Sound of da Police

The following events took place between the hours of 19:00 and 20:00 on July 11th and mostly in real time.

I’m stood in my back garden. A riot van and an unmarked car at the top of the drive. Five burly police officers are charging through my flat, two more are trying to find a way in to the house upstairs. An alarm is screaming bloody murder while the neighbours stand gorping at their windows, cradling their kids who look petrified. I feel petrified.

Not twenty minutes before, Jade and I were going through the humble domestic motions of cleaning out the kitchen. All week we had been playing an unspoken game of chicken with each other; the bin was so full, it had become necessary to break the laws of physics to pack more items inside. Alas I lost to an apple core. Here’s something for all you chaos theory pundits: had I tossed that rotting fruit into the compost instead of an overflowing bin, the whole cycle of events that spiralled forth could have been avoided. Another reason for going green kids.

The camels back was well and truly broken; once I’d reclaimed the bin bag from the murky depths and stared into the very jaws of hell there was no stopping me. Soon I had a line-up forming by the front door. Bottles needed recycling, broken glass wrapped up in Tesco’s carrier bags, a mountain of cardboard; yes a trip the local recycling centre was in order. But I’ll be damned if I was going to walk there with all this stuff.

Jade helped me lunge it all on to the drive and pack my Mini, that’s when she noticed the other car.

Now its time for a little context.

Jade and I live in a granny flat below our landlord’s house, its not directly connected; our front door leads to their back garden. Our landlord and his family have gone away on holiday to Australia and have left us to keep an eye on the place. One thing the landlord pressed upon us was the need to lock the gate at the top of the drive. Security, security! After all they had been broken into previously and only last month, a friend of ours had had his car broken into while it sat on our drive. Its not a bad area but we do live right next to a less than desirable bit of town.
You can imagine the gut wrenching horror then, when we came out onto our shared driveway to find what can only be described as a chavmobile, parked (and I used the word “park” lightly, it looked perched) right by an open front door. We hadn’t locked the gate.

I’m no expert on cars and I would hate to judge people by material things such as what they choose to drive about in but when you see a 10 year old pimped up Golf GTI, complete with heart squeezing bass speakers taking up the rear seats, your first thought isn’t, “I wonder if this is that nice middle aged man we were told might be stopping over for a few nights to take care of the plants”. Especially not when the front door is half open and is framed by a trimming that looks like it lost a fight with a crowbar.

Heart starts beating. What do we do? Jade is turning a little white.
“I’ll go and ring the door bell,” I suggest meekly.
“Don’t be bloody stupid, they might have bats.
“I have an iPhone,” I offer, thinking that some how having the World’s Greatest Phone™ will protect me from their weapons. I mean, its got a camera, a phone and the internet,  I’m practically bullet proof. If they try anything I could Twitter about it in realtime.
“Let’s lock them in.”
“Your a genius!” I declare excitedly. We have a key, and a gate. I’d like to see their chavmobile get off a locked driveway. We could even taunt them from the other side.

We set about our master plan. I get in the Mini and drive to the top of the road, Jade closes the gate behind, sealing their fate.

And then we wait.

Nothing happens.

“Let’s go and drop all this recycling off and hopefully by the time we get back, either they will have unlocked the gate and gone or they will have come out with the telly, panicked and fled the scene.” We can save the planet, save the day and then do hand brake turns in their abandoned car.
Jade agrees and so we scoot round to Somerfield and offload. I’m feeling pretty pleased with our handling of the situation thus far but Jade’s still looking worried.
“Do you think we need to do more?”
“I think we need to ring someone.”
“Good idea, I’ll ring my dad.”
You have to understand, my dad is a geyser of common sense. Any drama, big or small he will have some practical advise for dealing with the situation. Imagine a cross between a less-starry-eyes Alan Sugar and Jack Bauer on a bank holiday and your halfway there.

“Phone the police.”
“What really?” I say a little flustered at my old mans advice. “999, like on TV?”
“Yes thats the one”.
“Wow, OK.” I hang up and fumble with my phone.
“What are we doing?” asks Jade.
“Phoning the boys in blue, but you’ll have to do it, I can’t make a 999 call, I’m too self conscious for that.” You start making 999 calls and suddenly you’ve transcended through some sort of invisible barrier. Your life from then on will be packed full of drama and you’ll end up the subject of a special report by Sir Trevor Mcdonald or worse, a talking head on a reality TV show.

