Prisoners, Property and Prostitutes (12 page)

It must have made a bizarre sight – a bunch of donkey-jacketed labourers reading their papers and smoking their cigarettes inside the van, and behind them a man on a rope flailing about and doing a full-blooded impression of a Wild West film stuntman.

The blame for that one really has to lie with the motorcyclist.

My learning curve at Newport sloped happily upwards, and shortly after my third anniversary of joining I was sent on my driving course. This was a three week affair back at the Training Centre, and my first return there since the last of my Probationer courses almost 18 months earlier.

It felt strange to return and see the uncertain faces of the new recruits as they started the long haul from induction to confirmation. I realised that as time went on in the job it wasn’t so much that you learned more, but you began to appreciate better how little you did know, and developed an ability to cover your mistakes with a veneer of competence.

Experience, they say, is what enables you to recognise a mistake when you make it for the second time.

On the first day of the driving course we had a number of
clerical procedures, first and foremost showing the instructor that I actually did possess a valid driving licence. It wasn’t something they used to insist on seeing, but after one man completed most of the course before accidentally disclosing he was actually disqualified, they adopted this minor yet fundamental formality.

Then there was an eye test to make sure you could see enough to get by, and then some simple instruction about the car before we set off to drive it. Things like which seat to sit in, how to turn the wheel, and basic maintenance like tyre pressures, oil levels and so on.

It all seemed very elementary instruction, but it made sense to tell us because then when it all went wrong on division at least we couldn’t say we hadn’t been told.

I had always had a love of driving – thanks to living in a house with a long drive, by the age of 13 I was reasonably competent behind the wheel of a car and had passed my driving test just 2 weeks after my 17th birthday. I imagined this course would be a piece of cake. How wrong I was.

We drove to what was called ‘the system’, a very rigid discipline of driving rules, and of course I had been doing it my own way for the last 9 years. ‘The system’ was defined as “a system or drill, each feature of which is considered in turn by a driver at the approach to any hazard”. It made sure you assessed and reassessed every feature of your driving, and the way you dealt with every situation, by the same logical procedure. It sounded odd to me at first, but I soon found it actually worked very well. Thanks to a patient and persistent instructor I started to make better progress. I quickly realised
that not having run into anything in nine years did not make me a ‘good’ driver. Being systematic in anything was alien to me, so the consistency of discipline in driving soon started to chip away at the bad habits I had picked up over the years. Consistency also extended to a check list of equipment carried in each car used for training, obvious things like a spare tyre and a jack. Things which you never thought about until you neded them, when it was too late to discover that the previous driver had already had a flat tyre and left you without a spare because he was too idle or forgetful to do anything about it. On division the checklist was longer and included things like a torch, inevitably with flat batteries; a few cones which would blow away in the slightest breeze; a first aid kit which usually contained a long piece of unrolled dirty bandage, two enormous plasters and an empty disinfectant bottle, and a pair of Wellington boots, almost always a size 8. This summed up the administrative mania in the service – someone had decided that each car should have a pair of wellies in it, but ignored the fact that different people have different size feet. Maybe this was catered for when the footwear provided had one a size 8 and the other a size 6, as happened on occasion.

It was the sort of logic that says a watch that loses a minute a week is always showing the wrong time, but one that is permanently stopped is correct twice a day. The Police mentality would take the stopped watch in preference to the slow one in the same way it issued a pair of wellies that fitted hardly anyone.

Once the equipment checks were done, you had to put a tick in the checklist record in the back of the car’s log book and
sign it. The space allowed for the signature was about 5 millimetres square, so to write any recognisable signature or even initials was impossible. The tick and signature took about 3 seconds, whereas actually to do the checks took several minutes. Occasionally it was tempting to reduce the check to a quick open and shut of the boot and kick the tyres. If it was raining, windy or cold, this would be reduced to counting the tyres and making a reasonable assumption that most of the kit would still be in the boot, or if not then another patrol would not be far away with whatever you needed. So the line of indecipherable signatures in the back of the log book was by no means a reliable reflection of the history of checks made on the vehicle.

