The Last Linslade Bobby. Chapter One.

THE
LAST LINSLADE BOBBY.

Chapter
One.

(NOTE THIS BIOGRAPHY IS IN 10 CHAPTERS, published individually as each is limited to 2500 words. There are 20, Twenty, Episodes.)

 

 

 

 

This is an updated version for
ABC Tales, with pictures removed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE
LAST LINSLADE BOBBY.

 

Prologue.

 

The cover photo was taken in 1990 by the Leighton
Buzzard Observer's photographer, just as I took over Beat Area DO8b,
'D' for 'D' Division under Dunstable Police Station control. ('A'
Division was Police Headquarters at Kempston; 'B' Division was
Bedford; 'D' Dunstable, and 'C' Amptill.). In the photo I am about to
take off on the official transport for my area. I was later given a
little Honda 250cc motorcycle to cover the beat. It is a bit of a
shock to realise that if you joined every Linslade street, path and
bridleway, plus Old Linslade and the road and footpaths to it, end to
end, there is over thirty miles to patrol. Not something that can be
covered in an eight hour shift on foot you will gather. Add to that I
initially had to walk from Hockliffe Street Police Station into
Linslade (in uniform) and this often had me dealing with incidents
well before I even got to the canal bridge. It is no good telling an
injured party I cannot deal with their complaint as I was the
Linslade Bobby; to them I was a Police Officer.

 

 

 

 

The
reminiscences of a retired local copper, but
not necessarily all in the right order.
For that I blame Old Age and a selective memory. Hopefully few people
will (not) recognise themselves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright Neil L. Cairns 2012.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE
LAST LINSLADE BOBBY.

 

Introduction

 

 

I
need to qualify the title before the arguments start. I am claiming
to be the last Local Beat Officer (LBO)who patrolled Linslade ON
FOOT as their primary beat area, then called DO8b. Leighton Buzzard was
DO8a (said as 'Delta Zero Eight Ay), and the villages DO7 with
various suffixes to differentiate them from each other. I covered
Linslade from late-1990 to mid-1995, on paper anyway since as the
1990s passed so the police service became very short of cash and
patrol officers (those who drive the Panda Cars for 'Immediate
Response') of which Leighton, Linslade and the area had only three
(just as they do today!) This meant I was taken away from my local
beat more and more often and for a while was Acting Sergeant for the
station, but here I am jumping far too far ahead. Let us start at the
beginning. If you cannot remember what a police officer looks like as
it is so long since you saw one, study the front cover.....

 

************

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter
One.

A
Second Chance.

 

There was once always a qualifying age limit, height,
physical fitness and education level to join any Police Force. Even
so there was also the need to pass an entry examination, a medical
and a fitness test. So, having just retired from doing my twenty-two
years pensionable service in the Royal Air Force as an Aircraft
Propulsion Technician (called an Aircraft Engine Mechanic when I
initially joined back in 1966) I plunged for a total career change. I
was forty-one years of age with a Service pension, married with my
own house in Leighton Buzzard, a wife and two children, one 14 and
the other 5 years of age and a mortgage to pay. I had just spent my
last four years service at RAF Halton as a Technical Instructor on
'Gas-Turbine Engines' and I had used this training camp's full
facilities for sport for keeping fit. To put it bluntly, I was as fit
as the proverbial butcher's dog and would find it difficult to
improve as you will see later.

 

To wind the clock back to 1966 when living in Wavendon,
I had then tried to join Thames Valley Police in Aylesbury, but as I
was just a skinny nine and a half stone and six feet tall with long
hair, I did not hit it off on the interview. I did not even get as
far as the exam or fitness tests as I looked just like the fan of the
Beetles which I of course was. I also wore spectacles and only just
met the then qualifying eyesight test. Also, back then you had to be
over five feet, eight and a half inches, over nineteen and under
forty years of age, as well as fit and pass the entrance examination.
So I joined the RAF and had a very successful enlisted career,
retiring twenty-two years later on a Flight Sergeant's pension
(though my rank was actually a Chief Technician for the pedantic). As
luck would have it, in 1988 the age limit of forty was dropped from
the necessary Police entry qualifications, so I applied to
Bedfordshire Police three months before my RAF demob date arrived.

