IT was my first parade as a new recruit in the city police. The station sergeant took a telephone call and said: "Go to the ladies' toilets in Angel Place, a woman's started having a baby, and you can take 'him' with you", pointing to me!

Nobody even knew my name but I didn't care. This is what I had joined to do, get stuck in and help the public.

I shot off the parade and was half way up the corridor when the old Bobby shouted: "Hoy, where you going in such a hurry, come back here and tell me your name and are you married?"

"My name's Joe and I haven't met Miss Right yet." "Well follow me, Joe, and if the woman asks you, you are married with a couple of nippers, do you understand?"

Eventually we got to Angel Place just in time to wave the ambulance goodbye. I always called it masterful inactivity!

I found it difficult to slow down, being only 20 and full of the joys of spring, and I often got into scrapes with my seniors.

One morning, I was called into the sergeant's office and one of the sergeants said: "My wife saw you going through Sidbury like a bat out of hell on your bike. She said you overtook a line of moving traffic!"

I tried to explain that as the lead vehicle was a tractor, whose driver thought he was ploughing up Sidbury, it was him who was going so slow.

As a masterstroke I concluded: "Anyway I was belting along trying to get to a '999' call".

"Never mind that, I don't want to hear about you racing about again". You just can't win.

JOE WALTER,

Worcester.