The card table, because it was a card table and not a dining table, though that is what it had been used for as long as Alan had been alive, sat two or three feet away from a 15” Bush television perched on top of a highly polished and stained wooden trolley with castors. On the lower shelf was an ancient gramophone player and a small collection of records, vintage ranging from 1930 to 1950. The trolley and the sideboard next to it had been made by his dad. The sideboard had originally been walnut sides from army ammunition boxes, but now was, like the trolley, highly polished by hand using French Polish. His dad had made them both and all the other furnituyre in the house. The bed he slept in, the double wardrobe in his parents bedroom, the table in the kitchen, the two arm chairs in the living room together with two small stools. All made by him. It was probably the high quality of the furniture which had turned Alan away from ever wanting to follow in his fathers footsteps as a joiner, or cabinet maker as he styled himself. However, now that he had left school and was the owner on one certificate in GCE English Language, and nothing else, he needed to find a job.
On the table spread out in front of him was the Bolton Evening News open at the Job Vacancy pages, and he was avidly casting his eyes on them as he had done for the past weeks, ever since returning from the Boy Scout Jamboree with a sun tan and little else other than fond memories. He smoothed out the paper with his right hand and remembered the day before the exam results had come in. Deciding he had to find a job he had spent the morning walking around the town centre trying to imagine what it would be like to work in some of the premises he passed. Then suddenly he found himself on Mealhouse Lane in the centre of town and in front of a tall red brick imposing building which housed the offices and presses of the Bolton Evening News (published every night, and the Bolton Guardian published on Friday). He pushed open the heavy wood and glass door and walked into the reception area. Heavy wooden floorboards showed a path where every visitor to the offices had made over the years. He stopped at the chest high Mahogany counter and waited until the woman fiddling with something on a shelf below the counter bent up and looked at him.
“I’d like to see the editor please” he said. She looked him up and down and wondered what on earth a teenager in a dog tooth check sports coat and grey flannels could want with the editor. “What is it about love?” she asked nt unkindly. “I want a job” Alan replied. Her eyebrows went up a little. “Wait her e for a minute and I’ll see if he can see you.” She disappeared through a door in the wood and wrinkly glass panels which formed the wall behind her. The door slammed too as she went through. Alan looked around him at the photos on the walls around the large reception area. Two minutes later she came back. “He’ll see you now,” she said, “Follow me.” She ducked under a part of the counter which was hinged and nodded to him to follow her through a door to the right of the area. She followed him up two flights of narrow wooden stairs until they reached a series of offices running along the floor they were now on. Stopping in front of one of them she tapped twice on the glass window in the door and opened it, allowing Alan to walk carefully past her into a crowded office. The editor sat behind a large impressive desk covered in paper and files. Behind him was a wall full of files on shelves and in front of the desk was a wooden chair with armrests. The editor rose from his seat and held out his hand. Alan shook it and sat down when the editor told him to. Alan sat, his stomach no longer churning and doing somersaults as it had been doing since he walked in through the front door of the premises.
Alan explained he would like a job on the newspaper and that he was very good at writing and expected to get five O levels including English Language in a few weeks time. After five or ten minutes conversation Alan was shown out of the office with a request that he return when his results were through and the editor would see what there was for him. Alan got only the one pass, in English Language, so he didn’t bother to go back. The single result had shattered his confidence. Perhaps not simply the single result but the conversation he had had with his English teacher for the final year at school. He recalled it well.
“I got a pass in English sir” he had said to the diminutive teacher as he had tried to waft past Alan wearing his long black gown. “Yes I know” had been the short reply. “It’s the reason I am leaving this place. When people like you can get a pass and others who are more clever and deserving don’t get one. I am leaving this sordid little system and this sordid little town.” And he had continued his waft down the corridor. Alan had stood there in the doorway to the a hall, unsure of what to say but feeling angry and diminished by the comment. Well, he thought at least I will never had to see that miserable so and so again. And he walked out of the school doors for the last time in his life.
