The Holiday Blues and Twos
Bank Holiday in Blandmore.
Ducks on the river, lemonade in the park, family lunches, picnic knives and forks, red cheeks and children skipping. Long cool evenings and a stroll home. Teenaged lovers texting each other, holding hands, kissing under the trees. Fairground rides and volleyball. Pimms.
Beer. Punch-ups with bouncers and stealing cars. Teenagers shagging in the woods, Facebooking death threats to the girl with glasses. Long nights of drinking and a stagger home, no cab money, no address. Children stamping on younger children, nicking their mobiles. Lock-knives and knuckle-dusters, and dragging drunk girls into alleys. Families fighting, death in the park. Cops combing the river.
Tuesday morning. Coffees and elaborate epaulettes. Strategies, priorities, pipelines. A long day of planning and a BMW home. Crime rates, incidents of note, targets and spreadsheets. Litanies of last night's errors. Stamping on sergeants and emailing job threats to PCs. Laughing about a funny thing that happened to the tasking database. No blue lights. No knives or knuckle-dusters.
Bank Holiday in Blandmore?
It depends who you are.
Ducks on the river, lemonade in the park, family lunches, picnic knives and forks, red cheeks and children skipping. Long cool evenings and a stroll home. Teenaged lovers texting each other, holding hands, kissing under the trees. Fairground rides and volleyball. Pimms.
Beer. Punch-ups with bouncers and stealing cars. Teenagers shagging in the woods, Facebooking death threats to the girl with glasses. Long nights of drinking and a stagger home, no cab money, no address. Children stamping on younger children, nicking their mobiles. Lock-knives and knuckle-dusters, and dragging drunk girls into alleys. Families fighting, death in the park. Cops combing the river.
Tuesday morning. Coffees and elaborate epaulettes. Strategies, priorities, pipelines. A long day of planning and a BMW home. Crime rates, incidents of note, targets and spreadsheets. Litanies of last night's errors. Stamping on sergeants and emailing job threats to PCs. Laughing about a funny thing that happened to the tasking database. No blue lights. No knives or knuckle-dusters.
Bank Holiday in Blandmore?
It depends who you are.
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'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in all good bookstores and online.
posted by PC Bloggs at 22:08
14 Comments:
Brilliant......
"Litanies of last night's errors"
aka "The Nine O'Clock Shuddas....."
He should have done this, she should have done that.
Decisions are so much easier the morning after, with a cup of coffee and the benefit of hindsight.
04 June, 2008 22:59
Madame Author - very well done.
Very good writing indeed .
Impressive,in fact.
05 June, 2008 00:42
Our new Super is already known as "Sponge Bob". He directs tasking, ops and "The Nine O'Clock Shuddas....."
He's not that Super and not as remarkable as the real Sponge Bob!
Lions led by Sponge Bob's???
05 June, 2008 01:07
Excellent Writing.
05 June, 2008 06:54
Excellent !
OUR beloved strategist, aka Superintendent Mad-As-A-Fish ******, has been in a blue panic this week because we will be getting a visit from an even worthier stategist, the ACC.
Aside from having to ensure that the biscuit supply is up to scratch, a threatening e-mail has had to be sent out to ensure that the ACC's sensibilities are not upset by the sight of any work on anyone's desk, the station is cleaned for a change and the civilian staffing levels are articially inflated just for the day. You know, to make it look like there are actually call takers to answer phone calls from the public.
How does the gaffer shoulder such responsibility ? What a man ! How much brown-nosing can he summon up in the quest for strategic thinking and that next promotion ?
Meanwhile, service levels to the public decline as our master-motivator juggles the statistics to make himself look good.But maybe I'm just cynical.
05 June, 2008 07:47
très bon , molto buon,sehr gut
I'd be happy with that .
this post is buffed to a very gleaming thing .
05 June, 2008 12:35
Ellie,
I always thought that the most, no the only important thing about Bank Holidays was getting paid double time.
You have introduced me into a new way of thinking:)
brendan (London today, where the sun finally came out, and went back in again)
05 June, 2008 16:33
all the above and STILL time to hassle me about finding a water pistol in my locker, when they did a "dodgy" locker search accross all the nick without us being there.Now im sure my new leatherman was in there when I finished nights.....
05 June, 2008 18:08
Oh gawd. Not another "leatherman"
D17 / GSG9 wannabee? (Anon 1808). Give me strength.
BTW - an extremely prescient take on BH's, Ellie.
05 June, 2008 22:28
Meant D11. DOH!
05 June, 2008 22:30
Well, it's not a bad posting - I'll give it that.
Mine's better, though - more swearing!!
06 June, 2008 20:59
Beautifully concise and with a few tweaks I reckon paragraphs two and three could be set to the music of "That's Entertainment" by yer Jam.
07 June, 2008 13:32
He said two of his crew got in the water with the dolphins. "It was a horrible scene of carnage with bodies everywhere, but we were doing our best to help those who were alive and succeeded in getting five back into the water.
"I can't say I've seen such a terrible scene as that which confronted us when we first arrived in the creek – it was horrific.
"RNLI crew training is extremely thorough, but this took all our skills and more besides. We are only glad we were able to help.'' RNLI crews managed to save seven of the stranded animals and the last two were taken out to deep water in stretchers attached to boats.
After the procession of boats made its way downriver, it was followed by a pod of about 60 dolphins.
Mr Nicoll said: "It was extraordinary to see. I was very relieved when the two we rescued in stretchers swam away to the others."
The Cornwall Wildlife Trust, vets and volunteers joined the massive rescue operation in which teams of conservationists, divers, coastguards and local government workers all tried to refloat the surviving mammals.
Tony Woodley, national spokesman for British Divers Marine Life Rescue, said: "Logistically, a rescue like this is a minefield. It is very difficult to manage.
"You have to get all the dolphins together. If one or two leave the river system, they will just come back to rejoin the main social group."
There were also reports of smaller strandings on nearby Froe Creek and in shallow water near Falmouth.
Mr Woodley added: "We haven't seen a stranding anywhere near this scale since 1981, when pilot whales were beached on the east coast. This is extremely rare."
FACT BOX
• Striped dolphins are closely related to the common dolphin.
• They are so called because of the characteristic blue and white stripes on their flanks.
• They are very acrobatic, able to leap up to seven metres out of the water.
• Striped dolphins are pelagic, or deep-sea, mammals and are not generally considered to be a coastal species, unlike the common dolphin.
• They travel in groups of up to 100 and feed on shoals of small fish, squid and octopus.
• Adult males grow up to 8.5ft long and weigh up to 160kg. Females grow up to 8ft and weigh up to 150kg.
10 June, 2008 01:53
mcm - at last, a thought-provoking and meaningful comment about the topic at hand...
12 June, 2008 17:48
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