I won't be hanging out the flags but I might have a small libation (what an interesting word that is) this evening.
For well over 17,000 of those days I have kept a diary. So I thought it would be fun (well fun for me but probably not so much fun for you) to pick a random date from the past 48 years of diary writing. So I opened up a random number generator to pick a date (yes at random).
It was an interesting mathematical exercise. Firstly I generated a number between 1973 when I started the diary and 2021. Then I generated a number between one and 12 to establish the month and then a number between one and 31 to get a date and the date I came up with equated to: April 25th, 1995, which incidentally was diary entry number 8,168 (I have told you more than once that I am a real anorak).
So for what it's worth here is my complete diary entry for that day.
"Another in a long line of days - culminating with an emergency exercise at Norwich Airport (1). Had a pretty restless night and felt rather tired when I got up, but not too bad. Had breakfast and got ready and left for work at 8 am. Put together the overnight messages on Voicebank (2) and then went to the daily CID meeting (3) before spending the morning sorting things out and answering calls from the Media. At midday I did a television interview with the BBC about illegal immigration where I was helped by Inspector Gwyn Jenson who is a delight to work with. Went to the canteen for lunch and then returned to the office and worked through until about 3 pm when I decided to have a break and do some work for the school PTA (4) as I was working in the evening.
Drove into Norwich and parked in Bonds (5) and went to the post office to post a parcel. Then went to Eastern Counties Newspapers (6) to sort out an advert for the PTA. Got some petrol and drove home for a break. Had some tea and a rest and at 5.45 pm drove back to work to prepare for the exercise. Met up with Sergeant Neil Ferguson and Inspector Chris Warren there and we drove in convoy to the airport. The idea was to test our Media plan and to be put under pressure by Media people but this just didn't happen, although I did learn how to use the mobile phone (7). The exercise was scheduled to last until 11 pm but was over by 9 pm. I drove back to police headquarters to help unload equipment and then went home and printed out my football training notes for Thursday (8). Watched some snooker on television (9) before going to bed."
Reading through this I felt some notes of explanation are called for which do help to explain my life at that time and are probably more insightful than the actual text.
(1) - I was at this time Head of Press and Public Relations for Norfolk Constabulary whose Headquarters were part of the Norfolk County Council complex in Martineau Lane, Norwich, and not in Wymondham where HQ moved a few years later. My job was to answer questions from the Media, facilitate interviews and promote the police in any way I could. Also part of our function was to run press set-ups at various emergency exercises.
(2) - Voicebank was a recorded message system on which we put details of overnight crimes and other matters for the Media. We updated this throughout the day as things happened. The Media were suspicious when we introduced this, believing we were taking away personal contact with them and hiding behind a recorded message. This just wasn't true. In any one day we could receive hundreds of calls from the Media and only had two lines into the press office. This meant when things were busy, journalists could be held in a queue for some time. The idea of Voicebank was to give the Media instant access to basic details to save us having to go through them time after time after time.
(3) - Every morning various heads of departments met in the office of the Head of CID (Criminal Investigation Department) to go through what was happening in the county.
(4) - This would have been Hethersett Middle School (now Hethersett Primary) of which I was PTA vice-chair. This could have had some connection with our annual fete which took place in May each year.
(5) - Now John Lewis.
(6) - Now Archant
(7) - Today this seems to be a ridiculous thing to mention but back then mobile phones were a new innovation. I think mine was the size of a brick. The first one I had was the size of about three bricks and had to be jammed onto a huge battery pack that had to be recharged every two hours. This all took some getting used to.
(8) - At this time I managed and coached youth football teams and was chairman of Hethersett Athletic FC. We played on Sundays and trained at what was then Hethersett Old Hall School on Thursday evenings and I wrote weekly training notes to give out with the team selection for the following Sunday. I think I still have these somewhere but won't bore you with them. There is a certain irony about the fact that Old Hall School is now a police training complex.
(9) - This would have been the semi-finals of the Snooker World Championships in Sheffield. In those semi-finals Stephen Hendry beat Ronnie O'Sullivan and Jimmy White beat John Parrott. Hendry went on to beat White in the final. I was surprised to learn that Ronnie O'Sullivan was playing top class snooker 25 years ago.
Well it's surprising what can come out of just recording one day in my life. I will do this again sometime in the future. Generating the random date made me think about the ludicrous way America decided the recruiting system for who should fight in Vietnam.
Apparently they generated a date at random and anyone celebrating a birthday on that particular day and under a certain age would be sent call up papers. That must have been the equivalent of playing Russian Roulette. They picked out each of the 366 days (including leap year day February 29th) and assigned them a number according to when the date was picked out. Now this was the lottery you didn't want to be picked for. Apparently the chances of the first 120 being called up were very good, the next 120 could rest a little easier but could still get called. The final third were unlikely to be called. I would have been old enough in 1969 to have been called up but my birthday was assigned the number 342, so I would have been reasonably safe.
It would have been an horrendous feeling to have had a good friend have his birthday drawn in the first 50.
What a horrid way to help somebody celebrate a birthday and of course the people picking the draft lottery all looked very ancient - the elderly condemning the young to death.
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Just a question (without a comment). If the Government agrees to allow vigils/demonstrations whilst we are still observing lockdown rules, how on earth do they expect people to keep to the social distancing rules?
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Finally yesterday I mention pingling and being a pingler. It's a simple word about somebody who eats only small amounts or, often in the case of young people who haven't yet found the delights of McDonalds (me being ironic there), refuse to eat or pushes their food around.
As one of my readers pointed out "it's the opposite of wolfing something down." I don't think I was ever a pingler.