Truly Lost ...........
London can be a very strange place............To me it always has been even after fifty years here, thirty of which were spent in the Police. The problem for me was that the river Thames flows more or less through the centre of it, West to East, and to this day, most of the area I know as ‘South of the River’ is still a foreign country to me. Apart from the main arteries to the south coast, I never know where I am. I have only worked ‘North of the River’ and even then, the East Side.
Foreigners, especially Americans
used to think that I was joking whenever I was on special duty ‘UpTown’ and
was asked the location of somewhere such as Piccadilly Circus or Trafalgar Square and I
told them ‘Sorry, but I am a
stranger here’. I am sure they thought not so much that
I was being funny, but that in fact I was either mad or someone pretending to
be a uniformed officer.
You see, when I left Ireland and ‘joined up’ in 1966, I had
never been within a few hundred miles of London,
knew nothing of the different areas, and would soon find out that I could not
understand a word that the local ‘Cockneys’
were saying. All that ‘Whistle
and Lute’, ‘Apples
and Pears’ etc., - so called ‘rhyming
slang’ left me puzzled for most of my first few years.
The Cockneys
were bad enough but the many different accents, including the Scottish and West Indians, left me
puzzled trying to understand what most people were saying to me. With my own strong Irish brogue, they
most likely had the exact same problem with me........
And so it was when I completed Police College and was posted to
my first station – Hackney – in the deep East End of London..............
After a week’s holiday back in Ireland, I presented myself at the Police College and was
informed that I was being posted to ‘G’
Division. They might as well have said ‘Mars’ for all I
knew. On arrival at City
Road Police Station, I was then informed that I would be working at
‘Hackney’.
That was the first time I had ever heard the name as a place but I
was familiar with the term ‘London
Hackney Carriage’ – the legal term for a black taxi cab.
After about an hour I was taken by police van to Hackney to see the Chief Superintendent.
After another long wait, his Clerk,
a Scotsman named
strangely enough Jock Clark,
with the most dreadful accent, informed me that I would be taken to a Section House a few miles
away which would be my quarters whilst single. I was to get the bus
the next morning and see the Chief
at 10.30am. He gave me directions on how to get to the
station. I must have been tired, for what he was saying, or at
least what I could understand he was saying, was going in one ear and straight
out the other. Nevertheless,
I was taken to the Section House and settled in.....
Next
morning, (and I can remember
it clearly), was a beautiful warm June day, and dressed in full
uniform, including my long coat, I stood at the bus stop opposite.
The West Indian
conductor went into shock when I asked him to let me off at....... Oh my God, I had forgotten
the name of my station (Hackney).
I did remember part of another address that Jock
Clark had mentioned - Shoreditch Church or something
like that.
I told the conductor and quite honestly I am not too sure to
this day if he understood what I said. However, a long time later,
far longer than it should have taken me to get to Hackney, he informed me that we were at Shoreditch Church.
I got off the bus and sweating profusely, I stood on the pavement at the height
of the rush hour. I
was now completely and utterly lost.................
I looked around me for what I could remember Hackney Police Station
looked like but saw nothing familiar. I strolled up to a newspaper
seller on the corner and politely asked him ‘Where
is the nearest police station please?’ He looked at me
in total amazement and said ‘Are
you taking the piss, guvnor?’ ‘No’ I replied, ‘Please can you direct me’.
He pointed across the road and said ‘Old
Street Guvnor – on the corner’. I looked but knew
immediately that it was not Hackney
as it looked nothing like it.
However, I did not intend to give up as the time was now half
past nine and I did not have to get to Hackney until ten-thirty. I
therefore made my way over to Old Street
police station, boldly walked in and said to the officer behind the
counter. ‘How do I get
to the next police station down the road’? ‘Dalston?’
he replied, ‘just get a
number 22: get off at Le Bon’s corner and walk back up Dalston Lane’.
It could have been for all I knew, so went straight outside and onto a 22
bus. ‘Tell me
when I get to Le Bon’s corner please’ I asked the conductor.
He said nothing and did not blink an eyelid. I honestly think that
word must have gone around among the bus conductors about the nut-case police
officer wandering around the East End.
In any event: I got off the bus as told and I walked
back up Dalston Lane
and immediately when I saw the police station I knew that it was not the
correct one. I stood on the steps, twenty-five years old, in full
uniform sweating like a pig and began to cry. Yes, I began sobbing at the thought
that I would be sacked on my very first day proper in the police.............
I pushed open the door
and entered. Immediately, Station
Sergeant Crask – a true gentleman of about fifty and one of my
favourite officers of my entire service – leapt over the counter and ran
towards the door. As he did so, he called back ‘What happened son, who hit you, who
did it?’ Through my tears I said ‘No-one Sergeant, I am
(excuse the expression) fucken
lost’.
He looked at me and put
his arm around my shoulders. ‘You
are new, aren’t you?’ he asked. ‘My first day’ I said ‘and I can’t even remember my station?’
‘Listen son’ he
quietly said ‘You can never
be lost with those numbers on your shoulders’.
With
that he telephoned Divisional
Office and said to me ‘Hackney.
Remember that for the rest of your life’. He softly
laughed. I looked at the station clock and saw that the time was
twenty past ten.
I stuttered and said ‘I am supposed to see the Chief Superintendent at half
ten’. ‘Don’t
worry’ he said and called another officer from the Reserve Room.
‘Take the Area Car’
he said ‘and make sure you
get our friend here to Hackney Nick before half ten. Use the Blue
Light if you have to’. With that we were away at high
speed.
Suffice is to say that I walked into the Superintendent Clerk’s Office
at exactly half past ten and when Jock
Clark saw me, he merely nodded and said ‘Away with you to the canteen and I
will call you when the Chief is ready to see you’. I
did and I waited and waited until just after twelve o’clock before I was ushered
into the Chief’s office.
A truly memorable day, albeit not for the best
reasons. However, I did meet my first police hero, Station Sergeant Eric Crask.
As true a gentleman as I have met throughout not only my police service, but
also during my life..............
(Incidentally, he made me write the name ‘Hackney’ on the palm
of my hand and also on page one of my A to Z map. Whenever I met
him for almost the next year, he would take my hand and check that I had
rewritten Hackney on it whenever I washed my hands)...............
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