My mind made up, I ‘put my ticket in’, which is police slang for submitting my resignation notice. Actually, resigning is only part of the process. I was required to submit no fewer than five different forms to ensure that my retirement goes smoothly and the well earned lump sum appeared in my bank account on the appointed day. The last form contained the chilling phrase:
‘Are you really sure you want to do this? By signing this you are invoking your karma and effectively setting the date of your death.’
Pushing aside all thoughts of my early demise, I signed it anyway and began to plan my future.
My last day as a police officer would be Wednesday 29th July, 2010. Thirty years to the day since I proudly put on my uniform for the first time as a fresh faced 21 year old sporting a very nice moustache. With the days of annual leave I have left and so called ‘Reward Leave’ (extra days leave given each year as a reward for not going off sick) I was able to bring my last day in that same uniform forward to Friday 3rd of July. The die was cast.
By this time I had a pretty good idea of what I want to do with my gap year and I gave my credit card a good bashing on the internet travel and airline sites.
Not wishing to waste time I decided to embark on my first trip the day after leaving work. I had never been to Italy so I booked flights to Pisa with a view to seeing Tuscany. As an added twist I arranged to stay in a hotel run by Buddhists in a small town called Montecatini. I reckoned on 9 days being enough for me to chill out and acclimatise to life beyond work.
Allowing for a few days at home I followed this trip by renting a cottage on the edge of the English Lake District village of Grasmere, in the hope that I could entice all three of my children to join me at some point during the week.
Allowing for another couple of weeks at home, I then booked a much more challenging break by arranging for my youngest son and me to travel to Turkey for a week’s activity holiday.
I was on a roll and decided to go for the big one. I booked myself onto a guided two week tour through East Africa in mid September, beginning in Kenya, travelling north to Uganda and ending in Rwanda. Had it not been for the kind people of the Police Federation who negotiated on my behalf for an increased lump sum when I retired, my plans would end there.
As it was I had enough time and resources to go for one more epic trip before the year was out. I booked flights to Hong Kong in November and arranged to stay there for a couple of days before heading south to Vietnam where I would join another guided tour in Hanoi and journey south to Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon as it is still commonly known.
I had a tentative plan to visit Australia and New Zealand in the New Year, but I decided that I have done enough credit card bashing for the time being.
My choices of destinations were not random. Each trip represented something special to me, from time with my children to seeking out the Big 5 on the Maasai Mara. My gap year wasn’t going to be about visiting places across the planet and looking at them. It was about experiencing all those places have to offer.
One thing I learned from all those tedious meetings I attended as a Chief Inspector was the importance of strategic and tactical planning. Most large organisations these days set themselves aspirational goals or create mission statements. Every police force has its own set of goals, usually four or five of them. If you were to compare the goals of each of the 43 police forces in England and Wales you would see that they are amazingly similar. There is a good reason for this. Although the Police Service is apolitical it is ruled by the government of the day who set the agenda for all police forces and measure success or failure by means of performance targets. This is a great way to waste taxpayers money on endless meetings and inspections. And all so the ruling party can tell you come election time that under their tenure they have cut reported crime by X%, or put Y number of police officers back on the streets. And when you read those statements don’t forget that they are based on data supplied by people like me. Yes, me! You can’t have read this far without realising that I can be prone to embroider the truth now and again. I never went to a meeting with Home Office officials without first visiting the stores for a large supply of smoke and several mirrors.
Casting cynicism aside for a minute, the process is not all bad. Having been set their targets and defined their goals, chief police officers then create a strategy in order to achieve them. Typically, this will require allocating resources to the so called ‘Three Pillars of Policing’ – incident response, crime investigation and neighbourhood policing. What underpins the strategy are the tactics used to carry it out. This is the work done by the police staff at the sharp end to ensure that you and I can live our lives in safety and receive a good service (or not).
The hours I have spent locked in mind numbing meetings had not been a total waste of time as I realised that I could apply the principles I had learned to help me gain the most from my gap year experience. I even decided to hold monthly staff appraisal meetings with myself to check on my progress.
After one or two coats of thinking about it I came up with my Middle Aged Gapper Mission Statement, my strategy and a list of 20 tactical goals to be achieved during my year. Here they are:
Mission Statement
To travel extensively, taking on challenges and meeting people that stimulate my mental, physical, emotional and spiritual growth.
Strategy
To visit at least 10 countries that I have not visited previously.
Tactical Goals
1. See the Big 7 safari animals in the wild
2. Appear on TV
3. Take an epic train journey
4. Go white water rafting
5. Catch a big fish
6. Watch the sun rise at Uluru
7. Take a dip in a hot spring
8. Climb a glacier
9. Swim with dolphins
10. Get a Maori tattoo
11. Go paragliding
12. Photograph a whale
13. Climb Sydney Harbour Bridge
14. Fly in a hot air balloon over the Maasai Mara
15. Photograph Wainwright with a celebrity
16. Take a Turkish bath
17. See the Northern Lights
18. Come face to face with mountain gorillas
19. Visit a Buddhist temple
20. Run a half marathon in under 2 hours
‘Are you really sure you want to do this? By signing this you are invoking your karma and effectively setting the date of your death.’