 

I was turned down!

 

But I had plan 'B', as I had also applied for a job at
Camden Motors as a Diagnostic Technician, someone who met the
customer and put their problem into a language the workshop would
understand. I also applied to Lancer Boss Fork Lift Trucks as an
engineer, to RAF Stanbridge as a Caretaker-cum-Odd Job Man and to RAF
Halton to carry on in my current job as an Instructor but as a
civilian in the Civil Service (on two-thirds of my RAF pay). In the
meantime I applied for my free demob course of a months duration,
designed to change we 'gun-toting soldiers' from wanting to kill
everyone into 'useful members of civilian life'; yes, someone once
told me that. I very quickly found out just how disorganised civvy
street was and how little they understood my CV. None had a clue what
a Chief Technician was. No one wanted their HS Nimrod servicing, or
their Bae Hawk overhauling, or their Rolls Royce jet engines fixing
locally, so all my RAF engineering experience was of little value. My
teenage indentured apprenticeship as a Toolmaker was too far in the
distance for me to take it up as a career. How ever, I was actually
offered all four jobs no less, all only paid about 60% of my final
RAF salary but I did have a pension to help pay the bills. The chap
at Camden Motors who interviewed me was horrified to find I earned
far more than he did and advised me NOT to put my RAF salary on
future CVs. Remember I was 'over the hill' at forty one years old to
most, but I must have impressed them with something. So I looked at
the pensions of each job and plumbed for the Civil Service. I did
exactly one month as a civvy instructor at RAF Halton. Boy, was it
different to service life. The whole system relied on seniority not
ability. This meant the longest serving fool was always the boss and
the chap in charge of my particular teaching section, an ex-sergeant,
was hopeless. But again I'm going too far ahead.

 

I took a demob course in 'Painting and Decorating'. I
had applied for HGV driving but as the Army could apply in their last
six months for their demob course and the RAF only let us apply in
our last three months, there were no decent courses left to go on,
the Army had booked them all. Typical RAF! I did 'Painting and
Decorating' at Aldershot in Hampshire because I was good at it and it
was something to fall back on if all else failed. And it was the only
course left open to me. I gained my City & Guilds easily. Whilst
on this course down at Aldershot and having failed to get even onto
an interview for Bedfordshire Police, I applied to be a Special
Constable as at least that would fulfill a bit of my teenage
ambition. I did not know then just how low some police officers
considered the 'Special' or in their derogatory terms, 'The Hobby
Bobby'. By the time my application had been sorted out I was demobbed
and doing my stint as a 'junior' civvy instructor (utter madness when
you consider I had been the RAF SNCO in charge of the very section I
was now the 'junior' in!) Civvies at Halton worked nine till four and
only did instructing; RAF Servicemen worked eight till five and had
to do parades, exercises, keep fit, inspections, be in charge of a
barrack block, have a tools and spares inventory to supervise, and so
on and on. A day was booked for a serving Police Sergeant to do a
'Home Visit' to see if I was a suitable candidate to be a 'Special'.
Meanwhile I redecorated our home from top to bottom.

 

The
day arrived and the Sergeant (PS Graham Caves) called that evening.
He asked me various questions about myself and once satisfied asked
if I had any in reply. Mine was ready and practiced. Here it is
necessary to tell you that a 'Special' and a full-time 'copper' are
the same in law, both hold the Office
of Constable and both hold the 'Queens
Warrant'
and both have the same powers but one gets paid the other does not. I
had been doing my homework.

 

I asked, “Why, if I am suitable for the job as a
Special Constable, am I unsuitable for a full time job?” I went on
to explain I had already applied to join but had been turned down. He
did not know this but promised to bring it up when he submitted my
Specials application. A week later a letter arrived asking me to
attend a two-day induction interview at Police Headquarters at
Kempston in seven days time. The Sgt had indeed rattled a few cages
in the recruiting department and I had hurriedly been added to the
other twenty-one applicants. Hoping this might happen I had
previously been busily doing a mail-order course on passing the
Police entrance examination. My spelling was (and still is)
atrocious. Thank you Microsoft for 'Spell-check'. Before the two-day
event I attended Dunstable Police Station and sat the entrance exam
with four other men. I passed with flying colours.

