Milan Hilton returns with a second installment of his guest blog and this time he reveals how a knife-wielding hoody made him realise how he could learn from the lessons he teaches every day.
Physician, heal thyself!
Luke, Ch 4 V 3
I’m not normally one for quoting the Bible. Usually, I’ll restrict my ‘chapter and verse’ homilies to health and safety issues, not The Good Book, but today I’ll make an exception as I recall a situation where, if things had turned out differently, I’d have been without a prayer…
Like so many things that go pear-shaped I began with the best intentions. I was leading a course for mhl support in the East End that called for a crack-of-dawn start, so I thought I’d get on top of the job by traveling down from The Midlands, the evening before. That way, I thought, I’d be fresh and alert and altogether more interesting than I’d be if I caught the morning ‘red eye’ and turned up smeared with Virgin Trains ketchup. As it was, I’d had a couple of hours to concentrate on my course, which was about lone workers, the unique circumstances and risks they often face and the duties of care owed to them by employers.
It wasn’t an easy journey. I was toting an overnight bag, a slide projector and the ubiquitous laptop, so walking the length of Platform 7 at Euston and schlepping through the crowds on The Underground wasn’t the most fun I’d ever had… But I thought about the benefits that would derive from my personal act of self-sacrifice – fresh, alert, blah-blah-blah etcetera – and I soldiered stoically on.
I found myself on Limehouse Station, off the Commercial Road, at just after nine o’clock. It was dark and I had no idea where I was going. Two other people were on the platform and I approached one of them, a well-dressed young man who gave me directions to my hotel. There had been another guy, but I’d decided against him. He was wearing a hoody and a slightly vacant look and it struck me that he might not be amenable to even a polite request for assistance.
So it was that I headed for my destination. Almost immediately, I found myself in the sort of gloomy, threatening, graffiti besmirched underpass that the makers of ‘Lock, Stock’ would have added gladly to their list of intimidating locations.
Remember Neil Diamond? At the risk of showing my age, he once wrote a song called “I Am I Said’ that had a line I particularly liked: ‘I’m not a man who likes to swear, but I never cared for the sounds of being alone.’ Well Neil, if you’re reading this (and I know you’re an avid reader of SHP’s Guest Blogs!), I’m here to tell you that the sounds of being alone are a Beautiful Noise compared to the sounds of a hoody’s footsteps (yes, it was him), behind you on a lonely, dark walkway. Being ‘A Solitary Man’ would have suited me better than ‘Hello Again, Hello’ because I caught, in the lamplight, a glimmer in hoody’s hand that I took at once to be a knife.
Oo-er, you might think. At the time, I thought something altogether more descriptive.
What did I do? Well, recalling all the advice I’d given to countless delegates on innumerable courses over God knows how many years, and realizing I’d ignored all of it, I called upon all of my worldly experience – and legged it, clinging to my overnight bag whilst my laptop and projector furled and unfurled in my wake, like (not-so) Superman’s cape. Knife-wielding hoody? He legged it after me.
Quite how this sorry tale might have ended, I shudder to think; but I got lucky. I found myself next to a haulier’s yard in which a large tattooed man was filling up his cement mixer. I ran through the double steel gates, to his side, and sanctuary of a sort.
All’s well that end’s well, I suppose, and I can laugh about this story now. But, if not for Big Ged and his cement mixer, who knows what would have happened? The moral of this tale (there’s always a moral) is this: ladies and gentlemen, let’s practice what we preach! The nature of our job means that we often find ourselves in ‘lone worker’ situations and while we’re extolling the virtues of risk assessment to others, we’d do well to apply the rules to our own working lives.
Like the man said: ‘let’s be careful out there!’ Until next time, keep smiling!
Milan is Training Manager at mhl support, part of the Bibby Group.
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