After the Bolton Evening News he paid a visit to the Army Recruiting office. There he discovered he was too old to join as a Boy Soldier and too young to join as Junior Soldier. Story of his life. Too old or too young.
An advert in the paper caught his eye. Bolton Borough Police were seeking to recruit a Cadet. No idea what that was, but he knew his uncle Fred had been a sergeant in the force prior to his retirement a couple of years ago. Maybe there was something in it. He wrote off to the Central Police Office giving his reasons why he wanted to be a Police Cadet, omitting the main reason, he simply wanted a job.
The selection process was quite involved and long. There were 83 young men sat in the large room which looked a bit like a gymnasium for the first of the examinations. He thought it was a gym as there was a badminton court painted on the floor and still several feet around it on each side. A large room. The exam, so Alan felt, was almost an insult. English, Maths, Geography and General Knowledge. Obviously too much for some of the applicants as sixty three of them had failed it and the remaining twenty went on to do a physical exam. In the end, and a week later Alan received a letter from the station asking him to attend for an interview at the Chief Constables office.
He sat on a solid hard backed wooden chair in a dark corridor seemingly made of dark wood. The three interviewees looked silently and nervously from one to the other. Alan was in the middle of the three of them. Eighty three whittled down to just three. How had he managed it? Still he found it hard to understand or believe. The first went in and after fifteen minutes or so the door to the Chief Constables office was opened and the first applicant came out. There was nothing to understand from the blank look on his face. The lady who had shown him out now held out her hand to indicate it was Alan’s turn. He stood and walked towards her as she held open the door. As he got to the threshold of the room she smiled kindly and nodded him through. He stepped into a large bright office with two windows forming the wall opposite the door he had entered through. Sat at a large wooden table were three men. The man to the right of the desk was a senior officer in uniform, the other two in civilian suits. The man in the middle smiled and said, “Come in, Sit down. Alan Robinson isn’t it?” Alan walked the four paces to the seat in front of the desk and sat down. “Yes sir” he said. The words sticking in his throat. The man in the middle, a stout balding man with a kindly face looked him in the eyes and said, “Alan Robinson. Is your father Stanley?” The question threw him and for a second he had to think. “That’s right sir” he said. The man in the middle smiled. “You won’t remember me but I’m Alderman Booth, chairman of the Watch Committee. I’m your uncle Freds brother.” He smiled again. “How is your father going on these day, it’s a long time since I last saw him.” Alan’s mind raced. Fred was indeed his uncle and had only recently retired from the force as a Sergeant. He was married to my brothers sister, my aunt Phyllis and had two sons, his cousins David and Peter. Alan nodded nervously and replied, “He’s fine sir, thank you.”
The Chairman of the Watch Committee, a man of considerable standing in local politics was a relative! Alan was stunned, he had no idea. It was him who probably had the last say in the appointment of officers in the force. Was his luck changing? Alan spoke clearly through the short interview and at the end was shown out into the corridor, and then home. He told his father was the people at the interview. His father looked quietly at him and said, “Mm. I’d forgotten Alf was there.” and that was it. Nothing moer was said.
During the next week, mid October, in the evening there was a knock at the front door as Alan and his father sat watching the television. Alan answered it. Stood there were two men in civilian clothes. One of them was his cousin Keith, the other a stranger. He had known Keith for some time, from the boy scouts. He was some years older than Alan but was familiar with him. “Alright Alan,” he said. “Can we come in? It’s about your application to be a Police Cadet.” Alan was confused, but knowing the identity of Keith he ushered them into the living room where his father rose from his chair and shook hands with Keith and was introduced to the other man. It turned out Keith and the other men were now detectives and responsible for doing background checks on people who had been successful in applying to join the force.
Alan was left out of most of the conversation between Keith and his father, answering only the briefest of questions. And then they left. Alana looked at his father after they had gone. “Well”, his father said, “Looks like you got the job then. Well done. Proud of you.” He smiled. A rare one.
On Monday 4th November 1963 Alan started work as a Police Cadet in the Bolton Borough Police Force. He left the job in March 1978 having risen to the dizzy heights of Police Constable.
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