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Have you ever wondered if there is a heaven and a hell, and if so, what they may be like? Perhaps you think you know. For the next few moments I ask you to bear with me, while I share with you a learning-point from my past.
First, though, you need a little bit of background. When I was six years old my mother died, and when I was nine years old the remnant of the Choldcroft household (my father, my brother and myself - Oh, and the cat) moved from our home on the Norfolk coast to Stevenage, a rapidly expanding new town in Hertfordshire.
I found myself transplanted from a village primary school of some 35 pupils and three staff (one of whom was my father) to a bustling school of over 350. Suddenly lost in the crowd, I had to come to terms with a whole new language and culture, with things called ‘prefects’ and ‘houses’, and three classes in each year group. I quickly found my true station as I plummeted from the A stream (I had been top of everything amongst my dozen or so peers in Norfolk), baffled by lessons where they literally spoke a foreign language (French)!
One morning I arrived at school to be confronted by the school caretaker. He spent the best part of an hour going through a ‘good cop’ routine with me, trying to persuade me to confess to the neglectful (if not wilful) damage of an alarm clock in one of the classrooms the night before. I was the last known person to go into the room that day, to close the windows. This, coupled with the knowledge I had not reported either causing or discovering the damaged clock (to this day I don’t remember seeing it) was enough to convince the Deputy Head, whose room it was, that I was the culprit, my careless and wanton use of the window pole the means.
So, while the rest of the kids enjoyed play together, and went into school assembly, I was subjected to this ordeal by interrogation. During the brief respite he gave me to think things over I found I had few friends in the playground; just a few sniggers and some delight that ‘Sir’s Boy’ was in trouble. My brother was out of reach, at a different school. My class teacher was the Deputy Head who was making the allegation against me, so no refuge there either. The Head himself was a tyrant before whom I was due to appear once the caretaker had finished with me; and I was promised the cane if I didn’t admit the offence - a promise I knew to be genuine, and a punishment previously not encountered but deeply feared by this sensitive Norfolk child.
Worst of all though, was the knowledge that the one person on whose unconditional love I had until then relied was powerless to help me and out of my reach - my father. To intervene would, I was told later, have undermined his position on the staff of the school.
And there you have it, dear reader; my first experience of Hell: feelings of isolation, fear, abandonment, having no ally anywhere in sight. In short, being unloved – forsaken, even.
Sometimes, life is hard and unjust. Sometimes it seems downright cruel. Leadership can be lonely, and the pressures we face can create Broken Clock Experiences for any of us, especially given the amount of pain we see around us at present. This is why I felt it right to re-vamp the Strategic Management Team’s terms of reference the way I have; to stress the fact
that our primary purpose is not to manage, but to lead. And to stress the importance of our pulling together, of helping each other through the Broken Clock Experiences, to achieve that
purpose.
Contributed by Graham Choldcroft, Area Business Manager, Crown Prosecution Service
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