Lucky escape
In my younger and more vulnerable years I was unemployed and homeless for a while in the nasty sticky streets of Peterborough. I had trudged that warm September afternoon from one side of the city to the centre in search of some mates who might want to share in my harvest of mushrooms picked in the grotty school fields of Bretton. In my ill-fitting leather jacket, spikey hair and over-tight tie-dyed jeans, I suppose I looked the part for a bit of police harrassment.

Arriving at a mate's house I found no-one answering the door. I was also trying to get a room in this soon-to-be-condemned slum, so I spent a while knocking on the door, thinking it'd be helpful to get the landlord's number.

Now, this was back in the days when police used to wander around the town on foot, not in pairs, without anti-stab vests... One such bobby sidles up to me and says (I kid you not) "Ello, 'ello, what's all this then?"
I reply, "I'm knocking on this door, officer." Despite my uncouth appearance, I'm dreadfully middle class, so I'm *always* polite to the police.
"Do you not know that this is the house of a known drug dealer?"
Well, yes, I did know that, that was exactly the person who had told me there was a room available, while I was smoking a large amount of weed with him. However: "Really officer? I'm just trying to reach the landlord as I heard there was a room to rent."
The copper asked for my name and address - I was homeless, so I had no address to give him - and asked to check my pockets. He suggested we go somewhere more private to do this. I reminded him I was homeless and just trying to get a place to live. He called my name in to his control room to check for outstanding warrants. The usual, you know.
After a bit of humming and ha'ing, he asked me to turn out my pockets in the street while people milled about...

Okay - in my army bag I had a batch of some hundred magic mushrooms. I was worried at this point. Not TOO worried though, I knew the law, and I knew I'd not be convicted for this lot. A police cell might be better than doorways...

So anyway, I started emptying my pockets. First my leather jacket: two breast pockets, one inside, two hip pockets... I handed him my fags, lighter, fag packet containing scrunched up crips bags - he opened up each one and looked inside...

Then I handed him my used tissues from my shirt pocket, my chewing gum, address book, box of condoms, and a little plastic bag containing cig butts from my waistcoat pockets. He rummaged through the butts sniffing them, emptied out the condoms and checked the box... he was putting my skanky things on the pavement at his feet and we were starting to get a bit of a crowd...

Then I started on my jeans, handing him more crisp bags, another lighter, some leaflets from the unemployment office...

"Okay son, you can stop," he said, exasperated. He started handing me stuff back. I opened my army bag up and put everything in on top of my bag of magic mushrooms.

The policeman was very apologetic. Mentioned that I *had* been knocking on the door of a dealer's place and that I *did* look the type. I let it slide, staying as polite and as middle-class as my plummy accent can manage.
( no cake for the impuritay Patrick Stewart hasn't aged since, Thu 22 Sep 2005, 12:00, Reply)