Charters Towers is the last major town before Mount Isa, the biggest and only large town in central Queensland, with a base catering for The Royal Flying Doctor Service. This gives a good indication of how remote it is. 400 miles from Charters Towers, (about 700 kilometres), there’s virtually nothing in-between the two apart from a few very smallsettlements dotted along the road. Anyone leaving Charters Towers heading west was therefore probably heading for The Isa, as Mount Isa was colloquially known.

From the chapter: 'Townsville'

Moving outside into the rear of the Holden Ute was the best decision I could have made. I lay down on my back with my head against my rucksack and looked up. The hours that followed would become one of those very rare, priceless travel memories. As we streaked across remote central Queensland on the Barkly Highway the view suddenly snatched the breath from my lungs as though I’d fallen into an icy lake. In the spectacular midnight wilderness the stars of The Southern Cross amongst the other billions in the clear sky above seemed to touch the ground all around us. The dark desolation merged completely with the edge of the sky and everything in sight was bathed in a silvery ethereal glow from the moonlight. Looking on, it seemed beautifully unreal, as though we were driving across the surface of Mars. Cutting our way through the vast featureless outback with our headlights reaching far ahead, I felt as though we ourselves were at altitude, tearing through space, the darkness forming behind in our wake as we moved.A truly unforgettable experience.

From the chapter: 'Three Ways'

I fled back to the Shady Glen Caravan Park, trudging with leaden feet, heavy heart and a throbbing head all the way. It was then that I did something I’d never done before or even contemplated doing; I picked up my first cigarette butt. I wouldn’t have done it, normally, but the first one I found was almost a full cigarette, just lying there on the pavement. It would have been a real shame to have left it. It was such a nice looking cigarette, beautiful and ripe for the picking. I flicked off a few crumbs of ash from the flattened end where someone had clearly lit it and then for whatever reason had stamped it out almost immediately. I found another a hundred yards later, only half a one this time, and picked it up with great enthusiasm, dropping it carefully and reverently into the pocket of my shorts.

From the chapter 'The Top End'

My deodorant had long since run out; it was not a priority so I guess I didn’t smell too good most of the time.One of the strangest things about such traveling is that you might think your own body odour would grow much worse as you continue to sweat day after day in the same clothing, but I don’t think this actually happens. Instead it reaches a certain level where it stabilises, and then the pong you give off becomes a combination of several pungent smells such as bad breath, general body odour, unclean clothes, tobacco smoke and many accretions of stale sweat, amongst other things. Eventually you have a generic kind of unpleasant whiff about you rather than simply stinking of armpit body odour.

From the chapter: 'The Alice'

***

'Friendships made on the kibbutz were real and unpretentious. Amid the harsh prosaic reality of daily kibbutz life, personalities and attitudes were more important than the size of your house, the type of car you drive, how many figures you had in the bank or your family background. All these were irrelevant. We were all stripped bare and exposed for who we really were. This was entirely unique in a modern world where money and material possessions seemed paramount.'

From: 'The End', in 'Kibbutz Virgin'.

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

'We kept our own chickens which lived very much with us in a large home-made and quite malodorous wooden cupboard in the front room, so at least we almost always had fresh eggs. This was assuming no-one let the birds out by mistake, an error which would then lead to front room chaos of pantomime proportions. My dad had to chase them around the ground floor of the house in his desperately inauspicious chicken-pursuit mode shouting: ‘Come ‘ere ye little bastards!’ or words to that effect, occasionally taking poorly aimed and obviously futile swipes at the mutinous escapees with a stair rod while clambering randomly all over the furniture. It made a welcome change from him whacking me with it I suppose, and it was quite good entertainment too, as there was no television in those days. I couldn’t blame the poor chickens for sometimes wanting to hatch escape plans rather than eggs. They certainly caused major problems when they did escape, as there was insufficient space in the tiny room to dive full length at the errant, scheming birds. A decision had to be made very quickly when pouncing on them whether to hit the wall or aim for the open fire. I remember on one occasion while resolutely pursuing our cock bird around the house, my dad tripped over our bone-headed and snappy little Jack Russell dog and fell headlong into the fireplace. Luckily the fire wasn’t lit at the time, as his head and shoulders plunged straight into the grate with such a thump that many years of soot came crashing down the chimney in one great thunderous black cloud. After then managing to extricate himself from the chimney bottom and stand up, he turned around only to reveal to my absolute delight, and that of my brother, that he suddenly looked just like Al Jolson in full make-up, complete with black hands and face.'

