Saturday, June 05, 2010
A tale for our times
The other night I was on a train running from Waterloo to Epsom and I got on at Earlsfield. So far so good. Two under dressed teens of an age who thought it cool to sit cross-legged in the doors compartment, chatting loudly about the sort of stuff that is cool at that age. Train gets to Raynes Park without further incident. Then we wait for a bit. Then a bit longer. Then the guard comes over the PA - the things actually have their uses from time to time - and tells us that someone appears to have had a heart attack while driving over the level crossing between Raynes Park and Motspur Park. Then we wait a bit more. Sirens heard in the distance. Eventually we are told that the train can move. But only as far as Motspur Park because someone in the next train has been overcome by the strain of it all and had another heart attack at Worcester Park. So we get to Motspur Park where a train load of people, previously ejected from their train, are waiting on the platform. More sirens heard in the distance. Options are not improving. Raynes Park to Epsom is a bit awkward when there are no trains. About all one can do is go to Surbiton, hope that one does not catch a penalty fare, and climb into one of the taxis there. Very good taxi service at Surbiton but one is £20 poorer. And in the meantime the train one had got off of might have got onto the move. But now we are at Motspur Park and getting to Surbiton would mean going back before going forward. So we sit and wait. Maybe as many as 500 of us. Get to Epsom maybe 45 minutes late.
I was reminded of the anecdote - if that is a proper word in the context - about the siege of Leningrad during which the city was stocked up by night by lorries running along an ice road over the lake. Any lorry getting stuck was simply pushed into the lake, just about giving the driver time to hop off. Things were pretty grim and nothing could be allowed to stand in the way of stocking up.
So in this case we have someone with a heart attack sitting in his or her car on the level crossing. I bet that in the days of Dixon of Dock Green, PC Dixon would have boldly entered the nearest pub and requisitioned 10 able bodied men. Then the 10 would have pushed the car off the level crossing to the beat of his trusty truncheon. The subject of the heart attack would probably never had known. But this would not do now. We have to wait for the emergency services and the paramedics. Collectively we are terrified of interfering in such cases. And I do not think it is just the fear of being sued by an irate heart attack. Someone less savoury is going on.
In the same way, PC Dixon would have gathered up 2 able bodied men and carried the patient off the train at Worcester Park onto the platform. Lied the patient down. Put rolled up police mackintosh under head. Talked calmingly to the patient while waiting for the ambulance to arrive. But again, nothing doing these days.
I may, of course, have got the detail of the story wrong. But I think the spirit of the thing is about right.
Something vaguely related is going on in the recent tragedy in Cumbria. Someone has gone mad, more or less out of the blue, and murdered a lot of people before killing himself. So tragedy indeed. But now I read that 100 or more detectives are crawling over the dead killer's life to try and reconstruct the whole grisly story of his madness. But what purpose does it serve? His victims are dead and he is dead. Why not just bury them with appropriate ceremony and move on? Do we really need such an elaborate ritual of detection?
I dare say that if the killer had been the subject of psychiatric screening, maybe at two or three hours a pop, the screener might have spotted that something was amiss and had his (the killer's) gun license withdrawn. A trick, incidentally, which does not work with knives or arson. One cannot stop people buying the stuff for that short of incarcerating them. But I do hope we are not going to move into such a world. The intrusion would not be justified by the modest amount of murder which would thereby be stopped.
# posted by Jim @ 12:57 AM 
