I CAN clearly recall the first time I saw a gun in real life.

I was a teenager on a school exchange to France.

When we arrived at Calais, French police boarded our coach to conduct a quick search and they were all carrying weapons.

I was fascinated and appalled in equal measure. It was such an alien sight.

I had a similar feeling the first time I went to America as a young man.

Seeing armed police at a border is one thing but seeing ‘ordinary’ people – security guards, park rangers and the like – routinely carrying weapons was something else entirely.

I mention this after reading that ‘Project Servator’ is coming to town.

The scheme will involve Cheshire trialling ‘new tactics’ in the town centre.

These include patrols by firearms officers, dog units, covert ‘plain clothes’ officers, CCTV and automatic number plate recognition technology.

This does raise some questions.

For years we have been told that the police were underfunded because of budget cuts and the years of austerity, so how much is ‘Project Servator’ costing and where’s the money come from?

Are we happy with police carrying guns on the streets of our town centre as a matter of routine? I’m not sure I am.

I notice that one of the aims of John Dwyer, the Cheshire Police and Crime Commissioner, is to ‘improve public confidence in policing’.

This pre-supposes that people don’t have confidence in policing and I don’t see how that will be improved by the sight of automatic weapons and big dogs in Golden Square.

Far from reassuring me, I am now concerned that there’s some kind of unseen, malevolent threat lurking in the background that has necessitated a regular and ongoing armed police presence in Warrington.

But we just don’t know the reason for all this police activity. Apparently, the scheme is aimed at ‘disrupting a range of criminality including terrorism’ by working alongside business, community groups and members of the public.

Well that’s vague to say the least.

And sadly, the man who appears to be in charge of the project, Chief inspector Neil Drum, doesn’t really give us much of a clue about why we are suddenly seeing armed police on our streets.

He told the Warrington Guardian: “I am really pleased to be trialling Project Servator in Warrington.

“This is a fantastic opportunity for us to talk to residents, visitors to the town centre and staff about the importance of being vigilant at all times and to work with them to keep everyone safe and add another layer of security to our existing policing methods.

“This isn’t in response to a particular threat, but something we’re trying out to see if it can further enhance our existing security measures.”

Don’t get me wrong, if there’s a need for all this, I’m more than happy to support the project but to be honest, I think we deserve a clearer explanation of why it’s happening in the first place.

On a different topic, back in 2018 I helped with a community project in Penketh and Great Sankey to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War.

As part of the research, I spent quite a lot of time in the cemetery in St Mary’s Road. Not only are there war graves there, it also has the Penketh and Great Sankey war memorial.

And to be fair, the memorial was showing its age.

So I was delighted when I was shown a post on one of the area’s Facebook groups that a local cleaning company had pressure-washed the memorial and its surrounds, restoring it to its former glory.

And all for free.

I was so impressed, I went to have a look for myself and the results are amazing.

And it’s in time for the Remembrance Sunday service as well.

Credit where it’s due, I tip my metaphorical hat to JLH Exterior Cleaning. Well done guys.