Good Old Britain.

Following on from my last post, I do not think people realise just what the majority of police time is spent on. When we aren't filling out checklists and files or catching genuine baddies, we are sitting in a decaying house listening to the woes of someone about whom society has forgotten. Unfortunately this often means the elderly. Whether barking mad or just lonely, the old have learned that whereas their family can just ignore the pesky ringing of the phone, the police cannot.

The reasons for the call are usually one of:

• I think I've been burgled but I don't know when, how, or what's been taken.
• I've fallen out of bed/my chair.
• My last light bulb has blown.
• It's them kids again.
• I'm old. Help me.

These people have every right to call us and PC Bloggs is more than happy to attend and sit between two stacks of books dating from the turn of the last century, while Mrs Dora Biddles recounts tales of her war-time marriage. Dora lives in a ground floor flat and hasn't technically been "Mrs" for thirty-five years since her husband died of alcoholism, but in her heart she always will be.

"John had a mean temper," she will tell me. "He wasn't a nice man. Or handsome. In fact, you could say he was one of the ugliest people you could find."

She will now rise, declining all offers to pass whatever it is she needs or help her up, and totter around the living room searching through a metre-thick perimeter of ornaments to produce a battered old photo of Major John Biddles. I note that he was indeed a hideous specimen.

"But then, we loved each other, you know." Now Dora will cry for a few minutes while I locate some tissues.

I stay for half an hour and make Dora a cup of tea. By the time I leave, she has usually forgotten why she called the police and thinks I am her daughter Marjorie. I will be the only visitor she will have until the home-care woman drops in the following morning to put some milk in the fridge. Dora has family - three daughters in fact - but they prefer to leave the job of providing comfort and companionship to specially-trained crime-fighters in stab-proof vests.

Less and less can I make time for Dora. I almost feel the emails pouring into my inbox as I sit with her, most of which will tell me that I have forgotten to tick a box on a form and it has been sent back to me for ticking. It is almost as if the originators of these emails don't care about anything except statistics!

Note
A general rule of old people's houses is that the area of free floor space decreases with each year that passes, as if each square metre represents the number of years the person has left to live. In the end the useable space in the room will consist of a single armchair, adorned with a squashed floral cushion and next to a side-table covered in cigarette packets, medication and the TV controller.

That is where the old person lives, in that chair. One day their possessions and memorabilia will become too numerous and demand the final space on the cushion, and I will break down the door to find them dead and alone under a heap of unpaid electricity bills.

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