Just by Meguro station today was a bobby giving out flyers. Which seemed both completely normal and extremely strange all at the same time. It got me thinking about the last time I saw a UK policeman abroad.
It was a strange holiday, it was a beautiful sunny day, Caroline had driven down from Lincoln to Northampton, where I was still living at the time. We’d hit the M1 heading south among the traffic. Taking it gently, its gonna be a long haul today, I look in my mirror and recognise the shades in the sports car behind, so I phone minusbat “Hi Pete, you’re behind me, where you heading?” “Paris, where you going?” “No way! We’re heading there too! I’ll let you past now, see ya on the ferry”.
We never caught up with him…
On the way back, after a lovely weekend with Laurence we encountered a UK police car driving back up the French motorway, the natural instinct being to slow down (they *probably* don’t have justristiction here, but almost certainly have friends in the Gendamerie (sp?)). As we’re passing theres an AA van too, strange, must be some kind of convoy. Then theres a couple of London black cabs. Carrying on for a bit thinking nothing of it, we hit the convoy, we pass taxi after taxi after taxi, about fifteen cabs in we start thinking we should have been counting.
At this point it became obvious that we weren’t going to pull over for the break we had planned at the next services, pressing on, past taxis, taxis and more taxis, there are a few more UK police cars blocking the sliproads joining the road preventing anyone breaking into the middle of the convoy. After miles of passing cabs, there must have been hundreds, possibly a thousand, of them, the road was absolutely clear – they were travelling at a steady 60mph and hadn’t let any other traffic onto the road while they were passing. Time to put my foot down and dash for the ferry in the hope of catching the one before they arrive at Calais.
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