Law And Order

[I've edited this post because it went on and on in too much boring detail].

I’ve just gotten back home after having been ‘detained’ by the police. Basically what happened was…

I was on my way back home from my studio and I heard there was some kind of protest happening and since it was on my way home I decided to see what was going on.

In a nutshell, there were cops blocking the crossroads on three sides (and inexplicably blocking the majority of protesters out). The ‘protest’ consisted of a small bunch of hippies dancing about and hitting a drum somewhat arrthymically. There must have been about five cops for every hippie. And then they wheeled in a bunch of mounted cops.

The atmosphere was getting uncool so I decided to… well, just turn round and take an alternative route home. When suddenly, a whole bunch of other cops who were probably from down south (they had a different uniform) appeared from nowhere and blocked the road off at the back, managing to cause some micro-violence in the process by manhandling anyone who happened to be in the way.

So by now the whole situation was rubbish, unless you were a hippie intent on smashing the system by drinking cider. (This I am not). And anyway… blah blah blah. None of the cops would accept that me and small group of people had been unwittingly trapped and refused to let us out. In fact, most of them refused to even be civil. (‘But officer I am a law abiding citizen, at this exact moment in time’).

And then the aggro cops at the back (ie. one metre behind me) moved forward in a sort of quite-fast-moving-wall-of-cops way. So I got totally bulldozed onto the bridge over the Clyde with all the hippies. They had blocked it at both ends and they kept us there for about an hour. The whole time I just kept thinking, Right if everything kicks off and it’s all hippies and cops and horses fighting I’m going to take my chances and jump in the river. But I didn’t have to in the end. After getting a fair amount of attitude from various officers of the law, I eventually found one cop who bordered on being reasonable. He seemed to realise that not everyone who doesn’t wear a suit is into hanging around on bridges trying to get arrested. And they let us go about our business.

Now, it has to be said, I’m not anti-cop* per se. In fact, my karate sensei is a police (and a very good one, I expect). But those cats really need to cool their boots because there wasn’t the slightest hint of impending violence until they started throwing their weight around.

*I’m more anti-hippie, as it happens.