Another one bites the dust

The seeming suicide of the Chief Constable of the Greater Manchester Police has made me angry on several levels.

If it is suicide he has chosen to deprive his family of himself and his chosen method has put others at risk to recover his body. To my mind, neither of these is acceptable.

But, and what a but it is, unless there is something behind this that we will never know - and we can never be sure we will know the full facts of this - the immediate impression is of a man who has taken his life because the black dog had him in its jaws. This was a man in a position to be responsible for the welfare of colleagues doing a demanding job and being aware of the help available to them. Help he was unable to understand was available to him. But that is what the black dog does.

So, I am angry. I am angry at an illness. I am angry at a man who was no more able to seek help than I could. I am angry because there is a widow and three children without a father. My anger is no more rational than my behaviour before I realised the black dog had his teeth into me.

He was a one in five, like me, and I think I am entitled to rage against the waste of another life.