© Jeff Dyson  - November 2006

Following a package holiday to Majorca, we decided that the best way forward was to start camping. I obtained a bank loan and in an ‘end of season sale’ set ourselves up with a frame tent, trailer and complete camping equipment. This lasted for many years, until the children left home and we had many enjoyable holidays and weekends away.  The trailer was dragged all over the place, all parts of the UK and most areas of France and on one occasion down into Spain. We joined the West Sussex Camping Club and most available weekends we camped with them and the children formed many good friendships and we had a most enjoyable time

I continued to work at Brighton until 1978 when I promoted to Uniform Patrol Inspector at East Grinstead. I had to check a map to find out where it was! This was a culture shock I had been out of uniform many years, and my children had never seen me in uniform. At least I was spared the ‘three shift system’ we three Divisional Inspectors had only to provide a 16 hour cover. With one on leave the others covered either 7 - 3, 3 -11, and 2am at weekends, or until the town had gone to bed after the clubs had turned out. The late Inspector remained on call until the next morning. My sleep was rarely disturbed

After a while I stood in for the Detective Inspector at East Grinstead whilst he was on a secondment, working a large area of rural Sussex including Uckfield and Crowborough. This lasted about 18 months when the secondment came to an abrupt end. It was during this time I again met the man I fell out the wardrobe to arrest, this time he having committed a burglary on Ashdown Forest