I’ve had a very busy couple of weeks. It’s birthday time in our house (most birthdays in our family happen over a short, few weeks), so I’ve been eating for seventeen. Also, I’ve had several social events to attend. The most recent was a reunion of police cadets. It was lovely to see old friends again. So many of us lost touch, as happened in pre social media days. Sadly, we’re of an age now where a couple of people are no longer with us, but the rest of us had a great time. We reminisced about our teenage years, pored over old photographs, which brought back some very funny, and a couple of alarming, memories. Sadly, I can’t find any photos of my time in the cadets, but I do have some from my time as a police constable. Several of our group have children who followed them into the police. I can’t say I’m sorry that none of my children followed us. I don’t recall politicians being so overtly involved in policing when I was a policewoman. They try to treat policing as a business, but it’s so much more than that and that difference should be acknowledged and treated accordingly. Police have always been held to a higher standard than other people, rightly so in my opinion, but the actions of a few bad apples have dragged the reputations of the thousands of good, decent men and women through the mud, and are used as a stick to beat everyone and justify swingeing and unworkable changes. Nobody hates a bad cop more than a good cop and in my experience, nobody is more ruthless when dealing with them. However, the public have lost confidence, the media don’t hesitate to bash police performance, morale is at an all-time low. Last time I checked, the pay was almost equivalent to pre-Edmund Davies levels, and police cannot strike. No wonder so many are leaving. Would I join up now? I don’t know. I really don’t know. Joining when I did, I made good friends. I did things I would never have believed I would do. I did things I wish I hadn’t had to do. I have so many memories, some good, some I prefer not to dwell upon. I can’t imagine doing anything else.