No-one was smiling. Knocking-off time on a Friday afternoon, the weekend ahead. Kids there to meet fathers; Jack in the foreground, ready to cycle all the way to Ongar to meet his lass. But no-one was smiling.
I’d heard rumours about the accident of course. As I made my way along the road from the Main Gate, fragments of conversations about the Finishing Shop. Someone had slipped or tripped or something. They had stopped the machines to extricate the poor devil, called the ambulance – which had taken an age to arrive. By then it was all too late.
Considering I worked in the Finishing Shop, I’m not sure how I managed to miss all the commotion. I’d probably been taking the week’s production figures up to the office; got chatting with that saucy Marjorie! Still, here we are, weekend to look forward to.
On the road outside the Main gate, no-one is smiling. In fact, they’re all looking my way. And then I realise. The ‘poor devil’ was me.
From a 2017 workshop entitled “The Dark Side”.
Ian Gouge - Writer 