From chapter one, 'An Adventurous Youth'

'As the London train gathered speed in the darkness I became terribly introspective, as my own reflection peered back at me mockingly in the darkened window. Was I happy, confused, or just plain mad? What would I find in Africa? Would I even return to Sheffield? I remembered my dad’s farewell comment a few hours before, spoken in his true Yorkshire vernacular:
“Weer’s tha’ goin’?”
“Africa,” I replied.
“Oh…” he said, bending over to put another lump of coal on the fire. A few minutes later he was buttoning up his coat in silence, and was gone, the front door banging loudly behind him as he went to work as usual at the furnaces in the huge Firth Brown steelworks in Sheffield’s east end.'

From the chapter: 'London'.

“Well, we need someone with a clear head, you know. Done any bar work, have you, do you think you can do it?” as he fixed a stare at me, pursing his lips then rubbing his chin with his right hand.

“Yes, I think so, I mean I haven’t done any bar work before but I think I can do it, of course, why not?” I replied, realising as he looked across his desk at me that he was either drunk or in the first stages of having a stroke.

“Then the job’s yours…” he said, just as he slowly closed his eyes and started sliding very smoothly sideways off his chair. He parted company with it and collapsed in an undignified heap on the floor next to his desk with an enormous thump, like a large sack of King Edwards potatoes. He was followed immediately by an avalanche of cushions which sprang off his chair and then partially buried him and obscured his face. He didn’t move or say anything. I didn’t know what to do and thought he’d died, so I jumped up and pulled the cushions away. At first it seemed as though he’d seriously and fatally cracked his head wide open until I realised his hair had flipped off his head in one great matted comb-over which then lay neatly alongside him on the floor. He suddenly started snoring like a walrus stranded on a beach, so to my relief I realised he was still alive.'

From the chapter: 'The New Job'.

'It was a particularly hot day and one of the first really dry days after the rainy season. Quite unannounced a young, well-built black African man walked in through the front door of the police station carrying a dirty and stained canvas bag. He was shaking and visibly upset, according to Fred, and with tears streaming down his face he walked straight past him and up to the sergeant in charge. He was cursing in his native language, either Shona or IsiNdebele, and dropped the heavy bag on the desk. He continued talking at the sergeant as though asking him questions in a desperately pleading and accusatory manner. The sergeant stood up and indicated for Fred and the other constables present to get hold of the man. Just before he was restrained he tipped the contents of the bag onto the table. It was a woman’s severed head. The man was dragged into the back of the station, along with the contents of his bag, which it later became evident was his wife. Fred was excluded from the next events but he says what he saw and heard he never wanted to witness again. He gained the impression the man was blaming the police for what had happened to his wife. It must have taken a huge amount of personal courage for him to walk into the police station the way he did.'

From the chapter: 'Police Reserve'.

'Dr Chu was a slight fellow, not very tall, slim, in his early thirties, and wearing black, square-rimmed spectacles, a bit like those trademark glasses worn by Sir Michael Caine. They looked way too big for him, to be honest, and he appeared a little comical as a result. But under these circumstances, the dichotomy was that he also looked sad and pathetic. I asked him where the television came from. He didn’t answer, but turned his head down towards the floor. He held his hands together in front of him. I could see the upright stature of his frame slowly but perceptibly shrinking away like ice-cream in summer sun, as I asked him again. Then the most extraordinary thing happened. He collapsed to his knees in front of me, onto his thick white shag-pile rug, right in front of the stolen television, and started moaning and groaning, over and over:

"Please... please... please...I’m sorry... I’m sorry... please... pleeeeaaase!!”