One last act of desperation while Jade fishes in her handbag for her phone; I start calling the landlord and every number connected to him. It might be five in morning in Australia but he might want to know that he’ll be coming home to an empty house.
We set off back to the scene of the crime when suddenly I remember that the police head quarters is just up the road. Why risk a life in the media spotlight when we can just pop in and ask if anyone perhaps wouldn’t mind, that’s if their not to busy, maybe strolling over to our flat and stop it being robbed. I admit, something in me very British was at work; it all seamed like a lot of trouble for someone to have to go to…

“Ring 999”.
“But…your 999?” Now my head really started to swirl with confusion. The constable on reception at Police HQ was suggesting we call her over the phone.
“It’ll be much quicker, they are primed to deal with this sort of thing.”
“Oh, OK, sorry to have bothered you. See you later”. I bloody well hope we don’t see you later. Like when Sir Trev is interviewing her or when we come back to file a crime report and have our finger prints taken or whatever horrific administrative ordeal you have to go through post-crime.

Jade makes the call. This shit just got real, yo.

We aren’t more than two minutes getting back to our house and yet the whole scene has turned into the finale of Hot Fuzz, or the Shield, or the Wire or any TV/Film depiction you care to start imagining yourself a character in. What could be more indicative of these postmodern, media saturated time then the tendency to tell ourselves its all scripted when anything remotely dramatic occurs?

There’s the riot van.
There’s the unmarked car that you can just tell is a cop car.
There’s the police swarming all over the place like a kicked over bee hive.
Here comes the bulking beast of a man, who probably had nothing more than a baton on him but in my minds eye was carrying all sorts of advanced and deadly weaponry.
“Is this your house?” he demands to know as we approach.
Alarms are going off. Lights are flashing. Everyone on the estate has come out to see what all the commotion is about. Babies are crying in their mothers arms etc. I see a fence pulled out from its concrete base and in that moment am convinced our worst suspicions were true and the gits have busted out before the 5-0 got here.
“Do you live here?!” Asks Action Jackson, getting a little annoyed.
“Yes, its ours!” I confess, wishing desperately to play the part of innocent by-stander rather than become the focal point of this lurching menace. But its too late, I’m on pumped-up autopilot; I’m running towards the house.

The gate is still locked but looks like its been attacked; the rod has been yanked out. The car has gone. But Police are in the driveway. I’m so confused. Jade unlocks the gate and everyone pours onto the driveway. Any minute I’m expecting a helicopter to fly overhead.
“Can you get in and turn the alarm off?”
Can I? Wait, that’s our alarm?! The bastards have tried to escape but before doing so have decided to exact revenge on their would be captures by braking into our flat, trashing the place, taking a shit on the coffee table and making off with our brand new Guitar Hero: World Tour wireless guitars! At least that’s what’s running through my mind while I power walk round the back of the house and open up my front door. A gaggle of coppers pile in in front of me and that’s pretty much were I left you at the start of this debacle.

Of course there was nothing wrong with our flat. It was the landlords alarm going off and that had been due to one of the police hammering on backdoor. When we realised that the first bobbies on the scene had yanked the fence open to get onto the drive, and the fact that the car had gone yet the gate still locked, we knew that no great crime had been committed here other than a man in his mid forties rediscovering his boyhood, fuel injected roots.
The police were very understanding but I sensed a certain degree of disappointment, this really could have made their Saturday night; the chance to catch some crack heads in the act and bust some nuts.
“You did the right thing. You never know how these situations are going to play out,” condoled Action Jackson when I told him how sorry I was for wasting police time, or more pressingly, building them up and then letting them down.

It was reassuring however, just how on the ball these guys were. It had been mere minutes from us making the call to almost a full blown S.W.A.T team casing the joint. And so we can all sleep safe in that knowledge. But then I just heard some strange noise coming from upstairs, I better go investigate. If I’m not back in five…