Trials and Tribulations of joining the Transport Police

Time flies when...

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 20:28:48 +0000

... you've got rapidly approaching coursework deadlines.

Passport Pictures

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 13:35:07 +0000

Are those passport machines specially designed to make everyone look terrible, or it just me. I think every passport/ID type picture I have, I look incredibly p***ed off. There is usually an obvious reason for this, mainly that I had to pay £4, which is ridiculous, and the incredibly annoying voice patronisingly explaining in slow and minute detail how to press a button, oh, and the fact you only get 3 chances to create the least terrible picture of yourself. The end result is never quite what is shown on the screen, and only on printing did I notice the large tuft of hair sticking out at an entirely random angle.

Long story short, my warrant card is going to look awful, and I probably need a haircut.

Christmas comes early

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 21:55:52 +0000

To use an over used cliché, Christmas had come early. We picked up our uniform this weekend, which had arrived at the training centre in several huge boxes filled to the brim with assorted bits and pieces, handcuffs, batons, badges, silly hat etc.

Trying to set up the kit belt was much fun. Considering we’re all adults, the whole left/right thing probably shouldn’t have caused as much confusion as it seemed to, with bits of kit ending up upside down, inside instead of out, or the wrong way round. My excuse was I was tired. It was especially entertaining, I found, trying to work the handcuffs into the holder. It seemed to involve about 10 minutes of desperate struggling, complete with the facial contortions and grunting, to fasten it up, and on successfully doing so we were then told that they needed the serial number off the cuffs.

Being as all the kit was literally thrown into the boxes, it came out creased, folded, and not very neat and tidy. This posed a problem as I don’t think I had ironed a shirt in about 1½ years, probably ironed trousers once or twice and have certainly never polished anything in my life. Oh, and for those on this site who would like shiny metal numerals, don’t. They are a complete bitch in every single way; maybe it is minor OCD but I had to rearrange mine, trying to line them up, ensuring the space is exactly right etc. so often that the epaulettes are probably see-through. And its still not quite right.

The weekend was essentially more law training, so aside from being issued kit nothing that exciting happened save a few dodgy stop and searches (I discovered that trying to do all the stuff you’re supposed for GOWISELY in that order was really quite silly) and some interesting arrests, as well as the fried breakfasts and Sunday roasts.

Don't Touch My Railway

Sun, 27 Jan 2008 21:44:46 +0000

This weekend was the second of two thus far, Saturday being Diversity Training, and today being Track Safety, which basically involved being told about the many varied and exciting ways in which you could die on the railways. The training weekend last fortnight as been lost to the annals of history, mostly because I couldn’t spin how I learnt the caution and ran around arresting my trainers into a decently long blog.

I’m not going to pretend that I had no idea that railways were dangerous, but when sitting down and having how the 25,000 volt overhead line can arc over a considerable distance explained in detail does make good food for thought, or at least consideration to where you swing your lovely metal baton. More interesting is the brilliant idea of a third rail, carrying a nice voltage, which anyone having the need to traverse the railway must step over. That said, the essential message is don’t ever go anywhere near thinking that you need to go anywhere near the railway, unless something fairly major, such as the Queen giving birth in the ten foot, as it seems the consequences of a balls up are fairly major and usually result in you dying. We usually need someone to hold our hands, which is fine by me, and I do get the slight impression Network Rail don't like us playing about on the rails as a matter of course. Its their toy.

Speaking of balls ups, getting to the training itself turned out to be a challenge since the driver took a slight wrong turn. Not a major issue on the face of it, but I was travelling by train at the time. Instead of heading towards London, as I had rather hoped we would, we were sent towards Woking, after which there isn’t much track thanks to “major engineering works”. Pulling up at a station the train shouldn’t be at, the guard was variously harassed by the confused passengers clawing at the door trying to get in and the annoyed passengers who were curious as to when, if ever, we were going to get to London, while the driver sprinted to the other end of the train. Ok, it was more of a meander down the platform. Anyway, drives don’t actually steer the train and this was a “signalling error on leaving Guildford”, which had escalated into an “Operational Incident” by the time we had reached Waterloo, and quite probably “A catastrophic cock up” the next time the guard explained it; a bit like how those stories develop from fighting one small guy to battling 50 fully armed ninjas. I digress.