He started crawling towards me on all fours, in a cloyingly subservient grovel, his face an inch from the floor, not looking up at all. I considered moving back, but there was nowhere for me to retreat to. What if he lunged at me, and attacked me? When he finally reached my feet he started caressing and fondling my size nine police boots with his bony, thieving little hands, putting greasy finger marks all over my lovely polished toe-caps. My colleague and I looked at each other in utter bewilderment and consternation. I didn’t know what to say, but of the two of us, Gary spoke first:

“Perhaps he just wants us to give him a damned good shoeing, take the telly, and leave it at that?”

From the chapter: 'The many doors of Dr. Chu', at the arrest of a doctor who had stolen a large television from his place of work which was found by police in his living room.

'I don’t think I’d be entirely disingenuous in comparing people such as Bobby, to insects like cockroaches. They feed off others in a typically parasitic and carelessly ebullient manner, consider nothing sacrosanct, and their only interest in their miserably tedious and feckless existence, is the pursuit of their own hedonistic ends, at whatever cost, regardless of such encumbrances which hinder the rest of us, such as moral scruples. I can’t begin to imagine the level of free thought which goes on in the head of such a rapacious person, so apparently at liberty to do whatever they wish, whenever they wish, all at the expense of their fellow law-abiding citizens. Like Premiership footballers.'

From the chapter: 'Bobby', describing a heroin addict who made a living from stealing from the hospital for twenty years.

'The man was standing slightly above them, and in silhouette. Carol didn’t even notice at first, as she was far too busy updating Sandra about a particularly awkward patient she’d been dealing with earlier. She was facing Sandra too, not directly at the entrance, and the man. Sandra nudged Carol with an elbow, once, then again. She discreetly leaned her head as though trying to point at the man. No opaque fumbling about this time. The man was standing only a few feet away from them, staring to his front, at the wall. His erect penis was sticking out, plainly, and hugely, from his zipper. He had it grasped in his right hand and was masturbating calmly and steadily while the two women watched on. Both Sandra and Carol were understandably very shocked, and suddenly became very fearful. Their distress was amplified by the fact they were trapped in there, with him blocking the entrance. Once Carol saw what was happening, she became by far the better witness. She described in clinical detail, perhaps how only a nurse could, the man’s precise actions. His hand moved faster and faster while his facial expression remained unchanged. There was a very slight sound of his arm moving rhythmically against his coat, other than that there was complete silence, there in the dugout, between the three of them. After a few brief minutes, which they stated seemed far, far, longer, the movement suddenly stopped. He was seen to finally ejaculate directly into his hands. '

From the chapter: 'The Flashing Blade', where two nurses were subjected to a doctor exposing himself to them at the hospital.

'It was only a five minute drive back to the station from there. Ellis continued shouting abuse and insults. Really nasty, disgusting, foul, personal abuse. I then understood first hand exactly what the staff in the dialysis ward had been through. I didn’t even get the full picture, however, as Ellis was safely cuffed and locked in the cage at the back of the van. I could only imagine what it felt like, an inch from my face. I then launched into my own mini-tirade, aimed at Ellis. I felt I needed to point something out to this man. He needed to know some burning issues, things which were already on my mind, but which he came to crystallize, right there in the van.

“Right. Shut up now. “ I shouted. He initially ignored me. So I tried again:

“For fuck’s sake, shut up. Shut up and listen to me!!” I shouted, as loud as I could. This time I had his attention.

“What do you think you are doing, shouting abuse and threatening hospital staff?! What’s going through your tiny fucking mind when you are threatening the very people who are trying to look after you and your baby?! Are you completely and utterly fucking mad?! You don’t go around treating people like that! You need these people! You should be fucking ashamed of yourself! Look at you. You’re just a useless fucking chav! No good to anyone! It’s people like you who are destroying this country! You fucking sit around all day watching fucking Trisha expecting everyone else to sort your fucking lives out for you! Well it doesn’t fucking work like that you arrogant fucking shit! Are you listening, you fucking bastard?!!!”