 

On the appointed day and at the correct time I attended
Kempston HQ ready for the two day event. I knew it would be grueling
and as each section of the interview was completed the failures would
be weeded out. I was by some big margin, the eldest person there,
even older than the Sergeant and the Inspector doing the interviews.
I got quite a few sideways glances, it seemed I was their first 'over
forty' entrant. Only that year the age limit of forty had been
dropped and left to the discretion of the individual force. We went
though various rooms during the day carrying out different tasks and
tests, giving speeches: one was to talk on a subject for a minute,
the subject being taken out of a hat. I got 'Homewatch', something I
had read up on anyway. I had also read T.A.Critchley's “A History
of Policing in England and Wales”, another good grounding for the
odd question thrown in here and there. I was an ex-boy scout and if
you want a job, you need to 'Be Prepared'. I was amazed at how some
had done no preparation and were asked to leave by the end of the
first morning, one went after the first test, a medical. We were down
to about fifteen by 4 pm. We were each given a short interview and I
was told to return the next day. That next morning there were only
ten of us doing the various tasks and tests. By dinnertime only seven
were left. That afternoon we did the one-and-a-half mile run. This I
was told, was the item that sorted the men from the boys (apologies
to the women reading this, but the Police Service was then very male
dominated.) Males had to run the distance in eleven minutes, the
ladies in thirteen minutes. I did it in just over nine and a half
minutes and came second, only being beaten by the Beds Cross Country
Champion who was joining the police! Yes, I can run, I always have
been able to and have very good stamina. I cannot play football or
cricket to save my life; I have never successfully hit a tennis or
golf ball, but I can run. I astounded the Sgt and Inspector in charge
of us. Four failed the run, only one woman passed the test. The
apparently fittest man amongst us also failed. He was a keen rugby
player, could run short distances very fast but very quickly faded
out. He was asked to come back in a month and try again.

 

The last part of the day was an interview with a panel
of senior officers. Amongst the questions I was asked was, how would
I cope with a riot in Luton at my age? I replied I had been shot at
in Sharjha in the Gulf by Arabs, I had collected bits of pilots
bodies in plastic bags after aircraft crashes, I had lifted dead,
drowned bodies from barrack room baths where the poor sod had got
drunk then fell asleep, worked up to four days without sleep on
exercises, identified young airmen who had had half their face eaten
away by crabs when they had fallen into the sea, so I might just
treat it as jumping out of the way of a double-decker bus. It must
have been the right answer and I doubt if they had ever heard one
like it before. They then asked if I had any questions. I had.

 

“Why,”
I began, “when you designed the application forms did you only
consider young unattached people? The forms I was sent only had two
spaces for siblings, I have six; only two spaces for previous
addresses, I have twenty three; and no where near enough room for
training and qualifications other than for a few 'O' and 'A' levels?
If you are to recruit the older officer, you need to modify your
forms as the initial impression given to such an applicant is not a
good one.” They concurred with me but did not spot that my 'not
suffering fools gladly' attitude would later affect any promotion
chances. Calling a spade a spade has often got me into tight
spots....

 

I went home elated after having been interviewed by the
Chief Constable and offered a job. I received a letter confirming my
new career as 'PC406' in Bedfordshire Police and told to report for
duty just two weeks away. I was to do one weeks induction at the
Kempston HQ then three months initial training at Ashford Police
College in Kent. I heard that another over-forty had been accepted
just after me, a lady school teacher from Luton. We were to be
Ashford's very first 'older entrants' with me wearing an RAF 'Good
Conduct and Long Service Medal' (GCLSM) ribbon.

 

My sixteen year old son was horrified, he complained
that as a teenager at Vandyke Upper School, just what would his
friends say about him having a Rozzer as a Dad? I told him, do not
tell them. By the time I have done my two-years probation, you will
be out at work. He was.