Pushing aside all thoughts of my early demise, I signed it anyway and began to plan my future.
My last day as a police officer would be Wednesday 29th July, 2010. Thirty years to the day since I proudly put on my uniform for the first time as a fresh faced 21 year old sporting a very nice moustache. With the days of annual leave I have left and so called ‘Reward Leave’ (extra days leave given each year as a reward for not going off sick) I was able to bring my last day in that same uniform forward to Friday 3rd of July. The die was cast.
By this time I had a pretty good idea of what I want to do with my gap year and I gave my credit card a good bashing on the internet travel and airline sites.
Not wishing to waste time I decided to embark on my first trip the day after leaving work. I had never been to Italy so I booked flights to Pisa with a view to seeing Tuscany. As an added twist I arranged to stay in a hotel run by Buddhists in a small town called Montecatini. I reckoned on 9 days being enough for me to chill out and acclimatise to life beyond work.
Allowing for a few days at home I followed this trip by renting a cottage on the edge of the English Lake District village of Grasmere, in the hope that I could entice all three of my children to join me at some point during the week.
Allowing for another couple of weeks at home, I then booked a much more challenging break by arranging for my youngest son and me to travel to Turkey for a week’s activity holiday.
I was on a roll and decided to go for the big one. I booked myself onto a guided two week tour through East Africa in mid September, beginning in Kenya, travelling north to Uganda and ending in Rwanda. Had it not been for the kind people of the Police Federation who negotiated on my behalf for an increased lump sum when I retired, my plans would end there.
As it was I had enough time and resources to go for one more epic trip before the year was out. I booked flights to Hong Kong in November and arranged to stay there for a couple of days before heading south to Vietnam where I would join another guided tour in Hanoi and journey south to Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon as it is still commonly known.
I had a tentative plan to visit Australia and New Zealand in the New Year, but I decided that I have done enough credit card bashing for the time being.
My choices of destinations were not random. Each trip represented something special to me, from time with my children to seeking out the Big 5 on the Maasai Mara. My gap year wasn’t going to be about visiting places across the planet and looking at them. It was about experiencing all those places have to offer.
One thing I learned from all those tedious meetings I attended as a Chief Inspector was the importance of strategic and tactical planning. Most large organisations these days set themselves aspirational goals or create mission statements. Every police force has its own set of goals, usually four or five of them. If you were to compare the goals of each of the 43 police forces in England and Wales you would see that they are amazingly similar. There is a good reason for this. Although the Police Service is apolitical it is ruled by the government of the day who set the agenda for all police forces and measure success or failure by means of performance targets. This is a great way to waste taxpayers money on endless meetings and inspections. And all so the ruling party can tell you come election time that under their tenure they have cut reported crime by X%, or put Y number of police officers back on the streets. And when you read those statements don’t forget that they are based on data supplied by people like me. Yes, me! You can’t have read this far without realising that I can be prone to embroider the truth now and again. I never went to a meeting with Home Office officials without first visiting the stores for a large supply of smoke and several mirrors.
Casting cynicism aside for a minute, the process is not all bad. Having been set their targets and defined their goals, chief police officers then create a strategy in order to achieve them. Typically, this will require allocating resources to the so called ‘Three Pillars of Policing’ – incident response, crime investigation and neighbourhood policing. What underpins the strategy are the tactics used to carry it out. This is the work done by the police staff at the sharp end to ensure that you and I can live our lives in safety and receive a good service (or not).
The hours I have spent locked in mind numbing meetings had not been a total waste of time as I realised that I could apply the principles I had learned to help me gain the most from my gap year experience. I even decided to hold monthly staff appraisal meetings with myself to check on my progress.
After one or two coats of thinking about it I came up with my Middle Aged Gapper Mission Statement, my strategy and a list of 20 tactical goals to be achieved during my year. Here they are:
Mission Statement
To travel extensively, taking on challenges and meeting people that stimulate my mental, physical, emotional and spiritual growth.
Strategy
To visit at least 10 countries that I have not visited previously.
Tactical Goals
1. See the Big 7 safari animals in the wild
2. Appear on TV
3. Take an epic train journey
4. Go white water rafting
5. Catch a big fish
6. Watch the sun rise at Uluru
7. Take a dip in a hot spring
8. Climb a glacier
9. Swim with dolphins
10. Get a Maori tattoo
11. Go paragliding
12. Photograph a whale
13. Climb Sydney Harbour Bridge
14. Fly in a hot air balloon over the Maasai Mara
15. Photograph Wainwright with a celebrity
16. Take a Turkish bath
17. See the Northern Lights
18. Come face to face with mountain gorillas
19. Visit a Buddhist temple
20. Run a half marathon in under 2 hours
Next time - advice on parachuting.
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