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Brand New, Fresh Out Of The Box

It's strange looking at that picture now. It seems familiar and, somehow, weirdly foreign. A doppelganger experiencing a completely separate life.

Taken almost forty years ago, it shows a young, fresh-faced boy about to take part in an adventure story. Not the kind, though, that ends with discovered riches, a monster slain or a princess bride.

He doesn't know where, in London, he's going to be posted. He doesn't know the people he's going to meet or the things he's going to experience.

He doesn't yet know about the serious back injury he's going to suffer, or that he's going to be shot at four times, and threatened with knives on a regular basis. 

He hasn't yet been disfigured. The scar on his right index finger from a red-hot steam iron wielded by a suspect's angry mum. The fading train tracks on the inside of his forearm - left behind by the sharp end of a burglar's claw hammer. A bite mark's ghost that lives near his left shoulder.

He's already broken a couple of bones, accidentally, playing football. But he doesn't yet know that there are people in his future who will deliberately break them. Nose. Right eye socket. The knuckles on his right hand.

And yet, he will be one of the lucky ones. Two of his colleagues will die in the line of duty. One will commit suicide.

Others will only die on the inside. Trapped in a job they detest. So ruined by dealing with the worst in society that they then regard everyone and every situation through a prism of distrust and cynicism. 

He would experience these feelings too but, mostly, about some of the other people he worked with. But he recovered. Almost fully. Then, years later, he wrote books about it.

Wednesday, 18th June, 2025