Longrider

I was buying my rail tickets last week when the counter clerk proffered a copy of the new timetable, which comes into force today. The British railways network has traditionally operated two timetables - summer and winter - in May and September. Invariably this leads to subtle alterations in timings and occasionally more (or less) trains at certain times or on certain days. More on summer Saturdays, for example.

Anyway, this change has made the news because it is an extra change and the Train Operating Companies have also changed in some locations. These changes are part of the EU-wide standardisation whereby in future there will only be one annual change. There is a drive from the EU for interoperability between member states and this is part of that process. That’s the upside. The downside is that people may find that their regular train no longer runs or that is stops more frequently leading to more overcrowding.

Overcrowding is a pet peeve of mine. When all the mainline trains were of the old High Speed Train type (the 125 Intercity trains) they were either seven or eight coaches long. The newer trains are four or five coaches long. The cross country and commuter services have always suffered from overcrowding so replacement with shorter trains just makes matters worse. The apparent solution was to run more trains. However, this merely massaged the problem and caused more strain on the already crowded network. One of the reasons trains have difficulty running on time on the UK network is that it is running at full capacity and therefore there is insufficient makeup time built into the timetable. A small delay has knock-on effects that can affect services several hours later.

Despite all this, the services that I take from Bristol are little changed - just a minute here and there. On the downside, though, the fares are set to rise. Not that I am too worried by that as I charge them back to my clients.
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Yesterday was a day and a half. Literally. Moving from being employed by a large organisation to being a self-employed consultant is a culture shift. You have to take personal responsibility for everything - tax, national insurance, pensions and, crucially, work. While I charge much more for my time than I was paid as an employee, it compensates for the feast or famine nature of the work. I work when there is business to be had, and I don’t when there isn’t - at least, it isn’t paid work. Selling your business takes time and effort and the payback is not always immediately obvious.

Following my redundancy at the end of 2003, I endured a period of enforced idleness until my contract officially terminated on New Year’s Eve. During January and February I did a little work, but was relying heavily on my redundancy package for subsistence. By May, things were getting fairly busy. However, at this stage all I was doing was assessment - the real money is in training, so I was still not yet on the same level of income as I was during the previous year. Two four-day training courses in a month would see me breaking even on my previous salary. It takes sixteen assessments to make the same income.

Then came the summer. For most of June, July and August I hardly worked and again, I relied heavily on my dwindling redundancy payout. September was manic - I barely had time to breathe rushing from one end of the country to the other getting up at godawful times in the morning to meet clients. This was a slightly unusual piece of work as I was helping my erstwhile employer try to recover from problems with a training programme, so I was providing a day’s top-up training for the candidates. I did well that month, but the planned work in October collapsed when the client decided not to spend any more money. They concluded that the exercise had cost too much (but chose to ingore the cause; bad planning) - well, they were told that at the beginning…

November was pretty quiet and my redundancy finally ran out causing me to curb all unnecessary spending. December however, has been busy. Yesterday I had two assessments - one in Bournemouth and one in Salisbury. This meant setting out at 06:00 to get to Bournemouth by 08:00. I planned to be in Salisbury for 14:00. Unfortunately, assessment is not an activity that has set timescales - you are driven by the needs of the candidate and if they take a long time over their preparation activities, well, so be it. I set out for Salisbury at 13:30 - it’s an hour’s ride, so I walked into Salisbury Railway station at around 14:30. Like his colleague in Bournemouth, this candidate took around 4 hours. I was supposed to be back in Bristol for 19:00 to meet my wife and join her colleagues at 20:00 for a meal. We were an hour late. Not that that was a huge problem as we let them know. When we eventually got home it was gone 23:00. Shattered? You bet.

Yup - feast or famine - yesterday was one of those days that just didn’t have enough hours. I could do with a few more of those.