Once again back to Stevenage Magistrates Court and this must have been 1996 or thereabouts. At the time there was an open air market which was in between the Probation Office and the Court. One day a week there was a market which proved very bountiful.
If Court finished later in the afternoon, the market traders will already have packed up and gone. They often left mounds of unsold produce, boxes and general rubbish in one spot, ready for he Council to come along and clear it up.
One day I spotted a tray of water melons and went over for a closer look. Now one or two were damaged with splits, the others looked perfectly fine. So I picked up as many as I could manage and staggered back to the office.
This became a regular event and after a while some of my colleagues started to notice. Oranges, potatoes, melons, parsnips and all kinds of other produce. They came to accept that’s what the newlywed officer did and the secretaries would have a chuckle. Sometimes I would even fill the Court brief case with oranges and other fruit (the briefcase was the communal “office” briefcase).
The really funny thing was when I was scavenging for food one day. You have to imagine I’m there, smartly dressed in a suit, with a nice shirt and tie with well polished shoes while rooting through the piles of rubbish. I found that I was joined by some others, scruffy and possibly homeless. I felt guilty about being in competition with them if they were homeless or destitute, so I walked away with nothing.
A few days later I was in Court again. Someone came up to me in the lobby and said
“here mate, you look just like a bloke I saw the other day, rummaging through all the market rubbish. Looked just like you….”
I had to confess it was me. He thought that was so funny, to see a well dressed man from the Court, scavenging for food!
The serious side of this is about not being too proud to have something for free. Many will have thought of this as being strange, weird etc. And yet 20+ years later we are in a society where food waste is an issue.
Perhaps I was even ahead of my time, just for once in my life!