Police

I got told off by a policeman on the way to work the other day. I was sat in traffic with a police car next to me when suddenly he put his siren on for a quick blast. I looked over and he started stretching his seat belt about. I assumed he was having some issues so ignored him, so he put his sirens on again and pointed at me. I realised he was telling me off as he couldn’t see my seatbelt. This is because I wear it tucked under my arm as seatbelts for some reason cut in to my neck and leave me with huge red marks across my neck and I look like I’ve been garrotted. I also feel that in an accident it would immediately snap my neck. Surely it is better to either catapult myself through the windscreen or crush all my internal organs? Either way, I proved I did have my seat belt on, arranged it properly and then enjoyed my neck being sawn to bits for the next 20 minutes. I can’t help but wonder if I am bizarrely proportioned. I thought only the likes of Jimmy Krankie had issues like this. I am a normal height, I don’t have to sit on a cushion to drive or anything. Perhaps I slump.

The last time I came in to contact with the police was when I was seven, so I am a generally law abiding citizen. Back then I was walking to school with my 8 year old brother when I thought it would be funny to pull his bag off his shoulder. He found this less amusing than I did so kicked me up the bum. At that precise moment a policeman appeared and said to Ben “Don’t kick girls. Would you like me to kick you? No. Don’t kick girls”. We carried on our way; Ben with the fear of God in him and me repeating “Don’t kick girls”. I still say it to him now. Later that day the same policeman came to school to give us our cycling proficiency lesson. Ben thought he had come to arrest him and panicked so much he had to be taken in to the hall to calm down. Looking back I can see how much this story has dated; the fact that a seven and eight year old were walking to school unaccompanied, the fact that a policeman was actually patrolling the street and the fact that we were scared of a policeman. If the Daily Mail is to believed kids nowdays would murder the policeman then complain that their human rights were contravened.

But apart from that I have had few dealings with the police. I called them once when my old next door neighbour lost the plot and her door keys and after a while trying her door open and tracing her friends and family and having the real fear that I was going to have a ninety year old house guest for the night I called the police and asked them if it was OK for me to break in. It wasn’t. I was told to hold fire until they got there, then Mary found her keys and she got in in a very undramatic fashion. But I think it is normally best to call the police and get advice on committing crimes before you do them. This could be a hell of a way to cut the crime rate.

I think law abiding is the way forward. A fair bit of my childhood was spent on the channel islands, on the island of Sark, where there is no crime. There is a prison but it only holds 2 people and is so horrendous that no one is allowed to spend more than a night in there. I remember peering in to it as a kid and it scared me so much it gave me nightmares. Even if I was in a normal sized prison I would die, I simply wouldn’t have a hope. So my seatbelt is now on properly, I have repaired my broken headlight and I absolutely refuse to break in to my neighbours house.