Moving on then, but doing this entirely out of order, this was today. Yesterday we had diversity training, which was certainly interesting, but all confidential operational information. Ok, it wasn’t operational, but that’s the usual excuse for this forum and I’ve wanted to be able to say it for a while. At any rate, I was particularly happy with the pork and stuffing (with apple sauce) baguette I had at lunchtime. Being a complete country bumpkin, it was quite entertaining to experience the market experience London style, which seems to be go in one end, shuffle around like penguins, and appear at the other without actually being able to see, let alone buy anything from, any of the stores and stalls, and without your wallet, mobile phone and iPod (or so the big yellow “WARNING, YOU’RE GOING TO BE ROBBED” signs claimed. I was bitterly disappointed at missing out on this particular part of the London experience, as you might well imagine.)

I’m now looking forward to next weekend, where I’m reliably informed that we will be given a lot of shiny new kit. Of course, I’ve jinxed it now.

I hate Blogs

Sun, 27 Jan 2008 19:46:43 +0000

Unfortunately through fiddling with my previous entry, "The story so far..." it seems to have now moved itself magically today whereas it was actually written on the 10th Jan. Never mind, the show will go on, I guess, even if it only has one actor and no audience. I suppose that could be rectified by me actually doing some blogging. In fact, I shall do that now...

The Story So Far

Sun, 27 Jan 2008 19:45:27 +0000

–cue rolling text on starry background-

I think I have been one of the unlucky ones when it comes to applying to the Specials. Applying in November 06 the process has taken over a year now. A brief timeline would look something like this;

Nov 06 – sent in the application form
March 07 – BTP acknowledged I had sent the application form
October 07 – Interview
November 07 – Fitness Test
Jan 08 – Medical

Over the last few months the whole recruitment process started moving really rather quickly, and late December I was told that I was to join the January training intake, which looks like excellent fun. I must admit that the whole timetable we were given is nearly entirely incomprehensible due it being littered with police TLAs, but it still looks entertaining.

Being a law student, I was originally actually quite worried that the “Law Training” was either going to be really boring and really embarrassing, either because I knew it all, or because I should have known it all. Fortunately, looking at the timetable its all stuff I won’t have covered, and probably won’t cover. It’s a strange common misconception that law students sit down with a big book called “The Law of England (and Wales)” and read it beginning to end, and somehow know everything there is to know about everything that’s known, and should be able to answer obscure questions about tax and employment law, or the provision of tap water in restaurants. Disappointingly, that isn’t the case and it’s mostly principles, based on ancient cases involving mill shafts and goats, and I’ve not actually finished my degree anyhow.

Anyway, moving on, there was a “training briefing” on Wednesday, where we got fitted up in uniform. Reading around the forum it seems many people during a uniform fitting got to wear it and smile to themselves in a mirror. Unfortunately we didn’t get to do this, and all I can really say about the police uniform is that NATO jumpers are itchy and my brief encounter with a custodian, as much as I like them, has lead me to the conclusion that it’ll take some time to get used to have something so perilously perched upon my head. The rest of the “briefing” seemed to involve eating sandwiches, not that I’m complaining about free food.

There was an entirely bizarre situation where I and another member of this here forum were conversing, much to the amusement of SBG since we didn’t actually know it. Both of us had twigged something was up, since my long application sounded slightly too familiar to him, and his somewhat shorter application and sudden change to another area sounded slightly too familiar to me. That said, I didn’t really want to turn around and say “Hey, you’re that guy from that forum, aren’t you”, in case he wasn’t and laughed in my face.

The “real training” begins tomorrow, it seems, with us heading to Tadworth tonight. I’m now really rather excited in a really rather childish sort of way.