Winter walk Towy Valley

I finished the painting above last week which  is of the Towy Valley in winter with Merlins Hill on the left in the distance. As with all disciplines painting improves with experience and training. Painting regularly keeps me going.

One of the things the police service do really well is training. I have been on numerous courses to learn the law, health and safety, project management, financial management, equal opportunities law, interviewing….etc etc as well as all the role related stuff CID courses, fraud, computer fraud, public order …etc  etc.

 All of these courses were of a very high standard with relevant qualifications.

The one exception to this for me was in Police Management at the “Staff College” Bramshill.  I had to attend 2 courses, a junior command course of 6 weeks and a senior one of 3 weeks.  Now reality stopped at the gates to this fine establishment as did time for me. To be fair I am sure there must have been others that found it a life changing experience and deeply satisfying? (I am sure things have changed now anyway as this was many years ago).

Anyway  I was in a group of 12 senior officers with 2 tutors.

Now it is no secret and probably not surprising that I didn’t get on with my tutors but that is another story. Basically Bramshill at that time was in my eyes equivilent to sitting around holding hands and chanting Hari Krishna. It certainly had nothing to do with Policing as far as I could see. One of the things we had to do was talk about ourselves and how we could make more of our feminine side, or something like that.

One of the officers let’s call him John a Detective Chief Inspector from Manchester on the Crime Squad gave a long talk on his work and how it had affected him. The tutors were spellbound, the one was making page upon page of notes,(probably for a book).  John had been so affected by his work that he had taken up rug making to get in touch with his feminine side. He told us all about the yarns and the colours and how he was abused at work because of his new hobby. I swear the tutors were near to tears. So was I and every other officer in the room but for a completely different reason. It was complete garbage but very convincing. John had never been near a rug in his life. His story held up for the whole 6 weeks and got more and more embellished. God knows what was said in his report or if it was even mentioned but he knew how to play the game as did most of the others.