Nearly 11 years since retiring from Sussex Police, there are two very specific and private moments which stick vividly in my memory, writes columnist Graham Bartlett. While I didn’t realise it at the time, they bookended my career in the most symbolic way.

The first was 41 years ago yesterday when, having been issued with my shiny new uniform and kit (including a cape, I kid you not) I struggled to fix my police constable epaulettes – or shoulder numbers – to my shirt. My unfamiliarity with the buttoning mechanisms and the fact they were fresh and stiff out of the box might have been the reason but at the time I wondered whether this was a sign I was not yet ready to wear the uniform I craved.

Fast forward 30 years, alone in my office at the end of my last working day, I unbuttoned a very different set of epaulettes – these ones denoting that I was a chief superintendent – with worrying ease. Removing them felt poignant and, while the simplicity of the operation this time was clearly down to them being well-worn, I took it as a metaphor that I was ready to leave and hand the baton on.

This small part of donning and removing my uniform, something I repeated countless times over the intervening years, was that both imbued mild anxiety. On both occasions I worried about what on earth lay ahead for me and whether I had made the right decision.

I had an incredible career and while it would be a stretch to say I enjoyed every second – policing isn’t like that – I fitted in and the profession infused my blood. At my exit, I naively thought that my body would somehow jettison its ‘Old Bill’ genes and I would become something different. That was so acute I thought my whole identity had disappeared along with my warrant card.

Now people don’t tend to remain in one profession for so long, I wonder if it’s the same but you can take the boy out of the police but you can’t take the police out of the boy. Some former colleagues might disagree, but rather than entering my new world as a “clean skin” my former job, rank and identity continues to shape all aspects of my life.

Shortly after retirement, I worked extensively in safeguarding, then became a true crime and fiction author, and a police and crime adviser for other writers and TV makers. I now contribute to crime documentaries and even write this column of course called ‘Bartlett on the Beat.’ Everything I do professionally links back to having been a cop. Even my crime novels centre on the Brighton and Hove divisional commander. Well, they do say write what you know.

It goes further than that. If only I have a pound every time someone has called me from their car, opening the conversation with “I’m hands free, just in case you were going to nick me”, or regale some story of a friend (it’s always a friend) who has committed a minor transgression, then to say, “perhaps I shouldn’t tell you that.” If the police don’t turn up to a call or are less than polite, the look in the person’s eyes tells me they see that as my fault. I’m even introduced as “the former police commander for Brighton and Hove”, despite there have been many since. Like me, my friends, family and colleagues see the thin blue line running through me even though in real terms it’s been gone for more than a decade.

I wonder whether other professions are like this? Are ex-train drivers blamed for delays? Do former road-layers feel guilty about pot holes and are retired actors maligned for the quality of contemporary TV drama?

I’ve never worked for the police since I retired but I am still shaped by my career and, in case you were wondering, I see that as a good thing. I loved my time in the police, and I am grateful that it is still in my system; I wouldn’t have it any other way. But I’m also a husband, father of triplets and a one man DIY disaster area. I’m not complaining but just wonder why our work defines us so, when we are all much more than our jobs.

Former Brighton and Hove police chief Graham Bartlett’s Jo Howe crime novel series continues with City on Fire, out on 21st March 2024