My parents mostly trusted my friends and me and so we were let off the leash quite young. We weren’t the kind of kids to hang around, bored, stirring up trouble or leaning on lamp posts or riding the buses playing loud music on our phones. OK so phones with music had not yet been invented, but anyway. Armed with day travel cards we roamed around the big city like we owned the place.
At that age I was definitely part of the geek squad. Some things never change. The most exciting place for hi-fi and computer enthusiasts was Tottenham Court Road. The shops there are still pretty tech oriented, but in the early to mid nineties it was bigger, brasher, louder and more chaotic. Every shop was in aggressive competition with each other, even within shops there was a rivalry between counters and sales staff. It was like being in some sort of consumer theme park. Mostly we only did window shopping and dreamed of buying the various gadgets, separates or whizz-bang computers on offer. We would hotly discuss which brand of X had better specs, whether Y would go with Z in the tech house of our imaginations. When we actually had the money we searched out the best deals, played traders off against one another, drove a hard bargain.
One time my best mate from school and I were wandering up TCR. We were in that section where the shops are set back from the road under a canopy formed by the upper floors of the office building above. I reckon it must have been a Saturday. The light was just beginning to fade, and suddenly we noticed that there were no other people about in our section of the street. Everyone had disappeared. We knew then exactly what was going to happen. Out of nowhere a couple of older kids appeared. They didn’t even have to threaten us, they just told us to give them our money. We did. I had a fiver and my mate had ten pounds.
That pretty much ended our day, so we headed back to my mate’s house. We told his dad what had happened and he made a big fuss and insisted on calling the police. My mate and I didn’t see the point, but we didn’t have any choice. Two coppers turned up quite quickly and took all our details. We told them what happened, what the thieves looked like, etc.. They were interested, sympathetic, reassuring. When they left we felt much better about the whole thing. In retrospect it is obvious that there was nothing they could do about what had happened. Our descriptions were patchy, if there had been witnesses they would never have been found, the chances of there being CCTV was minimal. We had waited about an hour before reporting the crime, the thieves could have been anywhere by then. There was a zero probability of solving the crime and bringing the offenders to justice. The officers knew that, but they didn’t make us feel like we were wasting their time. We felt like they were going to do their best.
Over at Mr Area’s site, a little discussion has developed about how attitudes to the police develop. Given my upbringing I think it unlikely that I would have developed a natural hatred of the authorities, but my experiences as a victim of crime (in my teens I was a serial victim, luckily never of anything serious) and the professionalism and reassurance I have received from police officers have left me on the “doing the best of a difficult job” side of the equation rather than on the “corrupt evil pigs” side.
“…but my experiences as a victim of crime (in my teens I was a serial victim, luckily never of anything serious) and the professionalism and reassurance I have received from police officers have left me on the “doing the best of a difficult job” side of the equation rather than on the “corrupt evil pigs” side.”
I think humans underestimate the ‘first experience’ and how it can change their opinions regardless of their expected attitudes.
Get brought up in a nice middle-class, law abiding household and find that your first experience of the police is of a jobsworth, and it can colour your experience forever.
Thanks for the memories Blue, myself and my chum Tim used to do exactly the same. Armed with day travel cards Except in our day it was a ‘Red Rover’ ticket and there probably weren’t as many electronic shops in TCR in 1978-83.
But we used to hang out in the book & music shops in CCR, Forbidden Planet was already open and we used to spend a lot of time in there.
Happy days
Robbed there as a youngster. Whacked some druggie with a laptop bag there as an adult and he ran off.
One all so far.
Julia – I agree entirely. First impressions count. A lot.
PC – I used to lose myself in Foyle’s. It’s just not the same anymore. There used to be nooks and crannies where no man had set foot in decades. Progress, eh??
BQ – Excellent – although I hope the laptop wasn’t hurt in the incident.
A classic case where nothing could be done except an expression of society’s concern by the attendance of the police – although in this case a description passed to the divisional station concerned could possibly go towards the I/d of the offenders – again highly unlikely anything would come from it. According to the accountants who took over the police, this is pointless, futile and a waste of time and money. Just give the victim a reference number and the phone number of Victim Support if they want someone to make them feel better about it, job done.
