Sedgley Lane, by Yvonne Achterberg

An original novel extract set in the twentieth century.

Errol had kept the swing bridge at Sedgley Lane on the ship canal since 1978, and by now he could tell from the sound of an engine, long before he saw its lights, which boat was coming and how heavily it was loaded. For the length of each shift he lived in the little brick hut beside the bridge, with a stove, a chair and a telephone that rang to warn him whenever anything left the docks. Night or day, he swung the bridge open by hand, walking the long iron bar round and round until the road had turned aside to let the water through. Every boat’s name went into a ledger in his neat capitals, with the time and the direction, and he had filled eleven ledgers. He kept a kettle on the stove for the crews, and the skipper of the Eileen Mary, who came through every Tuesday at midnight, threw him a newspaper in return. Drivers who hooted at the closed barriers were made to wait an extra minute while he finished his tea. Once, when a boy slipped from the bank in fog, Errol went into the water after him in his boots, and he wrote nothing about it in the ledger.

List five things you learn about Errol in this extract.