Inspector Ramsay
Last week, I talked about Miss Riddell, today I'm introducing Inspector Ramsay.
Inspector Ramsay is a blend of me, my father and all my four, uncommunicative uncles when growing up. Good men all, but not given to wild displays of any emotion.
I used to say we lived in a ‘depressed region’ (as the phrase was back then) because the people who lived there were depressed. I still think I’m right. Having said that, they were kind, considerate and would do whatever they could to help others including, to their mind, strange sons and nephews like me.
Most of my uncles had served in the war or had been in reserved occupations, primarily coalmining and upland farming, none of which had led them to have a cheery disposition. In the mines, it was dark, dusty and hot. The hilltops were wet, windswept, and cold. Still, their example provided me with all the evidence I needed to find a different career. I went off to become an engineer -- the first on either side of my family to go to university. I soon found I wasn’t alone in that. Many of my university colleagues were ‘first in the family’ students.
It’s hard now to remember a time when only around 1 percent of people attended university and how that all changed from the 1960s and on. Inspector Ramsay, perhaps fortunately, never meets the folks like me coming to take his place.
