Free Life on the Run by Stan Eldon Page A

the Market Place in the centre of the town and the local bowls club, a short distance behind it. I had to make enquiries at one of these cottages, and I never forgot the scene that greeted me. A place with hardly any furniture and very young children on the bare floors eating crusts of dried bread, taken from the floor, which they had also used as their toilet over a period of time. I did report it and something was done to help those poor children. I just hope they eventually grew up into a better life.
    Night duty in Wokingham was very interesting, as the town had some strange acoustics. If I was in the town centre sitting on my dustbin behind the town hall, a favourite resting place for me when on night duty, I could hear men speaking to each other quite clearly at the Explorator Fish Depot, over half a mile away.
    I had a very good police superintendent at Wokingham, and he and all the staff there were very helpful to me as I progressed my running. After I won my first Police Athletic Association Cross-Country Championship, they presented me with a special certificate, that had been designed and painted by a patient at Broadmoor, and a pair of red Adidas running spikes. I never did know who the special painted certificate was by, but I was told he was a mass murderer. I still have and treasure that special presentation.
    The CND marches from Aldermaston were taking place during my time in the police. They were at Easter weekends and normally passed through our territory on Good Friday. I was on escort duty with the march on a few occasions, and enjoyed my walk with them, even though I was in uniform and on the ‘other’ side. It was always good natured and trouble free.
    My police duties were mixed and various. In February 1958, I was working for a short while with CID at Wokingham, and used to run the seven miles from my home in Reading to work and back again. The fourteen miles a day was a good way to keep up my training while working for six days a week. It was while on CID duty at Wokingham, when I heard the devastating news about the Munich air crash of the Manchester United Busby Babes.
    During my time both at Woodley and Wokingham, I did have to deal with quite a few sudden deaths of one sort or another, and was ‘Coroner’s Officer’ on a number of cases. This required my attendance at postmortems, which I never had any difficulty with. In fact I was fascinated by the work of pathologists and often used to act as assistant to them. The difficult part of this work was dealing with relatives, especially when one was the first bearer of the bad news about the death of a relative or loved one.
    Other more mundane duties could be the Christmas turkey patrols. Keeping an eye on anywhere that turkeys were being raised for the Christmas trade. This also included a watch on growing Christmas trees, and on the sports clubs who had a bar, to make sure no one broke in for some easy booze. We also did a lot of farm inspections and supervision.
    Throughout the year there could be other observation duties, which included spending all night under hedges in front gardens trying to catch a persistent burglar, whose wife later worked for me as a secretary, and laying in wait close to a pigsty trying to catch ‘criminals’ stealing pig food. I wonder if even a country bobby today would get caught up in this small type of crime.
    Police work was never without unusual and funny instances. When people went on holiday, they asked for their house to go on the unattended house list, so that the patrolling officers could look in during the night and make sure the property was secure with no unwanted visitors. Customers used to tell us when they were going and when they were due to return, but they were not very good at informing us if they returned from holiday a day or two early. On more than one occasion I checked a house and found a door unlocked. Quietly and gently I would creep into the house, truncheon at