Dark Matter…

A Drain On Society?

I originally wrote this on one of my substack profiles, this is part of an ongoing autobiographical FREE newsletter. The original is HERE if you prefer to go there!

Life as a Security Officer at “The Cenner” was, to say the least, colourful.

As you may imagine, shop theft and brawls were frequent and attempted break-ins on external retail units littered themselves across the nightshifts.

Coming off day shifts generally meant dropping into the Shopping Centres built in pub “The Fordyke” where we would often see known thieves plying their wares to customers. The traded items, back then, were swathes of bacon and slabs of butter, deftly transacted from within a coat lining to the cash buyer. These items, once sold, gave the criminals their “housekeeping money”…well mostly either alcohol or drug money.

The money was better than the news trade but even with a structured shift pattern, it starts to wear on you.

As it happened I became well-liked by the Centre Manager. I think part of this came from my positive interaction with the team, the retailers and the security dogs. The Centre Manager loved the dogs and had one of them as a family pet, Shane…Shane had retired from security work and resided in the Centre Manager’s living quarters.