From the chapter: 'Jimmy' and an occasion when the police lose their temper.

Books about the police and the wider public sector sell really well, even the crap ones that clearly haven’t been properly proof-read or copy-edited, and particularly those written from the inside. They are quite rare because according to Home Office and ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officers) guidelines serving police officers should not write books about their job. Those who do are clearly taking a risk, and many are therefore written anonymously. Even so, they have to keep their scribblings innocent, amusing, and inoffensive. I now have greater freedom because I don’t work for them anymore.

As soon as I joined I was told that Sherwood Lodge was where all the Chief Officers and their hand-picked staff hid from police work and as such proper police officers below the rank of sergeant were not permitted to work there. I quickly learned that it was commonly known by front line officers as Fraggle Rock from The Muppets, and also by some as The Dream Factory. This was due to the fact that some police officers apparently spent their entire careers there, climbing the ranks and then disappearing, fulfilling their own personal dreams, avoiding shifts and the thoroughly distasteful nature of proper police work. So I was told. At first I didn’t understand this level of antipathy towards others, mainly due to the natural deference in which I held those of a higher status than myself. I was still very naïve

The Professional Standards Department, or PSD. If you can imagine a huge and rapidly expanding department within any organisation whose main raison d’etre seems to be to unnecessarily persecute all hard working conscientious colleagues then that is the modern day PSD. It’s the same in every UK police force nowadays. They are a bastard cross between the Soviet Stasi and the German Gestapo, but thankfully nowhere near as well-organised, professional or efficient. They seem to be entirely self-perpetuating in that they only exist to further their own ends, to create a climate of fear in the workplace, and to counter their own extreme paranoia, and for no other useful reason. They usually operate in pairs and luckily for most of the time many of them conduct themselves more like Bungle and Zippy from the children’s television series Rainbow, but they have the power to destroy people, and they seem to relish it.

“We deal with the same families time and again. It runs in the generations.”

I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. What runs in generations? He fiddled with his radio, adjusting the volume slightly, turning a knob at the side of it without looking at it. I wondered how he knew which way to turn it. He spoke into it briefly, pressing the small yellow transmit button on the top, as though in response to a request, which I didn’t hear, then turned his attention back to me.

“How did you know they wanted you, just then?” I asked, genuinely curious. I could hardly hear anything legible from the walkie-talkie around his neck, let alone a name of any sort.

“They just shouted my collar number, see?” and he touched the series of metallic silver numbers on his right shoulder. He smiled at me. “You get used to it.”

Offences of assault were covered, including sexual offences. A person could never consent to assault, even in the bedroom and in private. ‘Unnatural’ sexual offences were discussed which mainly consisted of buggery with another person or with an animal, both of which seemed to be categorised together and were therefore seen as equally bad. Sodomy was discussed, and was defined as: ‘Sexual intercourse per anus between males or male and female’. It was a serious crime, an arrestable offence, i.e., it carried a prison sentence of five years, and was illegal even with a spouse. Consent, apparently, was no defence.

There were some lawful homosexual acts, but they must take place in private, with the consent of both parties, and a maximum of two persons taking part, both being male and over twenty-one years of age. There was an excellent mnemonic to remember this: Private, Over 21, Only 2, and Full consent: POOF.

“We’re moving out soon. Two weeks actually. Down the road to the new building. Have you seen it? The CID are already there.”

“Yes, I have, I think so,” I thought of the imposing new brick fortress construction I’d seen near the petrol station and asked: “Is it the new building on the corner?”

“Yeah, that’s it. It’ll be great to get away from this shithole. The local fuckin’ snaffs never leave us alone here. Every time you leave your car it gets damaged. We had bricks and bottles chucked over at the back the other day. The locals really fuckin’ hate us. Still, you’ll probably be based up at Broxtowe, not round here.”

