Police Investigation

Mark buzzed off to rescue the world from its internet deficiencies this morning, and I was left on my own.

I was resigned to this, because we have got bills to pay, but not pleased, because I wanted to get on with building things in our garden. We are going to be busy now for the whole of the rest of the week, and nothing is going to be done. 

I contemplated going and building the shed myself, but obviously it would not be worth upsetting Mark to quite that shocking extent.

He does not hold my DIY skills in high esteem. 

Instead I went upstairs and sat by the computer.

Lucy has been considering that she might join the police force when she grows up, and has decided to study criminology at university as a means to this end.

I find it difficult not to interfere in this sort of decision making, and whilst looking at ‘careers in the police force’ on Google during a dull moment on the taxi rank, I discovered their apprenticeship scheme.

It appears that the police are taking on apprentices, teaching them for three years and then giving them qualifications and jobs.

I suggested this to Lucy who thought that it might be worth a look, not least because it was free. A university course is a mightily expensive project, and if there turns out to be a low-budget alternative then I would be all for it. 

She emailed me over the weekend saying that she couldn’t make any sense out of their website so I promised that I would investigate.

I did this today.

By the end of the morning I had become convinced that their application process was designed to weed out anybody who did not already have advanced detecting skills. 

It took me several phone calls, any amount of frowning at Google, and some maps.

The College of Policing said that some forces were running the scheme but they didn’t know which.

The Centralised Human Resources Department said that some Welsh forces were running it, but only accepted people who could speak Welsh. Other than that she thought maybe some in the East Midlands.

Nottinghamshire police put me through to the Midlands Human Resources Department, who put me on hold for fifteen minutes and then cut me off. 

The lady I talked to in the end said that they were not recruiting until November and I should look then.

I looked on the website she recommended, just in case, and found that they were recruiting right now, with a closing date at the end of October. 

I messaged Lucy, squeaking about urgency. She was busy, and irritated, but patiently set her essay aside and obliged me by filling in the online form. 

I know that she did this because I spent the next half an hour dashing up and down the stairs to and from the computer, answering queries about her place of birth and National Insurance Number. 

I was quite impressed, because I know that she is concentrating on other things . For a teenager this is advanced courtesy, and probably done with the intention of getting me to shut up and buzz off, which I did, in the end, so I have no idea how she got on with the rest of the form.

I went downstairs and made some fudge. The idea of this was to take it to the theatre with us, except Mark found it when he got home and now I am not sure if it will last that long.

We are going to stay in the camper van tonight when we finish work. This is not because of the theatre, but because Number One Son-In-Law is coming up.

We have had some threatening letters from the National Park about the camper van on our field. We know that you are not supposed to store decrepit camper vans on Lake District fields without planning permission, but we have been ignoring this and hoping that nobody would notice it.

Of course they have, and now it has got to be moved. Number One Son-In-Law has decided that they do not have the time to fix it, even with Mark’s help, and that he is going to strip all of the useful bits out of it and send it for scrap.

I thought that this was terribly sad, but Mark said that Number One Son-In-Law wants to build his own van really, just something a bit smaller so that he can go to work in it. This sounds like a brilliant idea, I like the idea of building things the way you want them, and so tomorrow we are going to go to the farm and help him get it all sorted out.

We are going to go over in our own camper van tonight so that we get up early enough to be useful, and also so that we can make cups of tea and sausage sandwiches.

It is not  a holiday but I am looking forward to it anyway.

Have a picture of our not-going-anywhere building project.