I'm very humbled that certain folk have missed me and others have worried that the rubber heelers have sussed me out.
The simple fact is that there have been a number of unrelated reasons why this blog has not figured high in my priorities of late.
Firstly, I have recently changed ISP, upgraded my PC's memory and added a DVD rewriter and oh how I like playing with my new toys! Speaking of which there's now a Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii to enjoy as well. I should grow up and yesterday I did. OK, I will forgive all of you for forgetting to wish me well.
Secondly, I have changed beat and as Gazza will confirm, WOW, quelle difference. Having suffered the PAIN of patrolling the very hub of Toytown™, I now look after a morass of sink estates and bizarrely this has proved so much more fun and a tonic to my weary body.
I now have time to breathe between calls and (apologies for the boss speak) am so much more pro-active. My intel stats and performance measured activities have sky-rocketed and YOU know how important that is these days.
I come home with a smile and go to work actually looking forward to a shift (well as much as anyone loves going to work!) Long may it continue.
This has had the effect of me being considerably less stressed at work and at home.
Accordingly, I have become a human again (well as human as a Copper ever can) and humans do more than sit in front of the internet grumbling about their job being shafted by Politicos. I think it is no coincidence then that the best (or most consistent) bloggers are fellow response officers, who are suffering the result of incessant tampering with the way the job is approached. You should therefore logically be able to measure my level of stress by the quantity of posts I submit. Please tell me how I'm getting on if you start to worry!
I'm not one to kiss and tell when it comes to calls I attend, well not until a fair bit of dust has settled, but my return to the wonders of policing cooncil estates has encouraged me to spill the beans on one I went to on the last set of Nights.
I received a hurried point to point from one of my female colleagues advising things were 'a little heated' at her call. She was with another female colleague at a flat trying to extricate a teenaged quine from her father on the instructions of the equally overstretched and thus absent SWD.
Big Daddy (see below) wasn't having any of it. My male colleague and I blued and two'd it down to their locus and ran up the stairs to see a doppelgänger for 'five bellies' yelling the usual bravado at us including the fact that he would, "spik to youse quines, but I'm nae spikin to yon twa fucking cunts." I retorted with a, "Nice to meet you too Sir."
He went on to advise us that it would take more than me and my colleagues to remove the wean. I took this to mean he would stand sideways in the corridor and effectively block any light with his belly, but apparently he was ready for a fight according to my colleagues as their fingers were itching over their CS sprays. I am such an optimist! Anyway, using God's best weapon we gobshited our way out of the hovel masquerading as a house with the wean, who incidentally was nearly awarded an Oscar for her panic attack scene.
Now all this took place well past bedtime (about 3.30 am) and in all the accompanying yelling and wailing (mainly from me, because my refreshment was chilling in the Microwave where I'd hurriedly left it) WE had woken an upstairs resident, who in wonderfully feminine and erudite language advised us WE had woken two of her precious wee darlings and wished the "fucking pigs" an early death and questioned our parentage from a now widely opened and surprisingly intact window of the close's top landing.
It's great to be appreciated for all the work we do.
Back soonish.
p.s.
There was a third reason for not posting i.e. there's been a lot of footie on the telly, but I will not be spurred on to elucidate on that!
© Mr Plod
Published by Toy Town™ Times
