Train suicides wreck lives, not our self-important schedules

That’s 236 families heartbroken, 236 train drivers traumatised and countless people affected by that nan-second of impact. The ripples of a train suicide run wide and deep.

The real anguish and long-term effects of these tragedies – for he or she feels there is no choice but to die under a train – is too often lost in the news of subsequent train delays.

Travel is disrupted by a ‘incident on the line,’ we’re told. Other people’s schedules thrown into disarray and appointments and connections lost causing much moaning about their own inconvenience.

Are we so heartless and self-absorbed to stop to think about why a little disruption is affecting our lives? To think about that poor person, their families facing the biggest tragedy and grief and the terrible fall-out for the train driver doing his job?

Last week, travelling back from an event in London, all aspects of human nature unravelled when, at Diss, everyone had to disembark because of a suicide on the line between Norwich and Diss.

Many reactions were distasteful, callous and downright unpleasant.

The ‘me first’ culture was laid bare as people ranted loudly and insensitively into their mobiles about the cause of their late arrival home/to a party/meeting.

Passengers of two trains milled around waiting to find out how Greater Anglia intended to get them back to Norwich.

Rarely do we get a chance to stand and watch in a crisis and study different reactions.

What was unveiled was a lack of kindness, consideration, understanding and a callousness that I hope not to see again.

Granted, the organisation, direction and communication from Greater Anglia was pitiful.

Eventually, word seeped out that buses were on their way, and everyone would be taken to their destination.

No one was organising any order for passengers so what ensued was the young, able and fit running and pushing to get a seat first.

Elderly, people on crutches, parents with small children and heavily pregnant women were given scant consideration, let alone a seat outside the station to wait, as people put their own comfort first.

One young woman was struggling with a tiny baby in a buggy, a heavy suitcase and two bags.

No one helped her as she tried to lift the buggy up some stairs. 

A couple of us carried luggage and asked people to give up their seats for people who needed them.

Whenever a bus arrived, it was the survival of the fittest as they swarmed to the bus, without a thought for other people.

One woman, probably in her seventies, was upset at the callousness. “At least we’ll get home tonight. We should be thinking of the poor person, their family and the driver, who will never get over today.”

In 2019, a train driver killed himself after he had hit a suicidal person. His partner told his inquest that he had never recovered the anxiety and depression caused by the accident and had started drinking heavily after, despite support by London North Easter Railway (LNER).

Train driver Andy Botham told the BBC how he could remember every second of the time when the train he was driving hit someone, travelling at 125mph.

He recounted that when, seeing a person standing in front of your train, a driver does everything possible to encourage them to move out the way, blowing the horn, emergency braking.

Then everything goes into slow motion, the image replayed over in your head time and time again, he said.

Drivers are trained to deal with the immediate moment, he said, but the memory never leaves.

“I still drive over the same piece of track now. There are still days where it's the same sort of light, the same sort of day, then it comes flying back to you. You remember it.

"One of the worst things was being called to the coroner's court. There they become a real person with a name, an age, a family, and their own problems, and you realise how they ended up there."

If only every person last week had thought of the person, who had a name, family and a future, the ensuing scenes would have been more dignified and less selfish.

'Manopause' is simply ageing

Women’s menopause has been overlooked, ignored, and diminished forever, but it only takes one man, Robbie Williams, to say he is going through ‘manopause’ after years of partying and ears prick up.

The singer, 49, says he is going through the “manopause” and is dealing with thinning hair, reduced sex drive and insomnia with his years of partying taking a toll.

It’s called ageing Robbie. Just get on with it – like women have been told to do that since time began.

Covid inquiry exposing childish behaviour

The point of that Covid inquiry is to learn lessons to shape how the government will handle a future pandemic.

What we’re learning is the true measure of the people we charged to navigate us through unprecedented times, as we were told daily, in WhatsApp messages full of obscenities, disdain and arrogance that sound like indignant spatting teenagers rather than the statesmen these men believed they were.