# Pc. Jack Roper.



## Cpt Dick Brooks (May 13, 2013)

I was in my first year as a probationary constable, just after returning to Ipswich from the No.5 District Police Training College at Einsham Hall, in Oxfordshire. Only nineteen years of age, I was a rookie, and was accompanied everywhere I went on my beat by a senior constable to guide my way into the job.
I was being shown around the Gainsborough and Greenwich housing estates by an old timer... Pc. Jack Roper. He was in his last two years of service before retirement, after completing his thirty years as a police constable in the Ipswich Police Force... after completing his National Service.
Pc. Jack Roper was from the old school, and would have easily fitted in the Dixon of Dock Green television drama. My generation of constable were of the Heartbeat period, set in the mid 1960's... even with the same uniforms as were in the television programme.
We were still a couple of years before Heartbeat, even, as there were only two elderly portable radios that wouldn't have looked out of place in a World War Two movie. There was only an east and west area patrol car at the time... of the early 1960's Austin Westminster type of vehicle, and the black Bedford van affectionally nicknamed 'The Meat Wagon' because of its violent, drunken cargos on a Friday and Saturday night of revelry. Personal radios and Panda Cars hadn't been invented yet.
Pc. Jack Roper and I were walking along a footpath on The Lairs, pushing our trusty double cross-bar Raleigh police bicycles beside us. This was wild, open parkland, covered in brambles and sloping down to the for-shore of the River Orwell Estuary. Sucking on his old blackened pipe, he pointed to a narrow opening in the brushes with the stem... the bowl clutched in the palm of his right hand.
"You see that pathway, Brookie?" he said to me. "It leads to a bit of a clearing in the brambles. Well," he sucked on his pipe again before blowing out the smoke in a long stream. "I was walking over The Lairs, one warm summer's evening... a bit like it is today... but later in the evening. I thought I heard a noise in there, so hid my bike in the bushes and snuck along the path with my head down for a looksee." He grinned at me for a moment.
"Well, Brookie, I couldn't believe my luck! There was this young couple, kissing and cuddling and generally mucking about on a patch of grass in the bushes," he laughed. "I ducked down to make myself more comfortable and watched. He took her top and bra off, and started kissing and caressing her breasts... and a nice pair she had, I might tell you! When he had a mouthful of her nipple he reached down between her legs and started fondling her underneath her panties."
He chuckled to himself for a moment as the memory of the occasion came flooding back to him. "I tell you, Brookie, I was getting a bona myself, just watching them! I undid my flies and made myself a little more comfortable as I watched them. He got her stripped off," he continued. "Then started to go for it. She couldn't have been much more than fourteen or fifteen years old at most... and he wasn't much older himself... but she had a nice pare of Bristols on her, though."
He looked at me and guffawed. "She was a lovely little thing. I wouldn't have minded having a go on her myself. I don't think my missus ever looked as gorgeous as she did that evening... even when we were courting as teenagers!
"Well, Brookie, I watched them until the boy finished, and they both had a song together... then they got dressed and walked out of the bushes hand in hand. I'd been so close that I could even taste her in the air from where I knelt in the bushes."
He snickered at the thought. "I let go myself, right there and then! After buttoning myself up, I stood up ready to leave. Well, I'll be!" he laughed. "Four other guys also stood up around the clearing, getting themselves together. We nodded to each other, and I said goodnight and we left on our way."
He looked at me and chuckled at the fond memory of the occasion. "I've been here dozens of times since... hoping for a repeat performance... but no such luck. Never mind, Brookie, it might be your turn to watch a rub-out one day. Just duck down out of the way and enjoy yourself... just like I did myself." All the best, Cpt Dick Brooks.


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