Hard Cell

"Oh my god," I thought as stepped out into the busy street with a uniformed cop taking up station at either elbow. At least they weren't actually holding on to me. I might be accused of theft but they seemed to content to accept my parole, at least as far as their personal professional responsibilities went. It has occurred to me this morning to wonder why I was arrested as opposed to being requested to go to the police station to help with equiries. I am a bit of hellcat in some respects. There are some things that just get my dander up and some other things that inexplicably do not. I suppose that it's the simple things that rile me, while the complex issues take some thinking about and there's nothing like a good think to defuse an anger-making situation. Of course stewing over a wrong is a good way to cook up a nice pot of cold revenge, but — although I have used the word before — selling that benighted bike wasn't an act of revenge. I was pleased there was a vengeful element in the outcome, but the whole business was matter of worry and wrongness to me. Not serious enough to have stopped me, and I would still do it again ... and hang around to face the consequences. All the same I am perplexed as to why I am not actually breathing fire and spitting lava over the indignity of being arrested. Partly I know that it is because there are almost no grounds whatsoever for objection and also because it is kind of a hoot when push comes to shove.

To be escorted from the house by the police is probably the worst sort of domestic nightmare of every normal citizen. Although having the house burn down would seem to me to be a lot worse ... or getting flooded out with stinking storm run-off. Hell! Most things are worse than getting arrested. I've even been burglarised and that was lot less forgettable. My own worst fear is to be physically attacked, I'm pretty sure I would wet myself if I found msyelf staring at a deadly weapon that was aimed in my direction. In short getting busted is a bad thing but I guess I'll get over it. All the same the road is quite busy and it was matter of excrutiating embarrassment to me that the traffic crawling past slowed down even more to rubberneck the cops making an obvious bust and, bless their Doc Martened size 12's, the cops did what cops do best, they held up their arms to halt the flow and speed my crossing to the other side where the jam sandwich was parked in a no parking zone (the zig-zag approach to pedestrian crossing) and blocking the driveway access to two houses. I couldn't make it up!

The police station is a mile away. It was a short trip then and that is also a cause for bitter amusement. How typical of me even to get short changed on my once-in-a-lifetime trip by police-car. British police cars aren't. If they were there might still be British car manufacturing industry, which there isn't. The police car I was taken away in was a Peugeot or maybe a Vauxhall although as all modern European cars look alike I have trouble telling the difference. Either way it wasn't made in Britain and that's kinda irksome in non-specific but slightly xenophobic way.

I have been to that police station before. It was to produce a vehicle's registration documents and insurance after I got into a pile-up on the M25 London Orbital (it wasn't my fault but that doesn't mean you get to avoid the fun of establishing your legal right to be on the road in the first place. On that occasion I entered via the front doors. Now we pulled up at the side and I was directed to an imposing unmarked set of dark oak double doors. The doors looked quite civilised and I felt a slight easing of my distress levels as I imagined being led into a large cluttered office full of clattering typewriters and sweating overworked cops yelling into phones. Yeah I think I watched too much TV as kid, too. Anyway my delusional dream did not persist beyond the doors. Inside a few steps led downwards ... not good, not good ... and into a spare wide space in a corridor that stretched away into depressing gloom.

The wide space was a sort of office on one side with a high counter topped off with robust looking computer monitor cowls. There were a couple of uniformed men behind the desk, a small TV was mouned high up near the ceiling. It was showing the funeral of the former Prime Minister Ted Heath. Part of one wall was covered with little black and white CCTV screens, the other wall had a stack of lockers one of which had been crudely marked to indicate that it belonged to "Son of Sick Note" (so that's all right then. Cops do do have a sense of humour — although not a very original one — and they are also not above defacing public property for their own amusement.

My escort asked whose funeral it was? On being told it was Edward Heath he retorted that he didn't know he was dead. The custody officer's remark:

"Someone's made a hell of a mistake if he isn't.!" Brought a smile even to my otherwise quite miserable face.

The area opposite the counter was a cell that I took to be the local equivalent of a "drunk tank". It was an alcove separated from the rest of the corridor with steel bars. Anyone locked in would be unable to make contact with anyone outside though because there was also a substantial layer of something thick and transparent. The only item missing was Anthony Hopkins, but it was unoccupied and I hoped I wasn't to be the next occupant.

In vain I studied the floor for a painted line parallel to the counter positioned at an inconvenient distance from the counter and behind which I would be ordered to stand and not to cross ... I really have seen too much TV. Maybe a spell in stir will save my brain from total dissoluion. I was guided to the desk and introduced to the officer behind. No idea what his name was, although I was told, I don't rememember the names of people I want to keep as friends so there seems little point making an effort to remember this one. It's not as though we're likely to meet again next week at the mayor's cocktail party. I do note his function. He is the Custody Officer whose job it is to record my visit in excrutiatingly minute detail as well as to assure himself and his service that all of my rights, legal and human, are respected ... because it would awful if they screwed up somewhere and had later to let me go on a technicality. How ironic it is that the more rights a society so graciously hands to its citizens the longer a citizen has to be deprived of most of them in order to assure that all are being respected.

