Wednesday and the pressures of actually working for a living and being grown up proved all too much. Alarm went off at 6am and I felt like a wino’s lunch box. Called my lift and told him to go ahead without me and did the required procedural thing of calling the police college to tell them I wouldn’t be “on duty” today (i.e. sitting in a seminar room all day trying not to bite my nails or chew my lower lip to ribbons with boredom). The change of pace from being unemployed, getting up at lunchtime and doing what the hell I liked to having a “routine” has taken its toll. Getting up between 5 and 6am every morning and cycling up a 2 mile, 1:3 gradient hill that has fog at the bottom probably didn’t do my immune system a whole heap of favours either, particularly with the lousy weather and the fact that I’m in my late 30s. Only good thing about this was I managed to finish a rough version of the poxy assignment they’ve told us to cobble together for our Diversity placement. The way this was sold to us before we left training college a month ago was that it was going to be soooo good that we would NOT want to leave and they were going to push us beyond our “comfort zones” and place us in communities that we’d never experienced before. So after rigorous research and going over my resume with a fine tooth comb they put a teacher with over 10 years experience working with teenagers into a school for teenagers. My casual mentioning of the fact that I would not only be in my comfort zone but wrapped up in a duvet was met with some red faced blustering from the placement organiser and a promise that next time I’d be working with Help the Aged. The whole point of this pantomime is to allow us a peek into the worlds that we patrol and to have us mingle with members of the community that we otherwise wouldn’t see. Fine in theory but as my mate Ben put it last night “the police never thought they’d live in a society where any of this would be an issue so they don’t know how to deal with it”. So instead they cobble together well intentioned but infuriatingly childish and badly thought out attempts to have us embrace our wider world. Another trainee officer told me he was in a school for kids booted out of the normal curriculum where a 14 year old girl tried to set another on fire (and by that I mean actually threw petrol on her and was sparking up the disposable Bic before someone intervened). He was also apparently called a c*nt on his first day by some vile little toe rag even though the kid thought he was a teacher and not a cop. So…I know full and depressingly well that the way to get an A+ on this assignment is to wax lyrical on just how much of a joyous, nae spiritually fulfilling journey my 5 days working with kids was AND how I had to have my fingers physically prised from the front door frame due to my tearful reluctance to give it up. The “honesty and integrity” thing seems to be having its faith tested. Thursday morning and I’m dressed in my best waterproof cycling gear including over trousers and a rather vile cap that fits over my cycling helmet when suddenly the wheels lock. Being stubborn and bleary eyed I simply kept shoving down on the pedals until they became completely immobile. With much cursing I then discovered to my unparalleled joy that the bungee cord I keep on the rear pannier rack had slipped, got caught around a spoke on the rear wheel and my furious force had caused it to become completely entrenched in the main cog. No chance of fixing it in under 2 minutes so I had to run the mile to the train station wearing Caterpillar boots, a rucksack, a bright yellow jacket, a cycling helmet covered in a black shower cap and black plastic trousers. The dark tranquillity of the local neighbourhood at 7am was marred slightly by my puffing and panting, the rhythmic thudding of my heavy boots and the swishing of my plastic pants. As I came into the final stretch on another bastard of a steep hill some poor woman wheeling her suitcase down the pavement turned round to see what the noise was and jumped back, squeaking in shock as what probably looked like a mouldy banana came hurtling down the street at her. Made it onto the train without about 2 minutes to spare and when I met my mate for my lift to college, had to apologise for making his car seat a bit damp from my sweat-sodden clothing. Our lecturer for Searches is also my personal tutor and proved to be a diamond in the rough on Friday when he said during the chat on ‘sensitivity to the community’ in Search Planning that he would never take his shoes off when entering a Muslim household for the purposes of a search. I agreed with him and added that I'd been afraid to say anything for fear of being singled out. We had a group chat on the merits of leaving one’s Magnums on one’s feet, particularly as a suspect might ‘make off’ if we’re standing there in our socks, or worse still stamp on our toes before doing a runner. He mentioned a cop he knew who had a Sikh pull a sword on him for picking up the Koran in ignorance during a search which led to the logical surmising from one trainee that any Sikh with any sense would hide the stuff you’re looking for in the book. He then said that he is not Politically Correct at all and told us ‘off the record’ that we should not ‘put our heads over the parapet’ and take what we learn from Diversity training onto division with us. This got murmurs of approval from most of the class and direct thanks from me and a couple of others. His sage advice was that while we have been told to challenge anything we think is inappropriate that we see another officer doing whilst on duty, this will only make enemies of us and unless it’s something incredibly serious, to let it all slide. This has put some of my fears to bed about being un-PC as I bloody loathe and despise this sodding bollocks and it’s reassuring to know that there is some acknowledgment (albeit unofficial) of the “real” world. Another lecturer broke down the force’s structure and main divisions and said that the Commanders over each area are like “feudal barons” from the days of yore and the whole thing is a heptarchy of jealously guarded power and the right to rename departments to whatever the new commander wants it to be called (SOCO is now CSI, no surprise there). It’s also funny how operations get named. I was told that the names are randomly generated affairs so the one I dreamt up during my time as a Special had the random moniker of Operation Theatre, despite it being about cyclists without lights and not misdemeanours at the London Palladium. I would have believed this lottery theory were it not for the fact that the 'getting together' of the top boys in London for emergency meetings in the event of major crisis (and by this I mean the Met, BTP and City police commissioners, MI5, MI6 and anyone else deemed important enough) has the well ‘ard name of Operation Cobra. Still I suppose it sounds better to have the headline “PM convenes Cobra” rather than “PM convenes Cauliflower”. | 