20 July 1969 One small step

We are watching the grainy monochrome images on TV in company with half the world, but at 12.30 I leave to walk under a moonlit sky down St Helen’s Road and into the depot. She does not like me working nights, nor spending my days at the beach while she types for eight hours shipwrecked in a babble of unfamiliar tongues. I’m striding and staring upwards in disbelief while walking briskly, courting a Chaplinesque collision with tree, or trip over pavement crack. Any sense of awe is shattered by the casual profanity of the crew. One new man. I can sense trouble, he just fresh from years of Army service, me a student in a time of unrest. We roll and bounce along the A48 towards Bridgend, the usual mindless banter edged by the pointedness of the new man’s opinion. Catching the night mail back to Swansea we stand and sway and eye each other, making up orders from the reams of bound papers loaded at Paddington. “a quire of Western Mail, half quire of Telegraph, six Guardian, two  Financial Times....there’s posh” . We work at our own orders on a trestle table down the middle of the carriage. He will be quickly frustrated at his inability to handle the simple task. Unwind ball of  string on table to appropriate length, keep eye on ball as train rolls and shudders, arrange wrapping sheet of yesterday’s news on string ensuring adequate supply where knot will be tied at top of bale, count out with thumb and forefinger along the spines, pile into neat column to agreed but not defined height, place more protective rapping atop, then whisk string from ball-end briskly right over, to meet loose end, loop and twist string, to send it down the other side and  in one move swivel whole bale to bring string between bale and table and back up other side to loose end at top. Take knife, cut string and tie securely, ensuring order firmly secured under string to identify recipient. After a fortnight I am sixty percent competent, working my speed up. Learning to keep my feet. He will not like it. On a first shift it is difficult not to feel like an idiot. Three hours later we are finishing off in Swansea cuttings before transferring our bales back into the van. We take a minute to read the headlines written before the actual moment of triumph. One first step.......I walk home with the rising sun on my back knowing this is a day I will not forget.  

Dave Morgan