This wasn’t training school where drivers would willingly tell you they didn’t possess a driving licence or that they were too drunk to get out of their cars. I wasn’t sure I felt prepared for it. And what the bloody hell was a ‘snaff’?

A crime report was something you simply filled in and forgot about, with absolutely no investigations whatsoever. I was told to make sure I wrote ‘Offender unknown’ on the back and that was it, even if the offender was known. I seem to remember one of my tutor's survival mottos when dealing with the public was:

“For fuck’s sake don’t give anyone your name, they’ll just keep ringing you up and you’ll never get rid of the bastards.”

The two of us leaned against the public bar, Dave chain smoking and quaffing pints of beer like it was the world’s end. He kept telling me very serious aphorisms about policing usually punctuated by many varied and colourful four-letter words, and when anyone came into the pub he seemed to know them all as though they’d been his best friend for years. Some customers would call him Dave, then others would appear quite deferential and nod their heads with: ‘Hello Mr Greasley’ and speak to him quietly and surreptitiously for a few moments before moving away with their drink. I nodded appreciatively and tried to remember what he was telling me while also desperately trying to keep up with the pace of drinking. I was hugely impressed and felt as though I was in the presence of DI Jack Reagan himself, from The Sweeney. I dared to think that I was being invited into this world. We had our uniforms on but with a ‘civvie’ coat over the top, which was soon removed after the first few pints. We were then joined by the other members of the shift, and at midnight by the four-twelve shift, until there were almost a dozen of us cops in the pub. I tend to lose count of how much I drink after about eight pints. So it was that I lost count that night. At about two o’clock in the morning we all staggered to our cars and drove home.

He looked at me and said quite calmly:

“Fuck off.” He turned and started to walk away. I took out my chain link handcuffs from my black leather handcuff pouch on the belt of my trousers and took hold of his left arm. At that moment his arm was relaxed and I managed to find an exposed piece of wrist for the handcuff. I thought I could manage the situation if I could get the handcuffs on him, and up until that point it was going really well. But I suddenly realised it was pointless trying to put the cuffs on him, however. To my horror I could see and feel his wrist was as thick as a man’s leg, and therefore the cuff was far too narrow to fit; I just couldn’t get the handcuffs on him, it was impossible. In a flash I pressed the transmit button on my radio and sent one word across the airwaves:

“Assistance!”

I had become a member of ‘Thatcher’s Army’, one of ‘Thatcher’s Bully Boys’ as we were variously known. It was only a year since I’d returned from my travels with my long hair, broad mind, and a mild antipathy towards the police. I was now paid to be sworn at and pushed around outside a coal mine.

Very often it became impossibly busy, to the point where no-one was available to attend calls. When this happened some less urgent jobs were disposed of, or ditched, as we called it, in order to make the job work. They were taken off the pad and placed in Docket Thirteen as it was known, the bin. All incoming messages should have been stamped with a hand-held consecutive numbering machine, but at very busy times this was overlooked. On these occasions ‘when the wheel came off’ as it was known, even some stamped messages were ditched. If you ever called the police in the 80s or 90s and no one arrived and you wondered why, there’s your answer.

At times of crisis in any organisation the management often run around like headless chickens, and so it was with our gaffers at Fraggle Rock. Those of us on the ground actually doing the work inevitably suffered. Frequent pointless changes were made in the hope the problem would mysteriously disappear. They changed the people in charge of individual sections, stations, and entire areas, and they also tampered with people’s shift patterns.

They might change the names of things just for the sake of it in the hope of improvement when all the time no real difference occurs. It probably looked good and someone at Fraggle Rock no doubt gained their promotion from it.

