The shoulder is now OK, and we have a stockpile of surplus painkillers - probably more than all the hospitals in Iraq....
Anyway, kaz has a photo of some aspiring politician on her blog, and in the photo is also a youth waving one hand about, and with the other down his track suit bottoms. It takes me back to working at the courts.
Tracksuit bottoms are the garb of choice for most young offenders. Not only easy to pleasure yourself while waiting interminably for your turn at court, or easy access for the girlfriend, but also swift access to a good hiding place for your drugs if the police arrive.
I remember listening to a Crown prosecutor reading out in court the statement of a police officer who witnessed exactly this method of hiding drugs when he and a colleague interrupted a deal in a local car park. Slightly surreal to hear a frightfully-nicely-brought-up middle aged lady describing this, and the subsequent rubber-gloved retrieval of said drugs at the police station. The defendant was quite unperturbed, but I had a sudden fit of the giggles when I caught the eye of one of the magistrates - I was able to leave court, but the magistrate had to stay.
It's also bizarre to hear solicitors and barristers with Oxbridge accents reading out interviews, when the interviewee has a limited vocabulary, and "know wh' Ah mean" and "fucking" are pretty well all he can manage.
But my favourite was always the statements of police officers who had witnessed some bloke urinating in public. There seems to be a poetic standard to attain, and some of them wax quite lyrical.
Mind you, working in HMCS isn't all fun; such entertaining moments have to be balanced against interminable hearings about council tax, parking fines, and fishing without a licence.
4 comments:
Was "fishing without a license" one of the Police euphemisms for urinating in public?
I hope you aren't waxing reminiscing for this graphic world of criminality. Trackie Bots are sooo last century.
Never mind fashion - I'm off to Primark tomorrow to get some trackie bots.
It's obviously the only way to live dangerously. Fishing without a licence just doesn't thrill me any more.
"Know wh'Ah mean"
If you fish inland, you need not only a permit for the place you fish, but also a national rod licence - and the bailiffs love to catch anyone without one, bring them to court, and get them fined.
Ah, the majesty of justice!
Yes, I wondered if fishing without a license was what was happening in the tracky bots!
Reminded me a bit of John Mortimer's stories about his embarrassed mother having to read his blind father's notes about adultery divorce cases out loud on the train, with such details as 'stained sheets' etc, when he'd say 'what was that? speak up!' so that all the other passengers were straining to hear.
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