Cumbria’s Keystone Cops and the Big Bang

You’re having a bad day when you’re taken ill suddenly. What could make it worse? Maybe the police having your car blown up?

I really feel for the poor guy who was taken ill in Workington recently. Helpfully, the police kindly looked after his car and took it back to the station.

So far, so good. Unfortunately, by the next morning they’d forgotten about it due to an “internal communication error” and spotting “suspicious objects” within decided to be on the safe side and call out the artillery.

Evacuating the station, closing the A596 and putting a 100m cordon in place, they carried out a controlled explosion on the vehicle. I’m making a wild guess here, but the local police getting a bomb disposal team to blow up your car probably affects your no claims discount adversely.

In a wonderful example of hiding your mistake inside a complicated sentence, following the unnecessary detonation of the innocent Vauxhall Corsa the aftermath of this high-drama moment was beautifully described by a spokesman thus: “...the vehicle was searched and the suspicions were negated”.

By which I assume they mean “We got a dustpan and brush, couldn’t find anything dodgy and then realised the only danger here is to our chances of being viewed as competent”.

Do you think there was an officer at home the previous evening, watching Corrie and thinking “I’m sure there was something I was meant to tell the next shift...”? Still, the police have apologised to the unfortunate owner who, if he didn’t feel sick before, almost certainly does now.

I’d imagine listening to the call at Workington police station afterwards sounded something like this:

“Good morning – Workington police station, how can I help you? Mr...? Oh... right, yes. How are you feeling now? Better? Good. You’d like to come and pick your Corsa up? *cough* Yes, of course. Now?! Uh... right. Can I suggest that whoever drops you off waits for you? And can you bring some heavy duty bin bags..?”

“Sir? Sir? Hello..? Sarge, I think we need an Ambulance...”

Still, we’ve all forgotten something important at some point. I’m at that stage in life where I go into a room and forget what day of the week it is, so I can hardly talk. On the bright side, no-one was hurt, the bomb disposal team had a fun day out, and a spokesman got to write some important sounding stuff like “The Constabulary will review this incident and take on board any learning” when they really mean “Oopsie. My bad.”

At least it sends out a strong message to Workington’s wrong-uns; Mess with the boys and girls in blue round here, and you’ll find yourself in an explosive situation. Light our blue touchpaper and you’ll find out we’re dynamite on crime. We’ve got a short fuse for law-breaking.

I’m done with the bad explosives puns now. Carry on. Hmm... where did I park my car..?

This post first appeared as my 'Thank grumpy it's Friday' column, in the North West Evening Mail, on the 10th of February 2017. Whilst the version online retained my suggested title, the print edition dropped the (admittedly somewhat obscure) b&w silent films reference, and went with "That bang's out of order!" Clever. Liking that.

Surprisingly, the page 2 teaser carried the entire first paragraph, in a font so small they should probably have issued a free microscope with each copy of the paper.

This one pretty much wrote itself. What a marvellous cock-up of a story. So embarrassing was it, that it made quite of few of the national papers, although I did notice that they has pretty much copied the NWEM's report word for word. Cheeky.

Of course, I'm now fully expecting to be pulled over by the local constabulary at regular intervals, for compounding their misery.

"Your back light doesn't appear to be working, sir."

"Yes it is!"

*smash*

"See what I mean, sir?"

*Ulp...*

(CD A-Z on hold for the new, and wonderfully indulgent, 3 CD set "Top of the Pops 1980-1984". Oh, yes...)

Making an exhibition of yourself

Now and again, it’s good to reaffirm that you’re a (relatively) normal human being. One excellent way of doing this is to go to a business exhibition. Despite what you might have surmised from reading my previous columns, I am employable, and even capable of acting like a regular person most of the time, even joining in the Monday morning conversation about the weather over the weekend, and why (insert name of footyballs manager here) should be fired immediately. The mug! True, there are times, often involving a caffeine deficiency, where it is like having the distilled essence of ten moody teenagers in the room, but I try and get that out of the way when people I genuinely like aren’t around to see it. As part of my ongoing experiment with what others call ‘working’, my ‘job’ involves me occasionally needing to go and see what some of my colleagues get up to outside the office, and what our competitors do to try and make sure that they do whatever my colleagues do better than ...

"It's all gone quiet..." said Roobarb

If, like me, you grew up (and I’m aware of the irony in that) in the ‘70s, February was a tough month, with the sad news that Richard Briers and Bob Godfrey had died. Briers had a distinguished acting career and is, quite rightly, fondly remembered most for his character in ‘The Good Life’. Amongst his many roles, both serious and comedic, he also lent his voice to a startling bit of animation that burst it’s wobbly way on to our wooden-box-surrounded screens in 1974. The 1970s seemed to be largely hued in varying shades of beige, with hints of mustard yellow and burnt orange, and colour TV was a relatively new experience still, so the animated adventures of a daft dog and caustic cat who were the shades of dayglo green and pink normally reserved for highlighter pens, must have been a bit of a shock to the eyes at the time. It caused mine to open very wide indeed. Roobarb was written by Grange Calveley, and brought vividly into life by Godfrey, whose strange, shaky-looking sty...

Suffering from natural obsolescence

You know you’re getting old when it dawns on you that you’re outliving technological breakthroughs. You know the sort of thing – something revolutionary, that heralds a seismic shift it the way the modern world operates. Clever, time-saving, breathtaking and life-changing (and featuring a circuit board). It’s the future, baby! Until it isn’t any more. I got to pondering this when we laughed heartily in the office about someone asking if our camcorder used “tape”. Tape? Get with the times, Daddy-o! If it ain’t digital then for-get-it! I then attempted to explain to an impossibly young colleague that video tape in a camcorder was indeed once a “thing”, requiring the carrying of something the size of a briefcase around on your shoulder, containing batteries normally reserved for a bus, and a start-up time from pressing ‘Record’ so lengthy, couples were already getting divorced by the time it was ready to record them saying “I do”. After explaining what tape was, I realised I’d ...

grumpyf1

Search This Blog