The flashing blue light in the rear view mirror isn't usually a good thing.
I wasn't unduly concerned. It may have been dark, but to my knowledge I was not speeding and Shed 7 hadn't indicated that a bulb had blown. No, it was, said the jovial cop, "a routine stop".
Now I'm the first to get all agitated about a creeping police state and penalty-points-through-the-post officialdom, but this was different. This was the police service interacting with a taxpayer being unfailingly polite and smiley.
I am lucky enough not to live in some urban hellhole where a driver and passenger could be packing AK-47s. I am just an old middle class bloke in a large car that's not stolen in no real hurry to get home.
So, although there are rural cattle and farm machinery rustlers and idiot youngsters in mobile boom boxes on Friday and Saturday nights, on the whole, the police don't have too hard a time in the sticks. But that is not the point – whatever the circumstances, this officer gave a truly wonderful textbook example of how to deal with the general driving public.
I promptly dug out my driving licence, a proper old-school, falling-apart paper one. I was checked against all the relevant databases, and it passed off so quickly that my daughter in the passenger seat barely noticed the intrusion and only briefly looked up from her smart phone. She just found it funny that I had been stopped.
My daughter already has a very positive view of the police because she is in the army cadets and most of the officers in charge are police.
The point of all this is that the more we come into contact with the police, the better it is for everyone. The increasing reliance on cameras and computers is a bad thing.
Bring back real coppers and loads more of them, I say. I trust you agree?
