nunoncastors

I do not particularly like PCSOs, they have a habit of mistaking me for someone else, wasting my time asking stupid questions and trying to be imposing. I wouldn’t object quite so much if they were policemen, proper policemen, but having your time stolen away by a monkey in a high-vis jacket and a little peaked cap is taking the piss as far as I’m concerned, yesterday was a case-in-point.

I’d decided to detour into town on my cycle home; I’d been playing badminton and fancied a bit more of a warm-down than my usual ride would offer, as riding into town adds about four miles to the journey it seemed to be the perfect solution. Clean. Sharp. Efficient. I was a genius.

Unfortunately, as I made my way past Waterstones and up the hill towards Hockley, two PCSOs stopped me.

“Could you stop for a moment, please?”
I stop. “Sure.”
“Can you get off the bike please, I’m not going to talk to you while you’re in the road.”
“What?”
“Get off the bike so we can have a word with you.”
“About what?”
“Get off the bike please, Sir.”
“No. In fact, I’ll be off now.”

At this point, one of them opted to stand in front of me and declare, somewhat dramatically, “You’re not going anywhere!” Well, needless to say I was impressed with his grasp of cliché and immediately began showing him the respect he deserved by laughing.

Eventually I stopped laughing because they both looked quite cross and wanted to know who I was and where I lived, which was nice, because they don’t actually have the authority to ask for that information unless you’re acting in an anti-social manner, which I wasn’t, so I laughed a bit more.

Then they got really cross and said that they were *gasp* calling a policeman. This made me so frightened that I enquired if they could be charged with wasting police time as a) I still had no idea what they wanted, and b) they’d certainly wasted enough of mine.

Finally, the bombshell was dropped; I fit the description of a man who had been thrown out of one of the bars for being drunk and threatening the staff.

“… Right, and do I seem drunk and aggressive to you?”
“Well, no.”
“That’s because I’m not, I’m tired and sarcastic. I do wonder though, did this aggressive drunk ride a bicycle from the scene of his shouting and flailing? Did he duck into a sports shop and buy a rucksack full of badminton kit? I suspect he didn’t. I’ll be off then.”

And so I was. Furiously off into the night, thirty minutes the poorer because two fuckwits can’t think for themselves. It’s not as though I was planning on doing anything with that half-hour, maybe keep it spare in case I wanted to do something that wasn’t standing around in the cold talking to idiots, but it’s the principle behind it. They stole thirty minutes of my life, thirty minutes I can’t get back.