I hated my children wondering around, and recall picking up unhappy bodies from hospital, and parties.
As a granddad, I find I’m going through the same process again, though different in intensity. However, to all ‘YOU KIDS OUT THERE’ please call us.
We will find and care for you. After that your arse is grass!!
Ah Foyles, certainly an experience. Christina Foyle was certainly one of the last eccentrics.
I also used to like the fact that there used to be a bus stop right outside the door with the poster “Foyle’d again? Try Waterstones”
(For those of a non London location, there was a massive Waterstones (now Borders) directly opposite Foyles on the CCR.)
Two bad youthful experiences in Suffolk – both with ’specials’
1. A ’stop’ by our long term neighbour, a 35 year old bachelor farmer still living with his widowed mum, in which he idiotically pretended not to know me. It went like this
“Is this your car sir?”
“Hello Russell; you see it parked in the drive every day”
“Can I ask where you’re going, sir?”
“Off to Burstall Grange to meet some totty. Any prospects on the female front for you, Russell? I can get you a date if you like ..”
“I’m concerned with your documents, sir”
“Your mum’s concerned with you not being the marrying kind, Russell – but we don’t talk about that, do we?”
2. A special who used to patrol the shared parking area of a mate in Ipswich – in which he had a right to park, along with other residents, but no designated space – at night, behind the houses; after he told me I couldn’t park there and I remonstrated there were no controls, he threatened to arrest me. We made statements to the Suffolk police HQ and he got the sacky and had to give his uniform back. Aah. He then BOUGHT a fake uniform and continued to make a nuisance of himself in the shared car park. We used to be VERY rude to him after that.
Then there was the real plod who lived next door to a small village shop. After a good winter’s morning rough shooting we parked the Volvo outside his house and went to get some freshly made ham rolls. He hated anyone parking outside his house. When we came out, there he was, looking at the (broken and unloaded) shotguns in the back. When he started the bullshit – “I have to face armed criminals who steal guns from careless people like you …” my mate asked
“How many?”
“What?”
“How many armed criminals have you faced in your police career?”
The answer was ‘none’, clearly, as he went straight into a ‘I’m all that stands between you and psycopathic murderers’ rant. Then the lady from the shop came out and said “Don’t take any notice of him; he’s always imtimidating anyone who parks outside his house – he’s pissed off because the Council won’t do yellow lines for him”
Yes, I’ve met decent coppers – but there are a HELL of a lot of them that are inadequate little nonentities who seek the boost of the uniform to try to make them the man they clearly aren’t.
I learned my opinion of police from Boy’s Own Annuals and Agatha Christie books. Ergo, despite my genitor’s aversion of the filth, I was kindly inclined. When I was 12 my friends and I were quite fond of coppers in a vaguely patronising “if you want to know the time ask a policeman” way and used to do just that. Lords was a good hunting ground. I was given a goodie bag of prison things at an agricultural show by one when much smaller. However the police stopping and searching my friends unnecessarily and aggressively, a false arrest on a ridiculous charge, 17 hours of detention by fairly rude and intimidating officers without my family being informed though I was 17, and watching officers provide false testimony in court has lowered my opinion of the force considerably. “Just had word through we’re to arrest 25 people for affray” wasn’t an inspiring order to overhear, nor was it comfortable being in an atmosphere wherein sex is taken so much into consideration, whether for political correctness or sexism. I still come down on the “‘doing the best of a difficult job’ side” but seeing these grown men compromising their integrity by lying for the sake of their job was absolutely sickening. If I hadn’t had a nice 22 year old ‘I became a policeman because I wanted to help people” PC taking care of me after my arrest I wouldn’t find it hard to believe that all police are corrupt evil pigs. Give him a few more years maybe
Also I noted when I started to drive that I was extra cautious around police cars- not because I felt they might contain people who would catch me doing something wrong, but because I didn’t trust the driving! It seemed purely instinctive but I suppose I had picked up on erratic and dangerous driving by police subliminally over the years. Boost of the car