MASSIVE DOGS
When I was just a nipper and still living with my parents we had an elderly neighbour. She was lovely and a family friend for many years until she hit her nineties when unfortunately dementia took hold and she started to get quite aggressive. One lazy Saturday afternoon my parents were enjoying a cup of tea when there was a knock at the door. Upon opening it my parents discovered two huge, burly policemen (but then everyone is huge and burly to my parents, neither of whom clear 5'3.)

"We've had reports of three large, aggressive dogs intimidating your neighbour" one said, officiously. "She says they have been jumping over the fence and she is scared to go out. Mind if we take a look?"

Bemused, my parents led the coppers to the back garden, which contained two Jack Russels and a small and rather stupid spaniel who immediately attempted to nuzzle the crotch of one of the policemen. The fence between us and the neighbour was over seven feet tall.

The cops took in the scene. "Sorry to have wasted your time" is all they said. They left.

The elderly neighbour went to an old folk's home not long after.

The next story is a festival one, unsurprisingly. For Glastonbury 2008 my group of friends got cheap tickets to London and spent the night before the festival watching My Bloody Valentine at The Roundhouse, which was fucking incredible, then staying in a manky hostel before heading to Paddington Station the next morning to get the train to the festival. We should have expected it to be crawling with police but unfortunately suffered from a lack of foresight and wound up observing the cops running sniffer dogs up and down the queue to get on the festival train while we watched from the upper footbridge with lots of weed in our luggage. "Shit," was all we could manage to say as we saw one guy being led away in cuffs while police tore through his camping gear.

While we were wondering how to get on the train without ditching our stash a policeman with a dog appeared behind us. We shat our collective pants.

"Hi there," the policeman said. He had a thick scottish accent, a buzzcut and looked like he didn't fuck around. "We're looking for drugs today, mind if my dog here has a sniff of your stuff?"

Unable to say no we exchanged terrified glances and stood stock still. The dog sniffed at us excitedly and jumped up at my friend. Unable to think of anything else, my friend began to pet the dog. "hey boy, how are you doing?" he said excitedly as he ruffled the dog's ears and made a fuss of it. The policeman looked at us oddly but clearly couldn't be arsed and waved us on. We got on the train just before it was about to pull away, unable to believe our luck.

One of our friends who we were meeting inside the festival was not so lucky and was pulled out of the queue for the coach when a dog sniffed out an eighth in her rucksack. My friend was, and still is, a small and unfeasibly pretty arabic girl. As soon as they took her into the portacabin which served as a makeshift police station she turned on the waterworks.

"I'm a good muslim girl, please don't do anything, my parents would kill me!" She sobbed. "I don't even drink! A friend gave me the drugs because I was going to a festival, just in case I wanted to try them. I was thinking of throwing them away! I've never touched anything like this before, honestly officers!"

This was a pack of filthy lies as my friend loves the weed. Her story worked and the cop's expressions softened. "Well, you've clearly learned your lesson. We're keeping the weed but we're letting you go. Stay out of trouble, okay?"

"Of course officers, I'll never dream of touching drugs again," my friend solemnly promised. She spent the rest of the weekend skanking spliffs from the rest of us and a happy Glastonbury was had by all.
(orestes is shitting in the 1940s, Tue 10 May 2011, 15:10, Reply)