As a teenager I had a holiday job cleaning the cells of Redland police station. On my second day I was asked to stop what I was doing — welcome, since I was elbow deep scouring a cell privy — and go to the Superintendent’s office.
Part of Redland nick is a Victorian building that from the outside looks charming, like a quaint village police station with flower baskets and cheery, ruddy-faced “bobbies”. But beyond the front desk I remember it as a cloying, institutional building greyly, grimly designed in that cramped, hopelessly unfunctional style the Victorians did so well.
Walking from the cells, up staircases and along corridors with walls that appeared to close in on you, I began to feel a sense of foreboding. Had I been using too much Mr Sheen? Not enough Brasso? Perhaps the Superintendent was just welcoming me on board?
In his office, sitting behind his desk, light bouncing off the pips on his shoulders, the granite-faced Superintendent was reading a piece of paper. Without looking up he grunted, “Are you a relation of ********* Warren? Is he your father?”
My heart sank as my head nodded. I knew what would happen next. (Was I about to be reminded that my father, a man I hardly knew, was a great, long-lost mate of the Super’s? That my dad had entrusted to the Super the deeds to a huge house, with buried treasure in the garden? That the Super had been asked to give the house to me on reaching the age of 16, after first conspiring to get me a job as a cleaner in his nick? No ...)
The Super’s otherwise motionless face coloured. Like a splot of crimson ink landing in a glass of water. Measuredly he asked. “You know why you’re here, don’t you?”
Shrug. My father had been in and out of prison for various misdemeanours (breaking into chemists for speed, fighting, stealing, general idiocy) since his teens. The sheet of paper was obviously a list of his stays in various remand wings, prisons and police cells — maybe even the one I’d just cleaned.
And here was his son, the one he hardly knew, on the pay roll of the Redland nick.
Clearly, I was guilty as charged, whatever it was that I was actually being charged with.
“I’ll be keeping an eye on you.” he said, both a promise and threat.
Dazed, I went back to my cell.
Later, mopping the cell floor, the Superintendent popped his head around the reinforced door. All friendly, like. “History tends to repeat itself. You’d be advised to get used to the cells.”
Eighteen years later, I just found the perfect retort. “Unreservedly, you will atone for the sins of your fathers.” All I could come up then, though, was “shove it up your arse”. Although, of course, I waited until he was out of earshot.
It’s a shock to learn that simply sharing genes and surname was enough to get a jailer rattling his keys like a tambourine. I’d been condemned.
My father, who himself was fatherless, started adult life down the mines in Radstock. He was a Jack the lad; he dabbled in petty crime, went carousing and had a kid — a sister, whom I met first last year.
At the age of about 18 he discovered his talent for acting. After some heavy drinking, and a spot of affray, he went to Bristol Old Vic school; later there was some thieving and some proper acting (ironically, including a role in Z Cars). He had some more kids, became a jailbird, cider-house raconteur and alcoholic, leading to his current role: deceased.
Now with a CV like that you could, perhaps, see some reasoning behind the not-that-Super- intendent’s attitude that criminality is in the blood.
But I think I’m more qualified than him to argue that it’s nurture rather than nature that determines whether I clean a floor with the mop or I steal the mop and then strip it and sell it as parts.
Because, from an early age, I was raised by my stepfather. A patient, funny, honest, hard-working craftsman who, with my mum, provided a loving, safe, happy home for his five children and brought us up pretty much to be successful human beings.
My brother and I may have fallen by the wayside a few times, and I’ve even, I’m ashamed to say, spent a night in the cells much like the ones I used to clean, but he’s always been there, patiently putting us back on the right track.
When I have kids I want to be exactly like my stepfather. He’s my old man.
My biological father wasn’t. There’s a big difference.
He may have provided the sperm that developed into 50 per cent of me; he may have had a good reason for leaving my mother to cope with three small kids when he popped out “for some fags”; I may have forgiven him when we eventually met, bonded with him for a couple of years before I felt his hand lose its grip on a BRI ward, but I never once referred to him as my old man. Because he wasn’t.
All of the above I would have liked to have pointed out in the office of that pompous copper who acting above his station promoted himself to judge.
Instead, I have to be content with writing about it 18 years later. I still feel hurt by what he said, but then I figure maybe he was just projecting his own insecurities, wrapped up in a fancy uniform, on anyone lower he could find.
