only had three left so I politely refused but sight of the sugary confection brought back an old memory from my days as a conductor on the trains.
Wigan has two stations, Wallgate being one and North Western the other. North Western serves the main line route Glasgow-London and also stations to Liverpool, but can also serve local routes to Manchester too. Very often I could start a shift at Wallgate and finish up at North Western depending on which service I worked home; Wallgate being my home depot. It's a short walk between the two.
Anyone working as front line troops in any public service will tell you that the great British public can be irritatingly ignorant at the best of times, and railway passengers, or, 'customers', as we were meant to address them, can often bring a rather high instance of ignorance to play.
One such individual was a regular customer, boarding the first train out of Southport at Moels Cop, the first station on the Manchester route. Immaculately turned out, he paid in cash for his weekly ticket then stuck his nose in a book while enduring the hour and a half trip on an ever crowding train and hopping off at Salford Central. He was no trouble at that time of the day.
Since he paid cash I didn't have a name for him such as I would from a card or cheque, but my colleagues knew to whom I was referring when the subject of difficult customers arose.
Fast forward fourteen hours or so to when he's making his way home after a quite obvious session in the pub after work and he came into his own, and you never met such an obnoxious individual; the transformation was spectacular. Dishevelled, surly and stinking of drink, he would take ten minutes or more to locate his ticket, muttering all the while that it was probably me who had sold it to him and I therefore should know he had one. Choice language too for one so quiet and reserved at the start of the day.
I relished these confrontations both from him and other such customers since it tended to show them up for what they were, but it all had to come to a head at some point, hilariously with this particular dude, as it turns out.
I was minding a new recruit, a young lady, showing her the ins and outs of the job and in particular the issuing/checking of tickets when the individual in question got on his high horse, rising unsteadily to his full six four and jabbing a finger in the poor girl's direction. I immediately stepped between them, told the guy to sit down, stay quiet and behave himself or he would be removed from the train at the next stop. I said it in a loud enough voice that the other customers present could hear me, thus saving me the trouble of announcing that there could be a delay to the service if he didn't do as he was told. This also put the other customers on my side and I knew they would assist in any way possible; very often with relish. After all, they did want to get home.
I always carried a little notebook with me. Nothing to do with the job but to jot down any music I might be on the hunt for whenever I had a decent lay-over in Liverpool or Manchester, both university cities and therefore crammed with second hand outlets dealing in the buying and selling of music in all formats. I got the young lady to write a report of the incident, did the same myself, although worded slightly differently to avoid any suspicion of collusion, and spent ten minutes copying them to foolscap sheets before handing them in to Zappy in the comms office at Wallgate; just in case the dude had the notion of complaining.
With a twenty minute wait for a connecting service to Southport at that time of night, the dude habitually made a dash upstairs for a top-up at the Swan and Railway, and that's just what he did that particular evening.
I didn't hear another word about it but a few weeks later I finished my shift over at North Western and was making my way downstairs to Wallgate comms office to book off. There's two flights of stairs, with a short landing between them, and I spied a Mint Imperial lying at the top of the next flight just as an arriving train disgorged its customers. I couldn't resist and lashed at it with a steel toecap as that very same dude hoved into view. The confection struck him square in the centre of his forehead with such pace that it stopped him in his tracks. I convulsed with laughter to see it still firmly in place as we passed on the stairs, wishing at the time that it had been something more substantial like a Bullseye gobstopper. Revenge was sugary sweet.
Wigan has two stations, Wallgate being one and North Western the other. North Western serves the main line route Glasgow-London and also stations to Liverpool, but can also serve local routes to Manchester too. Very often I could start a shift at Wallgate and finish up at North Western depending on which service I worked home; Wallgate being my home depot. It's a short walk between the two.
Anyone working as front line troops in any public service will tell you that the great British public can be irritatingly ignorant at the best of times, and railway passengers, or, 'customers', as we were meant to address them, can often bring a rather high instance of ignorance to play.
One such individual was a regular customer, boarding the first train out of Southport at Moels Cop, the first station on the Manchester route. Immaculately turned out, he paid in cash for his weekly ticket then stuck his nose in a book while enduring the hour and a half trip on an ever crowding train and hopping off at Salford Central. He was no trouble at that time of the day.
Since he paid cash I didn't have a name for him such as I would from a card or cheque, but my colleagues knew to whom I was referring when the subject of difficult customers arose.
Fast forward fourteen hours or so to when he's making his way home after a quite obvious session in the pub after work and he came into his own, and you never met such an obnoxious individual; the transformation was spectacular. Dishevelled, surly and stinking of drink, he would take ten minutes or more to locate his ticket, muttering all the while that it was probably me who had sold it to him and I therefore should know he had one. Choice language too for one so quiet and reserved at the start of the day.
I relished these confrontations both from him and other such customers since it tended to show them up for what they were, but it all had to come to a head at some point, hilariously with this particular dude, as it turns out.
I was minding a new recruit, a young lady, showing her the ins and outs of the job and in particular the issuing/checking of tickets when the individual in question got on his high horse, rising unsteadily to his full six four and jabbing a finger in the poor girl's direction. I immediately stepped between them, told the guy to sit down, stay quiet and behave himself or he would be removed from the train at the next stop. I said it in a loud enough voice that the other customers present could hear me, thus saving me the trouble of announcing that there could be a delay to the service if he didn't do as he was told. This also put the other customers on my side and I knew they would assist in any way possible; very often with relish. After all, they did want to get home.
I always carried a little notebook with me. Nothing to do with the job but to jot down any music I might be on the hunt for whenever I had a decent lay-over in Liverpool or Manchester, both university cities and therefore crammed with second hand outlets dealing in the buying and selling of music in all formats. I got the young lady to write a report of the incident, did the same myself, although worded slightly differently to avoid any suspicion of collusion, and spent ten minutes copying them to foolscap sheets before handing them in to Zappy in the comms office at Wallgate; just in case the dude had the notion of complaining.
With a twenty minute wait for a connecting service to Southport at that time of night, the dude habitually made a dash upstairs for a top-up at the Swan and Railway, and that's just what he did that particular evening.
I didn't hear another word about it but a few weeks later I finished my shift over at North Western and was making my way downstairs to Wallgate comms office to book off. There's two flights of stairs, with a short landing between them, and I spied a Mint Imperial lying at the top of the next flight just as an arriving train disgorged its customers. I couldn't resist and lashed at it with a steel toecap as that very same dude hoved into view. The confection struck him square in the centre of his forehead with such pace that it stopped him in his tracks. I convulsed with laughter to see it still firmly in place as we passed on the stairs, wishing at the time that it had been something more substantial like a Bullseye gobstopper. Revenge was sugary sweet.
About the Author
Angus Shoor Caan is in an ex-seaman and rail worker. Born and bred in Saltcoats, he returned to Scotland after many years in England and found the time to begin writing.
Angus is the author of thirteen novels, two short story collections and twelve collections of poems. All but four of his books are McStorytellers publications.
You can read his full profile on McVoices.
Angus is the author of thirteen novels, two short story collections and twelve collections of poems. All but four of his books are McStorytellers publications.
You can read his full profile on McVoices.