I’ve been away for a while …. well quite a long while actually !
Some may have noticed …. some have been somewhat concerned …. some thought I had ‘done a Bobby Ewing* ’ and been in the shower too long …. some may not have been particularly bothered ….
Either way, I thought it only right and proper to explain where I’ve been. It’s quite simple really.
For the first time in forever (aaarrrgh not that movie again!!) I had the chance to grab some refs – yes you heard me correctly, a uniformed frontline constable in one of Her Majesty’s great modern police forces, sorry, sorry, police services, was going to sit down for five minutes and get something to eat !
This, almost biblical miracle, only came about as I was working the appointments car / diary car / Facebook car / diarrhoea car, call it whatever you do in your force) and my 7pm appointment had cancelled for the gazillionth time (but I’m sure the control room will spend another week chasing them round to rebook ‘just in case’). Dazed, confused, and to be honest, not entirely sure how to react, or what to do with myself for the next 60 minutes, I headed for the refs room.
Having used all my might to force open the door which clearly hadn’t been used in a long, long time, pushed copious amounts of stacked rubbish (sorry, files waiting to go to HQ Storage) out of the way, decided standing was a far better, healthier and less contaminated option than taking advantage of any of the seating facilities, opened the £1 Asda Lasagne I had treated myself to especially for such a monumentous occasion and put it in the microwave with eyes closed (have you looked inside the average microwave in a police station ???), I then opened the cutlery door and arrrrghh ….
I couldn’t find a fork !!
I hunted high and low in every drawer, cupboard, nook and cranny, sneezing my way through the inches (no seriously) of accumulated dust, ancient sweet wrappers (can you still buy Fry’s Chocolate Cream anyway ??), petrified banana skins (as in so old, they’ve turned to stone not scared of the dark lol) but it was not good; the forks were gone, all gonny gone gone 
The next stop was the Inspectors office … well, you know what rank does don’t you … makes you hoard things, want to control thing … be in charge of things … more likely want to keep an eye on any sharp spiky object so that us clowns don’t go round sticking them into each other during some overly-animated heated debate over why Billy brought Hob Nobs instead of Ginger Nuts to briefing today. He just told me ‘not to be so stupid for thinking he’d be allowed near them either’ and to ‘go away quickly before he found me a constant watch to do’.
I got about 20ft along the corridor before the Inspector called me on point-to-point “Chaos, if you do find any forks make sure you bring me one, no make it two, straight in here before putting the rest in the drawer – got it ??”. “Yes boss, of course Boss” said I, quickly heading for the only place left in the nick where the holy grail of eating instruments would be found …… the top floor.
The top floor …
I don’t think I’ve ever been this high in the nick before .. well except for that time when I had to go and see the Super over a minor matter of going to a petrol station that had just been robbed by a bloke with a gun before the paper pushers had chance to have a meeting about how they should deal with it and how many meetings they would have to have to decide who to send but hey, I had the phone book down my pants reading for a good smacking … be prepared, that’s the plan !
And so, through those fabled doors I went …. “Jeez” I called out, loud so it turned out not just to myself, “they’ve got a bloody carpet up here”. And plastered walls with pictures on too it transpired. Downstairs it’s just magnolia emulsion on breeze blocks as you walk around from office to office. I tip-toed along the corridor, hoping not to disturb anyone working away, crunching numbers and planning how next we could reduce the crime in Chaostown and keep our communities safe.
Who was I kidding ?? It was well gone seven o’clock by now for goodness sake. The lights were off, the doors were closed and the radiators were cold. Hang on, did I just say radiators ??? have they got heat up here as well ???
I quickly found the room with a nice little engraved plaque on the door saying ‘Hospitality & Meeting Suite’, as slowly and as quietly as I could turned the handle and, millimetre by millimetre, pushed the door open. The “ssssshhhhhh” of door bottom scraping across the carpet pile was the only sound to be heard. The lights suddenly blazed into life … all by themselves. I nearly jumped out of my skin, fearing I had been busted by PSD, but no, it was just me, a shagpile and an movement sensor light switch. Visions of bigwigs having to dance and boogie every 5 minutes during meetings to stop the lights automatically turning themselves back off kept going through my head as one by one, I nosed through the cupboard drawers in search of my Holy Grail.
And then I found it. The one. The drawer that held within in all of the dreams and desires of every single uniformed response cop who had ever graced the doors of this most grand and gracious building ……The Senior Management Team cutlery drawer.
SILVER !!! …. BLOOMIN’ SILVER !!! …. they got silver cutlery !!! … with patterns on !!! … small swirly pretty patterns on the handles !!! …. and it’s all clean and shiny, like someone has been paid to sit and polish the afore-mentioned items every day after they have been used ….. actually they probably have but hey ….
And then I saw.
The one thing I could not believe.
The one thing that finally, after all these years; after all the long hours; after all the cold, wet, dreary night shifts, would send me over the edge ….
There wore no forks !!!!!
I left the room in a sullen state. I didn’t even have the energy or will to close the cutlery drawer.
It took all the might I had left just to open the door to get out. I was a broken man. I was hungry. I had nothing left to give. I would have to face my own Inspector and tell him I had failed. I could feel the action plan being written already.
By now it was five to eight. My next appointment would be here in minutes and ready to tell me that their ex-partners new partners mums ex had called them a slag on Bookface and that they wanted them ‘done’ but that they weren’t going to give me a statement about it ‘cos they weren’t a grass’ and they wouldn’t heed my advice to block the aforementioned super suspect on the said social media site because ‘they wanted to know what else was happening’ on the estate where they all lived.
Of course they didn’t turn up. As it later turned out, within micro-seconds of putting the phone down to police to report their dastardly crime, everyone was best of friends again and would spend the next week shouting ‘having you lot got anything better to do’ as we wasted umpteen hours of police time and taxpayers money trying to ‘re-establish contact with the informant’ so we could ‘accurately risk assess the danger’.
Ohh the joys of modern policing !!
Since that day I have been aimlessly wandering the corridors of our station, back and forth, without rhyme or reason, going nowhere, still searching for those four prongs of joyfulness. If you do see one, catch it quick before it gets chance to escape … and please let me know, a message; a drawing; a photo would be nice ….
* Bobby Ewing – character played by Patrick Duffy in the 80’s American mega-soap Dallas. Brother of JR Ewing (who got shot by his sister in law/mistress who also claimed to be pregnant with his child). Bobby was killed off in the final episode of the 1984–1985 season, and Patrick Duffy left the show for a year, returning in the infamous “shower scene” at the end of the 1985–1986 season. His accident, death and absence from the show was explained as being no more than a bad dream by his ex-wife and subsequently fiancé again (and you think Jeremy Kyle is bad !!). Yes I know you are too young to remember it all, go ask your gran !
This by the way is not really why I haven’t been around but it’s far more interesting. I’ll explain properly in another blog 
.
