Daft

I watched one of those much beloved Police documentaries last night. They’re much beloved by the TV stations because they afford cheap entertainment, by the police because they get the chance to show how great they are, and by the viewers because we’re all spitting feathers at the arrogance of our boys in blue. The irony of it all is that the police really haven’t got the faintest idea that they are being smug. And so last night we saw two of England’s finest stopping a cyclist who had ridden through a red light in the small hours of the morning. They eventually got him for:

• Running a red light
• Riding without lights
• Riding on the pavement
• Obstructing the police

They also accused him of being drunk which may or may not have been the case. In any event, he was a good deal more erudite than the two policemen, especially when he asked them, incredulously, whether they didn’t have anything better to do at 1am on a Saturday morning, than arguing the toss with him about such a petty matter. It was all to no avail. The cyclist was subsequently fined a whopping great £700 with £200 costs. And didn’t that make the police feel smug.

It was daftness of a darker kind later on Channel 4 with a documentary about a US Army Company in Afghanistan. I only caught the tail end of it but I did manage to see the bit where a group of sheepish US marines, presented an Afghan man with $10,000 as compensation for the four family members they’d accidentally killed the previous day. It was surreal television, the soldiers sitting shamefaced before the stunned Afghan; a much older man sitting cross-legged next to him, silently weeping and wiping away the tears. The American soldiers didn’t want to be there and the Afghanistan people certainly didn’t want to be there. We were treated to US marines who were genuinely proud of a mosque they’d helped build, while the indigenous population smiled politely and then said to the cameras that they simply just wanted them to get the hell out.

Finally, tattoos. I’ve never felt the slightest inclination to have somebody stick needles into me and scar me for life and so I personally can’t understand why anybody would want to brand themselves, especially as so much of the branding is so unoriginal – cobwebs on the elbows, LOVE and HATE on the knuckles. I mean, if you have to write on your hands wouldn’t it be more useful, for instance, to tattoo 1 2 3 4 5 and 6 7 8 9 10 to save you the bother of counting on your fingers? Or perhaps, F*** and C***, so that you can wave the F*** hand in the air when you stub your toe, and the C*** hand when you’re waving to a policeman.

On my way into work this morning, a girl cycled past me who had half a dozen stars tattooed on her calf. I mean, what’s the point of that? And that’s the other thing about tattooed Brits, they love to show off their artwork. So it can be freezing cold, or pouring with rain, and yet somebody will still cycle past you in shorts because they want you to see their calf stars. Like I say, daft.