I blame the parents.
Part of Redland nick is a Victorian building that from the outside looks charming, like a quaint village police station with flower baskets and cheery, ruddy-faced “bobbies”. But beyond the front desk I remember it as a cloying, institutional building greyly, grimly designed in that cramped, hopelessly unfunctional style the Victorians did so well.
Walking from the cells, up staircases and along corridors with walls that appeared to close in on you, I began to feel a sense of foreboding. Had I been using too much Mr Sheen? Not enough Brasso? Perhaps the Superintendent was just welcoming me on board?
In his office, sitting behind his desk, light bouncing off the pips on his shoulders, the granite-faced Superintendent was reading a piece of paper. Without looking up he grunted, “Are you a relation of ********* Warren? Is he your father?”
My heart sank as my head nodded. I knew what would happen next. (Was I about to be reminded that my father, a man I hardly knew, was a great, long-lost mate of the Super’s? That my dad had entrusted to the Super the deeds to a huge house, with buried treasure in the garden? That the Super had been asked to give the house to me on reaching the age of 16, after first conspiring to get me a job as a cleaner in his nick? No ...)
The Super’s otherwise motionless face coloured. Like a splot of crimson ink landing in a glass of water. Measuredly he asked. “You know why you’re here, don’t you?”
Shrug. My father had been in and out of prison for various misdemeanours (breaking into chemists for speed, fighting, stealing, general idiocy) since his teens. The sheet of paper was obviously a list of his stays in various remand wings, prisons and police cells — maybe even the one I’d just cleaned.
And here was his son, the one he hardly knew, on the pay roll of the Redland nick.
Clearly, I was guilty as charged, whatever it was that I was actually being charged with.
“I’ll be keeping an eye on you.” he said, both a promise and threat.
Dazed, I went back to my cell.
Later, mopping the cell floor, the Superintendent popped his head around the reinforced door. All friendly, like. “History tends to repeat itself. You’d be advised to get used to the cells.”
Eighteen years later, I just found the perfect retort. “Unreservedly, you will atone for the sins of your fathers.” All I could come up then, though, was “shove it up your arse”. Although, of course, I waited until he was out of earshot.
It’s a shock to learn that simply sharing genes and surname was enough to get a jailer rattling his keys like a tambourine. I’d been condemned.
My father, who himself was fatherless, started adult life down the mines in Radstock. He was a Jack the lad; he dabbled in petty crime, went carousing and had a kid — a sister, whom I met first last year.
At the age of about 18 he discovered his talent for acting. After some heavy drinking, and a spot of affray, he went to Bristol Old Vic school; later there was some thieving and some proper acting (ironically, including a role in Z Cars). He had some more kids, became a jailbird, cider-house raconteur and alcoholic, leading to his current role: deceased.
Now with a CV like that you could, perhaps, see some reasoning behind the not-that-Super- intendent’s attitude that criminality is in the blood.
But I think I’m more qualified than him to argue that it’s nurture rather than nature that determines whether I clean a floor with the mop or I steal the mop and then strip it and sell it as parts.
Because, from an early age, I was raised by my stepfather. A patient, funny, honest, hard-working craftsman who, with my mum, provided a loving, safe, happy home for his five children and brought us up pretty much to be successful human beings.
My brother and I may have fallen by the wayside a few times, and I’ve even, I’m ashamed to say, spent a night in the cells much like the ones I used to clean, but he’s always been there, patiently putting us back on the right track.
When I have kids I want to be exactly like my stepfather. He’s my old man.
My biological father wasn’t. There’s a big difference.
He may have provided the sperm that developed into 50 per cent of me; he may have had a good reason for leaving my mother to cope with three small kids when he popped out “for some fags”; I may have forgiven him when we eventually met, bonded with him for a couple of years before I felt his hand lose its grip on a BRI ward, but I never once referred to him as my old man. Because he wasn’t.
All of the above I would have liked to have pointed out in the office of that pompous copper who acting above his station promoted himself to judge.
Instead, I have to be content with writing about it 18 years later. I still feel hurt by what he said, but then I figure maybe he was just projecting his own insecurities, wrapped up in a fancy uniform, on anyone lower he could find.
I blame the parents.
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