Death On The Railway...

One heard yesterday the desperate news of a man crushed to death by a train. The railway station is local, the man not known to us here.

We do not know, but we heard it said that he was in his fifties and that he jumped - not fell or was pushed.

Why do I immediately picture someone so bereft of hope at the impending collapse of all he has worked for and dreamt of - the result of impending financial ruin - that only death could end the torment?

It may not be thus - and God save his soul and protect his family - but I fear it may be so.

We have had, in our Wolds, the shotgun farmers and we have had the starving widows, but now too it seems we are just as likely to have the bankrupt bankers. Black bin-liners to clear the desk; not the anticipated, expected annual bonus.

Do I grieve for such souls as much I would the others? Yes, without any shadow of a doubt I do.

My greatest dread has ever been death by mechanical crushing. It is my certain belief that this dread came about because when but a child of less than seven years I was nearly run-down by a car reversing out of its driveway.

Mother was following as I rode my tricycle along the pavements towards the shops. We were off to buy food for Father's tea. (Well, perhaps we weren't. Maybe we were doing anything you might care to imagine. But what we were doing was totally ordinary and safe to the child I then was.)

There was a low brick wall to my left. The driver of the car would not have seen me and my tricycle coming. He passed slowly backwards just as I reached his driveway, trapping me under his rear wheel. Mother - people - screamed as they saw what was happening and could happen. The driver heard and stopped. I lived. I might not have done.

That then, from that day, has been my abiding fear. An impersonal machine grinding my soft flesh. Our - and he is our - man on the railway line did die that way, split and sundered in a second. From life to death in a moment of agony.

God save us all from such an end. For whatever reason. For whatever purpose took him there. Good Lord preserve us.