Eyes

On the way back from town today, conscious that no opportunity for conversation had presented itself, but distracted by my book, which I read as I plodded along, I glanced up to get safely across a busy junction and looked straight into a woman's eyes. She was sitting in a black saloon at the lights. She was about 40, hair pulled back, elegant.  I looked away politely, then back again and she was still looking straight at me. I smiled broadly and she smiled back. And we each turned away. And we laughed when we both caught each other looking again.

And then the lights changed.





.

The "B" Licence

“I knew her when she was young”, Ron said, pointing to a Thatcher biography in the bookshop window, or rather he didn’t know her as such, as she was older than him, but knew the family and did see Margaret in the shop. His brother, a socialist all his life (most British people are socialist by birth, Ron told me), delighted in being able to tell people that he had been at ICI when she had been turned down for a job; far too bossy he reckoned.

Ron’s brother was in Mosquitos during the war and served with Kate Middleton’s Grandfather as his observer. Ron served in the RAF too, during National Service, having been deferred until he could finish secondary school. He was at Grammar school “Don’t even get me started on the demise of the grammar school system.”

He went on to train to be an Engineer….pumps mainly…hydraulics….land drainage etc. We talked briefly about John’s train whistles and our success using a pneumatic compressor to get them going and Ron listed all the steam trains he had known and he told me that he had seen the Mallard, which had done its high speed trial just near where he lived, though that had been a bit before his time. As an engineer he had earned three times what a politician made, - “Don’t even get me started on politicians”, he said.

Then Ron told me that, uniquely, Heseltine got out of his National Service because he was one (which is near as damn it true).  We talked briefly about career politicians and the Gummers, father and son, when Ron qualified something by saying that all politicians should be locals. Footballers too, I suggested. Exactly, he said. Points of agreement like that are useful when you know a conversation is about to become uncomfortable, but gratifying though this had been – shame that I had dug myself into a sport hole! Luckily Ron seemed no more interested in football than I am. “Of course I liked rugby, not football. Three and six was all I got in my boot, but then I was an amateur.”

He has family in Aldeburgh but doesn’t see the attraction. Then you should see it from the air, I suggested, and at this point of shared interest he told me he had his B licence, earned when he was called up and did his National Service, first on Tiger Moths, then Chipmunks, Oxfords (I think he said), then Meteors, which is where I started to really feel blessed that I had started this conversation, though sadly we quickly got off topic, “Don’t get me started on all this flowers and counselling stuff”. You don’t feel that by not addressing trauma in your day you bottled things up and have carried the pain of it? No, he said, and told me about the drowning of a school-friend, aged 12, who had got tangled in wartime barbed wire when swimming, and whose death was announced to the whole school. One day he was there, the next he wasn’t. And that was that.

The trouble with this country now, he said, is we don’t make anything. We used to when we were an Empire. Well to be fair, I said, we have Thatcher to thank for that, which was when I started to suspect that Ron did not share his brother’s politics. “And don’t get me started on immigrants.”

I like you, Ron, I thought, don’t ruin this. And soon we got on to the subject of long division. “And don’t even get me started on teachers.”

Student Police Constable Ben Redmond

Excuse me, I said, I write a blog about my conversations with strangers. 
"And I am today's lucky winner", he said. 

When I asked if it would be ok to take photos, he couldn't have been nicer about it. "I am a member of the public, just like you. Feel free". He told me that he was waiting for a recovery truck to take away an impounded vehicle, which had been driven without insurance, and then with fluency told me the rules which govern such things. Ben Redmond is a recently qualified Student Officer, which is what they now call probationers.

Only 24, it is amazing what he has already crammed in. Public sector cuts put paid to ambitions to get into the Police in Colchester, so this Essex boy applied to Suffolk. He came to the job with 4 years' experience as a volunteer Special Constable, which he did while working as a manager of a pharmacy. The knowledge of drugs, he told me, comes in handy.

One thing that really suprised me is that police officers patrol their beats on their own these days. Ben says it can get lonely. Especially so, I imagine, when you are new to policing. Only at night time do officers patrol in pairs. I think this is an unfortunate reflection on the times we live in, that when societal problems are now so complex, respect for authority diminished and violence a constant threat, officers are put at risk by working alone. And it can't be easy to learn the job when you are not paired up.

We talked a bit about the Police tractor; I told him that I am a teacher and we'd had the tractor at the school and that the kids had clambered all over it. Yes, Ben reckoned, I bet they were far more interested in the tractor than in the Police. I think it was all lost on us what the connection was between a tractor and the police in the first place, I said, and Ben told me that it has now been replaced with a flash car. But to my mind, all kids want to see is all the black kit and a police car. I got Ben to pose in front of his.

 PC 1794 Redmond's probationary year will soon be up. I have no doubt at all that he will do very well indeed. He certainly has the public relations thing down to a tee. And as we teachers know only too well, everything is about relationships. A calm, friendly yet firm approach is what modern policing is about.

garden visitor

This is a bit of a cheat - sorry!
 I didn't go out at all today.

 But while hoeing the garden, this cat came to visit.  Ordinarily I don't encourage feline visitors because my own cat, Buntu, resents it so much, and as she is very scrappy, I fear for the safety of interlopers. But whoever this very young creature was, she was  too sweet to chase off. So I let her hang out.

Wayfarer

 

I button-holed this old chap today because, even from behind, I was pretty sure his bike was a Raleigh Wayfarer, the bike my Gran bought me in 1975 to do my Cycling Proficiency on. 
And so it was!

He bought it for £20 and even for that money it was better, he said, than the modern bikes. We waxed lyrical about the build quality of old bikes, "Not like the rubbish they build today, which fall apart soon as look at them".


(I got a ticking off, though. Apparently I shot off at a tangent to talk to this chap, when my friend was in the middle of saying something to me. Am suitably admonished!)