Mr Woodcock
When myself and three colleagues were merely 17 we decided to spend the evening drinking one of our number's father's home-made wine in a big deserted house. We were not quite at the stage where we could no longer speak when two special constables suddenly loomed in the doorway.

We instantly (probably about twenty seconds when we'd worked out how he knew our names) recognised one of them as Mr Woodcock, a teacher at our primary school, known God-botherer and alleged amateur preacher. He quite clearly knew we were under age but accepted our poorly-thought-through excuses anyway. I think they probably ordered us to vacate the premises at least partially on the grounds that the building was a bit knackered (huge holes in the staircase) as well as the fact that youths shouldn't sit around drinking extremely powerful home-brew* in deserted houses. I sometimes wonder if real fuzz would have acted differently...

*later that evening I recall getting the job of lugging the most incoherent of us up to his front door into his parents' safe-keeping as they apparently didn't like the other bloke (bad influence). The resultant suspicion exhibited by this guy's mother probably lasts to this day. I also couldn't drink more than half a pint without feeling sick for the next year.
( wingpig wish I'd known about liquify eighteen years ago, Fri 23 Sep 2005, 6:31, Reply)