The Customs Officer – Pieters?

There’s history here – that’s one of the things about the job that he loves.

There’s been a customs post here for more than five hundred years. Think about that: a building on this very spot for five centuries, serving the same purpose for decade after decade after decade. All of the people who have served here and lived in the accommodation, all serving their country, protecting their country from all kinds of different threats, and all making their little contribution to the well-being and prosperity of the nation. Every time I think about that, I feel humbled and privileged. Privileged to be doing a job that I like, in a building full of history…living in a cottage that’s housed customs officials for two hundred years – the same stones, the same woodwork, the same windows and chimneys. What a privilege! To be in an historic building all the time, the kind of place that ordinary members of the public never get to see.

I particularly like my job at this time of year, when there’s snow on the ground all the time. There’s not much work at this time of year, if I’m honest. Not many people try to come in, and those that do are easy to spot and track against the snow. Easy targets. There’s a bit more to do in the lodge when the weather’s like this, I suppose – keeping the boilers fired up all the time, and then there’s the need to keep things tidy around the lock and the water gate, which is always more difficult with all of the snow and ice on the towpaths and up over the tunnel portals’ brickwork, but I do have these special-issue boots with the metal cleats on the soles, which are really marvellous. I get a new pair issued every year – for free, of course, part of my salary – so they never wear out. And they’re so comfortable. I think annual reissue is a bit too frequent, actually – a bit of a waste of money. Still, I take the old pairs back with me when I go home on leave, so the family get good use out of them – though I ask them to keep quiet about where they got them from. So I suppose it’s not that much of a waste – not like a lot of the undeserving things (and people) that the Councils seem to spend money on these days – you might have well have pissed that money up the wall and have had done with it. But that’s another story.