Today I was employed to stand by the side of the road from 11.00am to 8.00pm. For this I was paid £6 an hour. It was worth it, but only just. I was a marshall for the British Heart Foundation Bike Show Ride 2004 though I only know this now having looked it up. Kat at the agency asked me if I was available on Sunday for a marshaling job near the NEC and having not earned a load of cash this week I said yes. Had it not been cold and wet it would have been a kinda fun day, if your idea of fun is standing still by a roundabout for nine hours.
I was working with John, an interesting chap in his early 60s who temps two days a week while studying saddle-making. Despite better than expected company I was getting kinda bored by one, cold by two and then it started raining. While I can’t quite remember when or where I’m sure I’ve been this cold before, but it’s not something I want to repeat. It was like waiting for a bus that never came. We didn’t even have much to do – just wave the bikes over the roundabout. No traffic management or, well, anything at all. There was a garage nearby so we were able to get cups of tea but most of the time was literally spent on the side of the roundabout looking out for bikes. I know that patch really well now. Did I mention it was cold? And wet?
The weirdest thing was not knowing what was going on. As far as we were concerned people were cycling down the road, past us, and over the roundabout. Where they came from and where they were going was a mystery. We were wondering why, since the bikes had only come from Birmingham, as one rider with cramp told us, they were so spread out (the first arrived at about 11.30, the last at 7.30) – surely it would make sense for them all to leave at the same time? Now I know that they’d left from London, Oxford and Birmingham, and that the distances were 130, 86 and 48 miles respectively (they must have taken the long route from Brum) it all makes more sense. But of course we’re never told anything less than essential about these jobs.
In brief, then: Marshall, cold, wet, roundabout, bikes, cold.
A marshall’s job can be very important – or perhaps my point is that without a key marshall in place, things can and will go very wrong. To illustrate:
I went to Southampton University in 1964. The cross country team was legendary at that time, having spawned athletes who had competed in the Olympics. Having represented my county (Shropshire!) in the All England School Cross Country Championships, I thought I could compete with the University bunch. So I showed up at a golf course in Bournemouth and was selected to run the first leg of a four man relay team. Off we went. Soon I was left behind. Every so often I would come across a marshall and would be pointed in the direction of the rest of the race. But eventually I came to a junction in the trail with only pine trees as company. Which way to go? I had no idea. So, looking at the ground I decided to follow the path with the most footprints. Obviously I chose the wrong way. Eventually I found my way back to the start where I was blamed for ruining my team’s chances. To this day I wonder about that missing marshall – was he standing behind a tree taking a pee, had he decided to keep warm in a nearby car until it was time for lap two, had the other teams paid him off? I guess I’ll never know. But I never ran at Southampton again.
So all those cyclists may not realize it, but they owe you, Pete, for being there, for pointing them in the right direction, for suffering the rain and the cold with them. You didn’t let one of them down. They may never remember that, of course, but if you had slacked off for just five minutes . . . . .
Oh, I knew the job was important – in fact we’d assumed it would be more important, like stopping traffic and the like – and every rider who passed was given verbal and physical directions to go “straight over” the roundabout. This was even more important when you realised that turing right would take them onto the motorway-esque dual carriageway of the Coventry Road.
There were two of us there to cover the slacking off risk. A number of times I’d be gazing in the wrong direction as a cyclist buzzed past but John had caught them.
It was very cold and wet though.