Often he’d talk of a car chase he’d had or of an unusual traffic stop he might have made but sometimes he didn’t want to talk and would just watch the TV. His tiredness would show but he’d always pour out a whisky and join me in front of some mind-numbing TV show where I’d try and drag out of him any excitement that his day might have brought. Sometimes my father would arrive home after midnight having been in work on an early shift only to have been called to a Road Traffic Accident (RTA) later in the day. My father and Jim became two of the oldest traffic officer’s in the Constabulary and would mentor and instruct the younger ones in the art of pursuit driving and the intricacies of Road Traffic Law. He had a partner, Jim, who was of a similar age (mid-50s) and often they’d bring the newest and fastest BMW or Jaguar patrol car back to the house where I’d marvel at the equipment inside. I would wonder at how a car’s skid marks would finish where my father had drawn a tree or how neatly he had sketched the outline of a motorcyclist but had somehow forgotten to draw some of the limbs.Īs I grew older, my father would become more open and talk about his days on the motorways of southern England. Often I would have a sneaky look at the plans that he would create. Investigating accident sites, especially where there had been a fatality, was never an easy task and some nights, after arriving home from work, he would take a whisky up to his office where he would set about drawing his day’s work. In-between catching speeding motorists or breathalysing drink drivers, he would sketch intricate portrayals of vehicle accident scenes using very fine pens and on tracing paper that was admissible in court. When I was young, my father was a Police Traffic Officer and an Accident Investigator. A quote that is often attributed to John Lennon was actually first used in 1957 in an issue of Reader’s Digest by a man named Allen Saunders.īut he wasn’t the only person who knew what the quote meant.
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