Traffic cars were generally better looked after and more carefully checked, as they were the ones normally first on the scene of the bigger incidents, and there was more at stake in such circumstances. Brian Tweed, a good friend of mine, was once asked to take his traffic car to a school to do a presentation. He got the class gathered round the car and started a question and answer session to make the little darlings think in a constructive and involving way.

‘What would you expect to find on a Police car that you might not have on a normal car?’ he asked the audience.

‘Blue lights,’ came the first reply.

‘Good, blue lights,’ said Brian, and continued the session as they came up with things like two-tone horns and radios, and then he moved on to the ‘what’s in the boot’ part of the quiz. The class were quite bright and correctly suggested cones, lights, torches and eventually a first aid kit. These items were
produced in sequence from the boot, and an impressive array of equipment was laid out on the grass. The large box that was the first aid kit was among them, and Brian became more detailed –

‘OK,’ he said, ‘you’re at an accident – what would you like to find in a first aid kit?’

The children again responded well, and Brian was soon reciting a list of ‘bandages, sterile wipes, plasters, antiseptic ointment’ and so on.

Like a game show host he got to the ‘let’s open the box and find out’ stage.

He opened the box, and to his dismay found not a single medical item. The box contained a single, small screw. And it was rusty.

I enjoyed the driving course from start to finish – it was the first formal driving instruction I had ever received – but one of the highlights had to be the day on the skid pan. This was an area of concrete with two circles of tyres on it, so you could drive round it as an oval, a circle, or a figure of eight. It had years’ worth of old oil covering the surface, and a sprinkler system made from an old hosepipe to get it good and slippery. The day we were there it drizzled as well, so the whole area was truly glass-like.

We tried various experiments, such as timing how long it took to go round a set course using two different driving techniques – the first being very controlled, sliding as little as possible, and keeping the car under full control. The second time the same course was driven as fast as possible, tail out, engine roaring, all very flamboyant. Although this second way
looked faster, it was actually significantly slower – a huge disappointment to the boy-racer within my soul.

The downside of the course was that at the end of each day the cars had to be washed dried and hoovered out, and it was Winter time. My own car would get washed Winter and Summer – once in each season whether it needed it or not – so to be washing someone else’s car every day was irritating, but I suppose not too bad a price for the skills learned.

The course also introduced me to the art of providing a commentary while driving. This required you to say out loud what you were doing and why, and in theory is perfectly easy. In practice it was a different matter. The instructor would start you off with,‘Right, you’re driving on the B456 in the direction of Blinston. Carry on.’

Trying to get one’s brain into gear you would repeat,‘I am driving on the B456 in the direction of Blinston.’ And then fall silent as thousands of different facts all jostled for position to be first out of your mouth. Should I say it’s a single carriageway? That the road is dry? That there’s a car ahead, a junction to the left – oh I’ve gone past it, oh I’ve just been overtaken, should I change gear? And so it went on, and eventually all the facts waiting to be released gave up, turned round, and sulked in dark parts of the brain, refusing to emerge, until rudely awoken by the instructor saying ‘Come on, tell me something – the course ends in a fortnight!’

Eventually, like so many of the initially unfamiliar skills, commentary became more natural, and after a while it was more a matter of being annoyed at missing minor details than missing out whole and blatant features.

There was also a written exam in the last week, based on the Police ‘Roadcraft’ driving manual. Minimal cheating was allowed, so some serious study time was needed. But this was a residential course, so after driving and studying there was still plenty of time to use the gym or drink in the bar. There were two of us to a car, so the lad I was partnered with went to the gym while I went to the bar. I felt I had made the right choice as after a couple of hours he would appear looking very red faced, sweating and out of breath after using bars, weights, treadmill and all the paraphernalia of the keep-fit fanatic. I meanwhile had had a few cigarettes and a couple of pints, was not at all out of breath, and only slightly red-faced. I might not live quite as long, but I would surely have had more fun.

