Gentlemen,
As most of you are aware I am a Service Engineer and travel around this Island looking after customers equipment mostly in hospitals and universities.
Yesterday myself and our apprentice travelled to Sheffield university to spend two days checking some equipment.
On arrival I approached the security/parking attendants to see if I had a booked parking space and was told no there wasnt one so I asked if I could drive the van arond the back of the building and up to the building where I was going to work, the answer was I could try but the Queen was having lunch in the old part of the university and the police might not let me through as I was at the back of the building, anyway I drove across the carpark and upto a barrier which opened automatically with nobody to challenge me so I proceeded about 300yds up the ramp to my place of work.
My contact happened to appear and with his permission I left my tools inside a locked compound which surrounded the building I was working in and he gave me a parking permit to park the van in another carpark about 10 minutes walk away, we drove to the carpark and walked back past an army of plain clothes police all wired for sound with ear pieces and some with bulging left arm pits, on arrival to the compound I found a smartly dressed woman who asked me if she could help at the gate and I explained that I was working in the building we were stood next to and as I turned to go into the gate she stopped me and informed me that these two gentlemen were police officers, at the time out of my eye line, the policemen were going carefully through my two tool boxes and a box of spare parts.
Are these yours sir was the first question to which I replied yes to which he responded thank god for that as he carefully put everything back where he found it telling me as he did so not to leave the tools out of my site for the rest of the day, the woman said she was disturbed that I had left the boxes next to a gas tank, I dared not suggest to her that if it had gone bang then the container of liquid nitrogen would have most likely put out the fire if there had been one. All in the day of the life of Martin Perman
