Stealth Mode

Most of last night's shift was spent in an unmarked car, much to the delight of the general public.

We'd drift through some part of the town centre, spot some general nuisance, hop out and say "Excuse me", often met by a stunned responce of "Where'd you come from?!" followed by swift apologies.

The other part of the evening was spent doing some subtle obs in a location . Like a stakeout, just ten times more dull than you see in the movies. So we drive down this back road, park outside a member-of-the-public's house (unrelated) to get observations on this particular stretch. Several minutes later MOP comes out of his house, looks at us a little concerned, and goes back in.

"Ah, I suppose we better reassure him." I suggest to my colleague, and quikly hop out to have a word with him.

"Hello there sir. It's the police. We're doing some observations in this area, but I'm afraid I can't really tell what you we're doing."

"Ah right, that's lucky, I was just about to call you."

Maximo Park - Our Velocity

I cannot get this song out of my head at the moment...

Oh no, not another 'social networking' site...

After repeated nagging from a few buddies of mine I've finally joined Facebook.

More wonderful ways to waste hours on rainy days.

Any of you regular readers on it?

Let me know and I'll link to you...

How'd you find me?

Intrigued by the results of others' sitemeter results, I decided to sign this blog up to it to.

And boy, are the results... Eye-opening.... To say the least.

Seems people have chanced upon my blog with the following google search phrases:

transformers snapshots

Fair enough, I mean have been banging on in a geeky fashion how much the kid in me is looking forward to seeing the movie.

target culture

Ah yes. I hate it.

late for work every day

Thankfully, I never am. Powers that be would be rather pissed, as would the shift coming off...

Chris Rae funeral Cromarty

Who?!

inspector monkfish

Oh, he's going to love that...

Stacey

Probably the most heartbreaking words I've ever had to meet. I miss you chick.

why people kill

Good point. Why?

Picture of UK Police Officer in full Uniform

Ooer. Calm yourself, ladies.

Prize-winning Sheppard's Pie

Huh?

Roadblocks

Whilst I was stood out on a busy roundabout of one of the county's main arterial roads this morning...

I realised that I get a strangely perverse pleasure from sealing off roads and telling people they simply cannot go that way.

We've all got to get a little schadenfreude from somewhere.

Keeps us human.

Sicko

Love him or loathe him - this time round he's got a very good point indeed...

Change of scenery

Sunday night was interesting then; the final shift of this block.

Instead of covering my usual market town in the south of the county, because of staff shortages they send me to the other side of the county to assist in covering a somewhat larger market town.

Thank god I was double-crewed on the 22:00 through 07:00 shift. Basically I turned up with little idea how to even get into the police station itself, let alone which sector I’d be covering or who the hell I’d be working with.

Turns out I'll crew one of two cars covering the town and a massive rural area.

Highlights of the night:

• First job – assist other unit at a domestic where male turns up at his ex’s place, pissed-off that she’s got a new boyfriend. Rants & raves outside for a bit before going round the back of her place and putting a brick through one of the windows of her car and ripping off all the windscreen wipers. On arrival he states to the other unit “You’re probably here about the damage I caused then.” Why thank you.
• Blue-light run for miles down one of the county’s main arterial roads at high speed. unsurprisingly we set off a speed camera which is solved with a quick transmission of “Control, can you show a speed camera activation at blah-blah.” Sorted. Report of animals on the carriageway – deer, possibly cows (?!). Area-search no trace when we get there. They’ve doubtless mooved on.
• Report of domestic. Male and female, female states she wants male to be reomoved from the house. Arrive and they're arguing - she slaps him right in front of us. We seperate the two, give a little advice (especially to her), and he then agrees to be taken to a friend's place for a few hours so they can both cool off. As he's walking to the car she then declares "I wan't him back here now so we can talk this over."
• Just before we knock off close to 07:00, report of male coming into one of the train stations on an early-morning service refusing to pay his fare. Foreign male, big burly bloke apparently and the train guard was reluctant to challenge him as he was clutching a piece of official paperwork detaining his court appearance at one of the county’s courts on an assault charge. As two 6ft+’ers we form the welcoming committee and negotiate for him to leave the train and escort him to buy a ticket for the next train, which he does. Phew. Lucky really – an arrest at 06:45 for something would have probably seen us stay on till at least 10:00.

Being out of my usual sector, there was no real paperwork to fill in, as anything I did pick up would be simply assigned to local officers to investigate. Basically the night was just job-to-job.

In a way that’s how police work should be really.

I can dream.

Five by Five

Having been tagged by Girl Next Door a little while back, and being a bit bored this evening. Here's another of those random question thingies...

* * * * *

WHAT WERE YOU DOING TEN YEARS AGO?

Finishing my first year of uni. My god... Such promise. Such fun.

SONGS TO WHICH YOU KNOW ALL THE LYRICS:

Off the top of my head... Those that come to mind.

'Insomnia' by Faithless
'Hold On' by Sarah McLachlan
'Better Things' by Massive Attack
'Porcelain' by Moby
'Pedestal' by Portishead

FIVE THINGS YOU WOULD DO IF YOU WERE A MILLIONAIRE:

Buy a house (maybe then I might be able to afford one in this goddamn market!)
Travel. Loads.
Invest.
Live off the interest.
Pay off any of my friends or families debts.

FIVE BAD HABITS:

Procrastinating
Forgetting my point halfway through a sentence
Driving too fast (ironic that)
Sniffling (and not blowing my nose)
Buying yet more T-Shirts

FIVE THINGS YOU LIKE DOING:

Travelling
Reading
Driving
Imagining
Watching quality TV... Eg. Lost, Prison Break, Battlestar Galactica

FIVE THINGS YOU’LL NEVER WEAR AGAIN:

A fair number of the T-Shirts I own, but refuse to throw
Shell suits
Collar-less shirts (the ones that were big in the 90's)
Bright white trainers
Clothing marked 'XL' when I used to like the baggy look as an indie-kid student

FIVE FAVOURITE TOYS:

New Car (I got me a Focus 1.6 Zetec the other week... Oooo, did I not mention?)
PC
Mobile
Digital Camera
Anything with a Bluetooth connection

TAG! You’re it!

Don't Blame The Stars

Cut My Life Into Pieces

After The Jump

Think, Think, Think

Pics move, in mysterious ways...

Two things...

1. I've uploaded & labelled the Dublin Pics... Yay!

2. Yahoo Photos is winding up its service. Boo. However they have offered a 'shift your pics over to Flickr for free' service. Yay! The archive of my past travel pics are currently being shifted over to Flickr and will appear soon.

In the meanwhile, here's the Dublin shots... Enjoy & please let me know what you think.

www.flickr.com orbital_ing's Dublin - July 2007 photoset

Dublin Rocks!

Here's a quick taster.

More to be uploaded in the coming week.

Suffice as to say...

Dublin rocks!