Alan, now 72, worked as the Ticket Office Manager at Teddington Station
Alan receiving his MBE from the then Prince Charles 2010
Alan as a choirboy at St Alban’s church choir, Teddington in the 1960s.
Working for thirty years as Ticket Office Manager at Teddington Station, I became something of a local celebrity because I met so many people each day and shared a laugh and joke with them when they bought their tickets.
Even now, ten years after I retired, so many people still stop and have a chat. It’s the reason I didn’t leave Teddington when I retired, I had plans to go and live by the sea, but the people here are so fantastic and the friendships I built over that time are so lovely. I wouldn’t want to lose that.
My years in the Teddington ticket office were fantastic and I always wanted to make sure customers got the best possible price on a ticket or the best possible information for their journey. But I always wanted to do it with a smile and a bit of fun. I’ve always had a very active sense of humour and if you’re working for twelve hours a day, sometimes even longer, you can’t be doing that and stay sane if you haven’t got a smile on your face. So, I always had a bit of fun when someone bought a ticket
I was cracking jokes all day long and I was getting a response from the customers all day long. I’d often say to them when they bought a ticket: “That’ll be six million pounds please” or I’d say Good Evening when it was early in the morning. The customers seemed to love it because it made the start to their working day a bit brighter, and mine too.
Only once did someone not really get it. When they bought their ticket I said “That’ll be 3.7 million pounds please”, and they got abusive and wrote to the management to complain that I was trying to overcharge them. But I got so many lovely letters from other happy customers that one like that was water off a duck’s back to me.
I’d always had an interest in trains and never liked cars because of the impact they had on the environment. I had thirty years free rail travel during my time with the railway and I made journeys all over the UK. So if anyone wanted to get anywhere, I’d been there and done it. I knew nearly every route there was and knew first hand the best connections to get to places. So I was able to advise people at Teddington station with my first hand knowledge, I was almost like a travel agent. I told one traveller who wanted to go to Edinburgh to sit on the right hand side of the carriage for the best views of the Northumberland coastline, because I had travelled that route. It was little things like that which made people come to us from all over the local area for the best rail routes and tickets.
Teddington Life Stories is still available at Teddington Library
It was well known that if people wanted the cheapest fare, they came to the Teddington ticket office. We used to pride ourselves on researching the best routes and prices all over the UK. We had forms on the counter that people would fill in their destinations and travel dates and we would work out the journey plan and price and have it ready for them a little while later. I once managed to get one gentleman on the last train from Euston to Lockerbie in Scotland on Christmas Eve for £9. He was well pleased, and I felt a real sense of pride in that sort of thing.
I even got called ‘Mr Teddington’ because of my knowledge of the railways and best routes and best prices. I was always strongly pro-customer and sometimes that would take you into disagreements with management. They would come up with these policies which were anti-customer, and I would ignore them. which didn’t make me very popular with the bosses. I didn’t stick to standard procedure, but it meant we could offer good deals to Teddington travellers.
But the management came round when I won three awards for customer service. They were all awards voted for by the public and I knew management didn’t want me to win because I didn’t always do things their way, but in the end they had to acknowledge my awards. I also won the national award for best customer service.
There was then a campaign started by a local traveller to make me an MBE. He did a huge local campaign on my behalf and in 2010 I was invited to Buckingham Palace and was given the MBE by the then Prince Charles.
It was a lovely day, I took my sister and brother in law. The racing driver David Coulthard and the footballer Gary Speed were also getting awards at the same time. It was all a blur to me. I was calm in the queue, but when I reached Prince Charles I was so nervous. He spoke to me about the railways, but I wasn’t able to take in the words. Afterwards, I was shaking and in tears. It was so emotional, and I was so proud. I’m very patriotic, it was a huge moment in my life.
I didn’t have a very good first 25 years of my life. I got bullied a lot at school. I was always the tallest in my year, several inches taller than all the rest of my year, and often tall people are seen as a challenge or a threat. Also, I would never hit anyone, it’s just not me. So when they realised that I wouldn’t fight back, I was an easy target.
When I was in secondary school in Broom Road (now the Teddington School) there was a gang who always used to pick on me and often hit me. I used to hide in the school library at home-time until I thought all the other pupils had left. But, when I left they were still waiting for me. I got bullied unmercifully. They used to tell me how useless I was and I would believe them, which made my school days miserable, Plus the teachers would often compare me with my elder brother who did well at school, and they thought I never matched up. And I was also left-handed which wasn’t acceptable in those days and another reason for teachers to put me down. It was horrible in my junior and secondary school years.
One thing which was great early in my life was when I was six I began singing in the St Alban’s Church choir in Teddington, which is now the Landmark Centre. I was there for twelve years and I achieved Head Boy and I sang in special choirs in St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. I loved that, they were the best times of my early years.
By my early to mid 20s, I felt useless, which I’d been told most of my life, and I was on several tablets a day for depression and things like that. But then I thought, these tablets are doing me no good. I shook myself up and stopped taking them and I thought I’m not as useless as people think I am. I set about proving that to myself. I did a load of examinations – City and Guilds, some A levels – and got good results. I felt good physically, and went on a ten day charity bike ride to John o’Groats.
I also did a MENSA test because I’d always been good at mathematical problems. Without sounding immodest, I’m brilliant at mathematics! I used to play a game with a friend who would have a calculator and I would beat her to the answer by working it out in my head. So the MENSA test score came back as 133. That’s supposed to be in the top 2 per cent of the population. So, I was pretty pleased with myself. It proved to me inside, and that’s where it matters to me, that I wasn’t as stupid as people said I was and I went forward. And from that moment, I never really looked back.
All words and photos copyright of Teddington & Hampton Wick Voluntary Care Group
