Looking Forwards - 1974

Looking Forwards and Beyond -  1974

When the guardians of the website chose ‘a year- fictional or otherwise' I was intrigued to find myself returning to the 1970s.  I have written quite a bit about my childhood, formative years and my journey in life as a teenager. However, not about the mid-70s from the perspective of a chain of events in a year that changed the rest of my life  and sent it in a totally different direction moving forward.

Sure, the Iron Road continued to dominate my life. Heck! It gave me so much and formed everything right up to the family and home I lied to Michael the Tramp about in 1972. Like all symphonic stories the resolution’s roots lay in 1974.  I had returned to East London and soon decided to apply for work at St Pancras (yes, I know, railways again, please persevere…) and the desire for speed was satisfied in intercity passenger work.  Commuting across London at 3.a.m was indeed different . I was to enjoy the last two years of my footplate life visiting the Midlands, which included the city where both my mother and my sister had been born. As well as Leicester, where a close  friend went to university. Harlington, which is  on that route, meant very little back then except a flashing glance of a rural station on the rapid dash north,. Only last week (back to 2023) I visited a school there to give a talk to the 6^th Forms incumbent there.  Oh boy! What a life and what experiences have been crammed into those intervening years! 

Way back in 1992 (Oh do keep track…) when  I was a manager, one of my staff entered the office to ask what I had done in my life… an hour later he rose as if he had been given parole and said “Well, you’ve certainly been about a bit!”  Little did either of us know it was only half time in footballing parlances. By the time 1992 arrived I was a father of two and living in the North East.  Back in 1974 I still thought the buses in the North were horse-drawn and had thatched roofs!

So, dear reader, we go back to the year that was the source of all my joy – 1974.  Most of the year passed fairly uneventfully, really.  However, the events of the previous year changed both my direction and my outlook. I barley noticed the change back then. It was like taking a fork in the road. As the traveller I soon moved a long, long way from the original path.  I said in an earlier chapter that I had chosen to return to Switzerland with the Crusader Christian group.They organised holidays for young people to experience fellowship and adventure.  I  stood on Victoria Station staring open-mouthed at my surroundings with the edelweiss walking stick I had purchased in Switzerland 1972.  Unbeknown to me, at the time, was the girl with whom I was to spend the rest of my life, looking amusedly at the gawping youth.  I still really don’t understand what she saw in me in the months and years that followed, but it must have been something, as we married four years later. We got talking .I got to hold her hand as we ascended the Wätterlatte (a mountain walk in the Swiss Alps). The excuse had been to check increased pulse rates, but then I kept hold of her hand.  The descent was physical, but spiritually and romantically I soared and I am still soaring.

The plans I had back in 1972 turned out so differently. The classic question is asked ‘would I have changed anything?’ well obviously the bad bits, but the three years I have written about created a love story that won’t make a best seller, but nor can anyone tear the pages of my personal fairy tale from my firm reflecting and eternally grateful grasp.