When the sixteen-year old Bill Jack applied to join Lanarkshire Constabulary in 1969, little did he realise he would be entering a world of outrageous and colourful characters, overseen by senior officers who had learnt management in the National Service of their youth. He found attitudes and practices, officially sanctioned and otherwise, which would be inconceivable in a modern police service.

This was a world of small local police forces, now almost forgotten, and he considers himself fortunate to have seen and been able to write about the end of an era where hardly anything had changed in living memory, and which ended a few short years later when these old forces were swept into history.

This is a hilarious though penetrating account of one boy's introduction to the world of policing at the end of that era and his journey of discovery from wide-eyed schoolboy to police constable.