In the 1990s crime exploded, and still no-one knew why. It was common to have fifty cars broken into in a single night in the council estates of Aspley and Broxtowe in the west of Nottingham. House burglaries were almost the same. In the Forest Fields area I attended a house that had been broken into seven times. Criminal damage offences were no exception, but the official figures were kept reasonably under control, mainly due to the ‘Minor Damage Book’. Anything deemed to be minor in nature such as a broken window that might cost £10 to fix, was given a minor damage number. This was permissible up to a maximum of £20. The crucial thing about this of course was that it didn’t generate a recorded crime number. It therefore didn’t exist in the official figures.

In 1995 crime continued rising at a phenomenal rate and was completely out of control. There seemed no end to its upward progression despite the police being awarded double digit pay rises every year. As a response driver I wondered how much longer this situation could continue, we seemed to be busier every week. I drew a pyramid chart of job satisfaction and workload versus roles within the police, because it seemed to me that a tiny proportion of police employees, mainly the response cops, actually did anything, despite the staff car park being full every day. Nothing’s changed; response cops continue to be the hard-pressed front line of policing. It’s another strange dichotomy that they have the most daily contact with the public yet within the job their status is lower than that of caretaker. If you stay on response for more than a few years you are seen by everyone else in the job as a fool and by the gaffers as a complete idiot.

On 1st April 2007 staff at Fraggle Rock or their partners at the city council or both working together, decided to rename my beat area and the surrounding beats with a fantastical new title: It was henceforth to be known as the ‘Natural Neighbourhood Co-terminus Super Output Area’. I checked the date, but it was real. Someone was being paid a lot of money for this. I imagined the inventors of the title sitting around at home one night listening to Pink Floyd, off their tits on weed, suddenly having a Eureka moment when it popped into their head. It was like a post-war Stalinist five-year plan, more idea than substance. Yet again it was telling us to do something we were already doing.

I submitted a report - which as usual was ignored - suggesting we deal with wind damage in the same protracted manner, merely for the sake of recording it because nobody else did. A fence blown down in a storm could be a non-crime wind-related crime number, generating a wind-related non-crime crime report and risk assessment, at least a couple of hour’s police time utterly wasted. Why not? The police could even sell the statistics to insurance companies, generate some revenue, target repeat wind victims, and assist in the long term rectification of the problem, i.e., buy a new fence. We need not stop there. A dead bird in the street could become a non-crime dead-bird related crime number, and the figures could be used by the RSPB or RSPCA to monitor wildlife levels, because nobody else is doing it. Let’s get out there and start recording absolutely everything we see, because no-one else can be bothered!

For years when on early shifts I’d sit at a computer eating my cereal while checking what had happened overnight on my beat area. No-one ever minded, and it only took five minutes. There were just a few of us did it anyway, and only on the early shifts, which were not particularly frequent. Suddenly there was a blanket ban on eating in work time, other than for the statutory forty-five minutes at lunchtime. The female gaffer said: ‘I don’t want to see anyone eating at their desks in the morning.’ In my state of paranoia I believed this was directed at me. I knew I’d be safe in the gent’s locker room so for the rest of my service I ate my Weetabix standing up in the gent’s toilet. After several months I became accustomed to eating breakfast with the heady whiff of urinals, Lynx deodorant, and semi-naked men with their knobs hanging out.

The contrast between being inside a job, and in particular a modern politically correct machine such as the police service, and being outside it, is now huge. When on the inside you live in a bizarre gentile world like that of the Eloi in HG Wells’ The Time Machine, where no-one upsets anyone and all humanity is wonderful. Nasty and uncomfortable things are avoided but if they do occur they are hidden, as though they didn’t actually happen, because no-one wants to upset anyone. That’s why it’s easier for public bodies nowadays to ignore awkward problems rather than actually deal with them.

It’s ironic that the concept of political correctness was probably created like all religions in a dream in order to protect vulnerable members of society. What has actually happened is that it has allowed dreadful things to happen, and I cannot see this situation improving.

Anyone standing up and pointing out that such horrible things might really be happening, or indeed anyone who dares to speak out against the flow is quickly silenced. When you live inside the bubble it’s not obvious, but after escaping it all seems very clear.

'Who'd be a Copper?'

Jonathan Nicholas

 

 

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