When I popped out for lunch earlier, there’s an intersection I always cross at the lights for as traffic is often tricky. I should state that I have spent my life jaywalking at every opportunity all over the world. The oncoming traffic has a left hand arrow that changes to red for the pedestrian crossing. Folk often ignore it so I’m always vigilant when crossing. Sure enough as I started to cross, opposite car drove on oblivious and driver was chatting away on his mobile phone. I gave him the finger but he didn’t notice and I completed my crossing. What I hadn’t noticed, until the siren went off, was that there was a police car waiting at the red light on my side of the intersection. He put his siren on, turned around and went after the guy and pulled him over. When I heard the siren, I initially thought he was after me for giving someone the finger :-)

Sign of old age #422 the police are for you and not against you :-)

I remember when I first got my P plates, back in my Bankstown days. I used to go roller skating every Friday night at the local skating rink, then would drive friends home, via Chuckers, afterward. On one such evening, around midnightish, a police car followed me. Needless to say, as a young driver, I was very nervous having a police car behind me, so I slowed even further. I was driving in the back streets to get my friend home, then as my nervousness got the better of me, I took a couple of wrong turns, and still the police were behind me. By this stage I’d gotten lost and was about to head back to the highway when they switched on their siren and flashing lights and pulled me over. The policeman asked me various questions about what I was doing and where I was going; he said that I’d been driving very “suspiciously” and they were concerned as to what I was up to. They eventually let me go and I took my friends home – I was very shaken that night.

With that said, most of my encounters with the police have been pretty good, even when they were giving me a speeding ticket (deserved). And I loved them even more when they turned up after my house was broken into (several years ago). They commented on the mess and I had to confess that the mess was actually mine – they were very understanding for which I was eternally grateful. They never found my stolen DVDs though. Curiously, while the thieves took a third of my DVDs (amongst other things), they left The Sound of Music alone in that section.