Chapter 1 - The Briefing

 

My name is Jonathan Tavy. Now my wife has immediately rebuked me for my modesty. "Superintendent Jonathan Tavy," she says with some degree of insistence. She's always been very proud of my achievements in the Police-force. Actually it's Superintendent Jonathan Tavy Retired if I'm to be perfectly correct about these things. My wife says I'm too modest when it comes to my career, so she doesn't believe I was a bit of a big head when I was young boy growing up in the sixties in the West Country. I'd always wanted to be and knew I'd be a Policeman - a Detective. Never any doubt in my mind.

In those days people didn't have computers or mobile phones. Us kids didn't have play stations or the many other electrical gadgets available today. Nor was there multiple TV channels to choose from, on demand, 24 hours a day. We'd only two channels in black and white and there was little or nothing broadcast during the daytime. Watch With Mother which was on for about 15 minutes during the day was aimed at very young children. The likes of Picture Book, Andy Pandy, Bill and Ben, Rag, Tag and Bobtail or the Wooden Tops was hardly riveting entertainment for us older kids. Around tea time there were programmes on aimed for us older ones. I vaguely remember Johnny Quest which I quite liked and, if my memory serves me correctly, was a cartoon. I don't remember much detail now but I believe Johnny Quest had adventures so I probably liked it for this reason. Another programme I've vague recollections of was the Range Rider. As the title suggests it was a cowboy and the Range Rider's trusted younger companion was Dick West. I used to ride my bike and pretend I was Dick West riding a horse. Most of the time though I'd other things to do when programmes such as this were on so I didn't watch many at least not in the summer time. There was no means of recording programmes back then and catch up facilities weren't available either.

In the main we made our own entertainment and we used our imaginations. Sometimes we crossed the line with PC Plod who in those days either walked the streets or got about on his bicycle. He'd have to find a Police Telephone Box if he wanted to contact the station in an emergency or blow his whistle in the hope other officers would hear. Life then was a lot more basic than it is now and yet I wonder if I'd grown up in modern times whether I'd been so inspired as I was then. I wonder what a young Jonathan Tavy would have made of the internet? I think perhaps the sixties was the right time for me. There was an innocence; a certain mystique which existed for me then when perhaps it might be missing today. Who knows?

When I was growing up I had my own gang but not the sort who gets into scrapes with other gangs. No, I had my own little police-force - The Tavy Gang I called it. The Tavy Gang sort out crime even when there wasn't any. I remember getting it spectacularly wrong when I accused Mrs. Baker of burying human bodies in her back garden. Poor woman. She was merely burying her two cats who had both died of old age within a couple days of one another. Then there was the time when I convinced my dad who convinced the army there was a man spying on the barracks on the edge of Darnwall. I'd observed he was regularly cycling passed the barracks at slow speed and I reasoned he was using his bike as cover and was up to no good. One day the army stopped this man and questioned him. It turned out the man had just moved into the area and had to cycle pass the barracks to get to and from work. He explained he cycled slowly because he wasn't very fit and a slow speed was all he could manage. By cycling home for lunch each day he aimed to get fitter in the hope he could cycle a bit faster. Dad wasn't best pleased I'd wasted the army's time although the man was all right about it. Yet there were times when my intuition paid off and despite my successful career as a Policeman I look back on those times with the greatest satisfaction. Like Miss Maple or Poirot I had the knack of being in the right place at the right time or in the wrong place at the wrong time depending how you look at it. Yet it was Sherlock Holmes another fictional character who was the greatest influence on me. His arch enemy was Moriarty and mine was The Man With His Dog but more about him later. My father had been a high ranking police officer and had also been some kind of agent for the Home Office. He couldn't talk about this work and I never did learn what he actually did for the Government. Yet whilst I admired and looked up to him it was the fictional Sherlock Holmes I aspired to. I was fascinated by the way he used science to help solve his cases and I took a leaf out of his book by conducting my own experiments in my room. I was good at science always top of the class.

During the period of my youth, before I became a grown up, I enlisted a number of kids into The Tavy Gang but it was my trusted threesome I remember most fondly. My second in command was my lifelong friend Roland Bates. He was my Dr Watson, loyal to the core. Roley faithfully obeyed my orders throughout those times but as a grown-up he wisely opted for a career in catering and now runs his own restaurant. Roley was always fond of his food. Then there was my kid sister Betsy. Bets as an adult surprised us all by going to University and still enjoys a successful career in teaching. I still find it hard to get my head round this as I can vividly remember her forever mispronouncing words or spelling them incorrectly. As a young girl at school it took a long time before her potential was realised. Zoe Butler was first and foremost Bets' friend who unwittingly found herself in the gang. Zee was the fastest runner in the school, even faster than any of the boys. It was of no surprise to me after leaving school she became an athlete and has won a number of medals. Bonzo, Zip and Mickey were also, in theory, members of the gang but I don't recall them ever being that much involved. Most of the time they were either doing something else or their parents wouldn't let them out of the house. Bets has suggested they probably thought I was a bad influence and I'd get them into trouble. There's probably some truth to this but for me Bonzo, Zip and Mickey only bothered with The Tavy Gang when they'd nothing better to do. After leaving school I lost touch with them and the last I heard they were living in London.

Thinking back on those times I recall some of the adventures we got involved in. Oh, happy days!