Now a very long time ago, upon seeing ECILOP in very large letters showing in the offside mirror of my AJS 350 cc motorcycle and thus drawing my attention to the police car disconcertingly close behind me momentarily threw me for a loop. Was the then seventeen year old that was me loosing it? Late for work as usual, I was doing 50 plus mph in a 30 mph zone en-route to Glaxo Laboratories where I worked as a laboratory assistant in Ulverston Lancashire.* (Now Cumbria). A certain well known all be it rather disliked local police officer constable Bellamy was about to pull me over and hand me a speeding ticket, my first ticket ever for speeding or otherwise committing a traffic offence. He gave me a quick lecture and the ticket. Fair enough. Guilty as charged. The fine for speeding was five pounds; more than the three pounds seventeen shillings a week I then earned at Glaxo Laboratories (Now GlaxoSmithKline or GSK) then as now a pharmaceuticals company. Sadly, the GSK Ulverston plant is currently in the process of being demolished along obviously with the many concomitant jobs. C’est la vie.
I was about two years out of high school having been hired as a laboratory technician, first in 1959 at British Cellophane locally (Barrow-in-Furness, Lancashire) and a year later the job being much more to my liking along also with a higher salary, at Glaxo’s facility in Ulverston, an eight mile road trip from home. Constable Bellamy it turned out had, days before my misdemeanor, handed a Glaxo employee friend of mine a ticket for being found on a street in Ulverston * around midnight get this: ‘drunk in charge of a bicycle!’ I am not making this up and yes he was fined. It was the eve of his wedding. Some of his close friends had held a stag party for him. For reasons unknown, likely because there was very little of public interest worth printing happening locally at the time, both his and my encounter with constable Bellamy were publicized in the local newspaper complete with our names the revelations bringing us somewhat comedic publicity within Glaxo.
I received my second highway police pull over ticket, yes second, about a week ago these sixty plus years later. This time ECILOP presenting in the interior mirror of my BMW Z4 sports car having some years ago moved on from motorcycles (sort of) and for that matter from the United Kingdom in favour of Vancouver, Canada. It was alleged that I was driving without auto insurance. This apparently detected by a West Vancouver policeman following my car to the point of incipient tailgating. His cruiser I was soon to discover, was equipped with a camera based electronic instrument enabling him on taking aim at, with clearly what must be the latest and greatest such technology, any BC number plate and henceforth to immediately reveal the vehicle’s current insurance status. The ‘times they are a changing’ big time I would say. However, the chances of me knowingly driving without insurance were, are and always will be zero.
In its ‘wisdom’, our British Columbia provincial government it turns out arranged, contrived and arguably conspired, to make it easier for law abiding citizens more readily, unwittingly and unfortunately blissfully unknowingly, to drive without insurance. (NB: Our auto insurance is entirely provincial government run.) How did they do this? To my knowledge nobody told us that going forward, on renewing our insurance we no longer were to receive rear number plate annual expiry date reminder stickers or to receive renewal notices in the mail. (It is just possible there was one in the mail which went astray but I doubt it). A cool way for our provincial government to make a few extra bucks via fines if ever there was one. Thus by such action we BC residents have become targets for electronic gadgetry seemingly with the specific aim of collecting fines money from us. No doubt along with myriad others, I was unknowingly trapped into the likelihood of breaking the law. Adding insult to injury and very uncharacteristically, I did not receive a renewal notice in the mail from my insurance broker. Were they remiss? Or perhaps their annual renewal letter to me also happened to get lost in the mail? I do not know nor do I care.
Since leaving high school in 1958 I have driven, flown, rowed, paddled, ridden or otherwise operated, guided and safely controlled: sedan cars, sports cars, (As stated, I was driving my mint and beloved 2003 BMW Z4 when the recent incident occurred) trucks, motorcycles, campers, scooters, airplanes (I part owned a light aircraft an Aeronca Champ) gliders, kayaks, canoes, row boats, bicycles, chain saws, horses, sailboats, scuba gear, skis, ice skates, roller skates, etc, etc ad infinitum. This all without any kind of accident or insurance claim. OK I lied about operating chain saws. Too dangerous for me. I would never use one. A friend of mine came within a smidgeon of blinding himself with one. Instead he just tore open his forehead less than an inch above his eyes. Think about it. Do not under any circumstances whatsoever hold and operate a chainsaw close to your head, least of all your eyes, even if unlike my friend, you are wisely wearing protective goggles.
Getting back to Glaxo and my speeding misdemeanor, I was very surprised at how many employees there far from criticizing, rather praised both me and my drunken cycling friend for earning the publicity and hitting the local newspaper’s ‘headlines’ so to speak. Such was about par for life’s highlights in small town north of England, Lancashire in the late 1950s. Not that there was anything amiss with that. A person could do a lot worse. The next day my friend made it to his wedding sober as a judge and on time and I made it to work albeit later even than usual. I eventually payed the five pound fine for my speeding ticket, a fortune to the likes of me in those working class not so salad days.** That said, Glaxo was a very fair, appreciative and compared to many, well paying employer.*** To this day I rate them, with one exception, as the best employer I ever had out of a total of nine business entities for whom I worked during a fifty plus years working career. My best and by far my most lucrative employer? It was the last one, B.H. Devonald & Associates, manufactures’ representatives. If you can make self employment work for you go for it! Need to have some some printed circuit board designs manufactured? Or perhaps you might be interested in some internationally specified, top of the line AC and/or DC power connections hardware from US based Interpower? (www.interpower.com). Just let me know!
* The small town is of Laurel and Hardy silent movies fame. Stan Laurel was from Ulverston leaving when he was quite young and making it big in Hollywood with of course Oliver Hardy. Quite the stretch for a Brit in the early nineteen hundreds. Laurel and Hardy were of course a motion picture comedy team whose official filmography consists of 106 films released between 1921 and 1951. They appeared in 34 silent shorts, 45 sound shorts, and 27 full length sound feature films. Like myriad others, I always enjoyed their movies.
** Salad days is a Shakespearian idiom referring to a period of carefree innocence, idealism and pleasure associated with youth. Modern use describes a heyday, when a person is at the peak of their abilities, while not necessarily a youth.
*** Eight years later, during an unanticipated short term return to living in Barrow, I was to work for Glaxo, Ulverston again for about eight months immediately prior to emigrating to Canada. Same job much better pay, same mix of great to work with colleagues. (Most of them the same colleagues from my previous Glaxo sojourn years earlier!)
POST SCRIPT.
The local police officer who pulled me over for being uninsured albeit unwittingly so, turned out to be so to speak, a ‘good cop’s good cop’. He and I got along famously. Not that I could be a cop. (A miniature variety it would have to be.) For sure he knew he wasn’t talking to someone who would even dream of knowingly not having auto insurance. He fined me the minimal amount he could. Perhaps our provincial government will go back to sending rear number plate stick on reminders of the expiry date but I doubt it.
Do please open and read the included letter below which I sent to the police officer’s superior. (No names are shown). I very much appreciated the officer’s very professional and common sense centric approach and commended him to his superiors to the Nth degree. He deserved it and then some.
See Letter to the West Vancouver Police Department re no insurance
NB: i.e. Nota Bene. Not Written by ChatGPT but by Barry H. Devonald.
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