The last Thursday of the course was the ‘final drive’, when the Inspector in charge of the driving school did the all-or nothing assessment. It was incredibly nerve wracking, and even though the Friday was available for any last minute re-sit, I was faced with the realisation that this test was the key to my career hopes – pass it and I was a step nearer to a Traffic job, fail and I was back to a big hat and boots, and a long wait for another course. Additionally there would be the inevitable leg-pulling if I had weeks away and came back with nothing to show for it. But the gods must have smiled on me, as I not only passed but was awarded an ‘Advanced Recommend’, a very useful plus in an application for further training.

Training is one thing, putting it into practice quite another. On my return to Division I was one of the drivers not allocated a permanent car, but would get to fill in when there was a space, so I felt honoured and fortunate one afternoon shift only a few days after my return when the Sergeant allocated me to a car beat – my time had come. I did everything by the book – checked all the tyre pressures, made sure that all the issued kit was there (including the obligatory size 8 wellies), fuel tank full, washer bottle topped up, lights and indicators working, and log book completed correctly.

Finally I had moved from two feet to four wheels – what a landmark!

If I was to realise my ultimate aim of going onto Traffic it was important to keep as clean a slate as possible, so the less damage to the car attributed to me and the less accidents I was involved in, the better. I determined not to forget any of the training, and also to use it to the full. I had been amazed at how much I had learned on the course, and had developed a far better feel for the handling of a car in all sorts of everyday situations. The driving course had us practising parking for some
considerable time – not a daft as it sounds, as most bumps and scrapes are during low speed manoeuvres. Any fool can drive on a big wide empty road at 70 miles an hour, but not everyone can judge correctly the width and length of their car in a parking space. We had practised ‘uphill parks’ and ‘downhill parks’, leaving the wheels at an angle so if the handbrake cable broke the car would simply rest against the kerb, not roll into the car behind. Sensible, logical, and simple, if arguably a little paranoid.

I drove out of the Police Station yard and stopped at the exit onto the High Street. While I was waiting for a gap in the traffic I realised just how conspicuous I felt – far more than I had done on my first day on unaccompanied foot patrol – I was still just a uniform Constable, but I was sitting in a car with ‘POLICE’ written in great big letters on both sides. I was a vast advertisement that said ‘If you have a situation you can’t cope with or can’t understand, the man in this car will sort it out for you’. I felt incredibly vulnerable and exposed, but a deep breath saw me drive calmly out into the road and towards the town. First port of call was to be for my own purposes, to go to the cash machine and get some money from the bank so that later in the shift I could buy some food. The bank I was to use had a parking area in front of it, with about six spaces on either side. This meant a simple left turn off the High Street, then a ninety degree turn left or right into the first available space. As I turned off the High Street I could see there was only one space, and it was in the right hand side set of spaces, about half way along. There wasn’t a great deal of room to spare, but I was quite happy that I would be able to fit the car in, and sure
enough I pulled smoothly and evenly into the gap. All I had to do was make sure the car was far enough into the space that the rear didn’t stick out. The problem with the Vauxhall Astras we had at that time was that the nose of the car sloped down quite steeply, so there was quite a lot of the front that was not visible from the driver’s seat and had to be guessed. You would often see these and similar slope-fronted cars with a vast gap in front of them as an over-cautious driver had stopped way short of where they imagined the nose of the car to be. Far better than hitting something, but obviously lacking in the skill and judgement I now possessed. With careful slipping of the clutch I inched my car forward to perfection. Almost. I actually misjudged the length of the car by about an inch, and this was just enough to knock over the litter bin in front of it. Had it been completely full the bin might have had enough weight to resist the gentle shove I gave it, but being only part-full and made of metal it hit the pavement with an almighty clang before rolling slowly down the slope of the street. My calm professional façade vanished in an instant, and I went from setting a wonderful example of slow-speed car control to chasing after a rattling, grinding litter bin before it caused more mayhem elsewhere. As I dragged it back into position I was also forced to spend a little while picking up the various chip wrappers and empty bottles that had predictably fallen out during its brief escape. Consequently my first operational excursion as a patrol driver ended up back at the station to wash my hands, humiliated, disappointed and still with no money for my tea.