The booking into custody procedure is stultifyingly tedious. It consists first of the arresting officer making a statement which, in this case, began with an account of the IP's (Injured Party) allegations and ended at my house where I was preparing to take flight. I discovered that I was the PIC — Person In Custody. From there we moved on to establishing my identity which is another time consuming process that seems aimed at checking every damned corner of the national crime records. Not having a criminal record in these instances is a handicap. Everyone should go out and get a criminal record while they are young and carefree and such things don't hurt so much. Believe me it will save a lot of time and worry later on if you ever get in trouble with the law.

Eventually I was told of my basic rights: namely to keep schtoom, to have free legal advice, and a load of other stuff that was printed in a forgettable leaflet. To be honest the separate drugs and alcohol leaflets, provided by charities, were much more interesting and I contemplated declaring a drink problem ... a free shot or three might make the time pass quicker. Of course I am not that stupid! I declared my wish for the lawyer and a phone call to speak to a friend. Then comes the property bit. Ah. That hurts. Whatever possessed me to pack so much stuff into my bag before I left home. My change purse was bulging and every coin has to be counted and logged.

"Don't worry about the coppers," I quipped, oblivious of the pun. "Just leave me with the taxi fare home."

"Sorry," came the reply. "It all has to be counted." There was £19.24 Good lord! If I'd known I was that wealthy I'd have chartered a boat and escaped to Ireland to buy a farm. I was handed my mobile and asked to turn it off. How pathetic can you get? I didn't know how to turn it off, so I got the custody officer to do it for me ... I also got him to show me how to turn it back on for when I got out. That was a rare streak of optimism from me. When, not if. Finally there's a body search. Not an intimate one, but any kind of (uninvited) feeling up is not a pleasant experience, and I've been around long enough to have been frisked a lot during the various IRA campaigns that hurt most of the major British cities over the last 35 years, including Birmingham in 1974 when I was a student there. One of my friends was actually involved, professionally, in those tragedies. He helped to squeeze a gallon of plasma into a girl whose legs had stayed in the pub she'd been in. The girl died before sunrise and no-one I knew got or was offered any kind of counselling.

Eventually I am escorted to a cell. I cannot use description to describe the feelings; the heavy door slams behind you and you can either go mad with any combination of emotions or bite down hard on everything and hunker down into yourself and wait patiently for the situation to improve. I chose the latter. The cell was 10 feet by 6 with a stout wooden shelf that bore a 2" thick vinyl covered mattress. The mattress had a deep indentation in the middle and lesser one that I later found matched my shoulders. I wondered how many crims had reposed here waiting for the outcome of an investigation that might send them to jail or else back into the real world. There was a toilet in an alcove at the narrow end. The ceiling was high, maybe 10 or 11 feet, as were the windows, which were the kind made of thick glass cobbles. Everything was very echoey and there was no handle on the inside of the door. I stepped inside in a sullen mood of resignation. The body search still rankled, I could still feel the latex-covered hands of the female officer tracing the outlines of my flabby and neglected carcass. It hadn't helped that I wasn't wearing any underwear ....

Well dear diary, I will admit that I am lazy cow. But I am also resourceful. I realised that I had a good chance of getting out fairly quickly but that, of course, I had to take legal advice before deciding what to say (or how to say it) in presenting my case when I made myself available for interview. I am the world's worst waiter-in-line, I walk rather than wait for a bus for example. Now I was locked in with nowhere to go and nothing to do and no way to measure the passing of time. I decided then that my only option was to practise some relation tecnhiques. After maybe fifteen minutes I was so relaxed I could almost ooze out under the door. As if! It was so noisy I couldn't concentrate on anything, let alone relaxing. Loud voices, heavy footsteps on hard floors, heavy doors slamming. It's purest bedlam. I concluded that I had experienced all the jail time I was ever going to need. Anything more would amount to cruel and unusual punishment ....

After an hour I was led out to speak to my friend who promised to come and bail me out if I didn't ring her back before midnight. Then back to my cell, where more time elapsed before a friendly face peered through the little hatch that — for the want of the proper term — I shall call the "Joe Sent Me" and asked if I was there because of drugs, presumably because he was able to offer counselling and rehab. Later I was brought a coffee and quite a lot later I was collected to meet my free lawyer.

At last this was going to be sorted out! I asked what was the time. I'd been in custody for four hours.