I had a proper job once. A job that involved the barking of orders, the kicking of arses and of, well, generally getting stuff done, unlike my current incarnation as a species of clerk. Many felt they should be called, fewer were chosen and only a handful earned the soubriquet of Lord of the Ramp.
What was it? When an aeroplane was on the ground it was ours, we were fond of quoting the Ground Operations Manual: 'The British Airways Dispatcher is the senior British Airways representative at aircraft side'. That one quote ended any number of arguments.
Pilots: 'Why don't you sit down like a good fly-boy. When I close the door, you can be as in charge as you want. Until then, enjoy your cheeseboard and work out your alimony payments'. (While they were working out the next cabin crew they were trying to shag).
Passenger Services Duty Officers: ' I don't need a butler or a maitre d'! Why don't you bugger off somewhere people are paid to pretend you're in charge’. (Insecure mummy's boys and little princesses, the lot of them).
Head Loaders: 'Stop scratching your knuckles on the tarmac and get that missing passengers bag off the plane now'. (This one at a safe distance).
Cabin Crew? You would always exercise your bottomless well of charm on cabin crew: 'Alright poppet; get your knickers back in and make us a cup of tea, there's a good love'. (Always tasted odd, that tea).
Senior Managers? Well, a wise old ramp-rat once told me that the secret to getting on in British Airways was to be sufficiently insubordinate and to avoid inappropriate honesty. Ah, alas. We weren't and we didn't.
More than one of my colleagues acted as if they left our comfortable little mess to the sound of trumpets and a blaze of light, like the final scene of El Cid, scattering all before them as they felt the earth itself tremble beneath their feet.
Rules and regulations underpinned that air of separation and superiority. (Again the GOM: 'The Dispatchers decision is final').
Eventually, British Airways forgot what we were for. One too many managers (including our own), stung by one too many accusations of ignorance, venality or incompetence, or a mixture of all three, used technology to cast us down from the right hand of the god of aviation to walk amongst mortal men as mere TRM's.
'Fiery the angels fell; deep thunder rolled around their shores; burning with the fires of Orc'.
The Dispatcher had joined the ghosts of aviation; the Radio Operator, the Navigator and the Flight Engineer
That didn't end my fractious relationship with my manager. An Ascian who had sold his soul and his shadow to a scrawny BCal devil in the hope of preferment. For every company initiative I was there as a Union Rep blocking it, but that's a different story. My worst crime was that I made look stupid, and came to enjoy doing so. There was never any hope of a rapprochement;
'Never can true reconcilement grow where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep....'
If I truly was a fallen angel, then he was also a serpent, biding his time to strike.
One of life's greatest burdens is to serve an unworthy master. Like another Kent in King Lear: 'You have that in your countenance, which I would fain call master'. I have spent my life looking for a master to serve in this world and found none.
The tide of British Airways' interest in Gatwick shrank as did the business, bit by bit. But this was the time of the Cabin Crew War and the union still had some teeth, so I couldn't be marched out and shot for lack of obedience, but I could be sent into exile, which is what happened and by a long roundabout route have ended up in a suit, in a world I can scarcely conceive of.
I always entertained hopes of a grand return until they sold off the Ramp in its entirety into a Babylonish Captivity. But that's another story.
A simple country boy, I found myself in a different world. My mind casts itself back to another 'elite corps' (and I'm not getting too full of myself. I have the BA News clipping describing us as that). Like one of Alexander's soldiers, I find myself lost in Babylon, like a simple Macedonian I found myself a veteran, but instead of a Silver Shield I had worn a Red Cap until events and politics had conspired to maroon me far away from home, and like those grizzled old veterans I found myself surrounded by smoothly sly courtiers and intriguing, scheming princesses and clever youngsters who don’t get the practicalities of what made you as you are and think it can all be learnt from a book, babbling away in what may as well be a foreign tongue.
Expected to train the next generation, to teach them what you know, but not to teach them to be like you, (British Airways learned that lesson well). You have become a sponge to be wrung out over the head of others in the hope of some of what you know may stick, but are reminded daily that you are an anachronism. Those courtiers want what you know so they can wear it like a cloak and pretend to a 'wealth of operational experience', like a child playing with a toy sword and shield. Your experience has become a dressing-up box for others and what you know is challenged as so far out of their day-to-day experience that sometimes you doubt even yourself, like Kafka and the cockroach.
Those odd occasions that like an old dog drowsing in the sunshine, surrounded by yapping puppies, you occasionally stir yourself and bite, you can feel a sharp tug on your chain, reminding you of your place, the increasingly familiar and comfortable kennel.
But like a Silver Shield or Jack London's old dog (and the two are synonymous), you can feel your nose come up and sniff when the air is in the right direction, before settling back to pretending to follow orders. But deep down, you know there is no way home
'Into my heart an air that killsFrom yon far country blows:What are those blue remembered hills,What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,I see it shining plain,Those happy highways where I wentAnd cannot come again.'
And I grow old among the Persians.
17-6-2017
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