Today, when driving home from Manchester at about 10 o clock or so, my driving was not particularly sharp. I had just eaten a massive Indian meal at a nice-looking (but not nearly as nice-tasting) indian restaurant, and my stomach was holding its own private little revolution. It felt as if the stomach acids tried to chew their way through my spleen and onto the car upholstery, to be honest, and I wasn’t having any of it.
In addition to this, I was tired, drove 85 mph most of the way (national speed-limit is 70), and spent a great deal of time on the telephone to a few friends, to find out if they were still alive. The first two phone-calls were done on my hands-free, but it ran out of battery, so the rest was done by holding the phone, much in the way you would hold a banana to your ear, if you were to pretend you were holding a phone. Except I didn’t have any bananas, and I wasn’t actually pretending.
Just as I got off the M62, I notice a police-van behind me. One of those yellow CCTV vans. I have no idea how long it was following me. But it kept following me . Off the M62. All the time, keeping its distance, but behind me. So I just stick to the speed limits, figuring that if they were going to pull me over, they would have done so by now. I drive the regular route home, which involves a lot of turning, changing lanes, and going on and off dual carriage-ways.
All the way, this police-van keeps tracking. The time from the M62 to my house can’t be much more than 7 minutes or so, but those were the longest minutes of my life. At the last stoplight before my house, another police car suddenly pulls out in front of me, and I had to emergency-break for the knobjockey. Of course, this puts me in the unenviable position of having to slam on the breaks for one police-car, only narrowly avoiding hitting it, as I screech to a halt behind the police-car, in front of a red light, but the police-van behind me also had to break hard to avoid slamming into me.
Of course, I take great care in maneuvering extra carefully from then on. I take a right into one of the side-streets. The police-car in front continues straight on, but the van behind me follows. “Oh”, I think, “Interesting. Perhaps he needs to go to London Road” (London Road is a pretty big and relatively notorious road that runs on the other side of before-mentioned side-street, so the assumption was not too strange.
At the T-crossing, i turn left. From here on, you are on a one-way-street system, and the only reason to turn left is if you need to be at either our estate, or another (much smaller) estate. The police van actually follows me around this corner. I’m now seriously worried. My stomach is churning madly, and I feel as if a very quick trip to the toilet is starting to be necessary, in order to avoid the impending disaster. I turn left (again, the road to both estates), and the van keeps following.
The safety gate leading into our compound is open (so much for *safety*, eh?), and I drive through. To my horror, I notice that the police is still following me.
So I just park up, and get my camera bag out of the back. The police van pulls up very closely behind my car, and one of the policepeople gets out.
“Uh, hi, officer, can I help you?”
“Maybe you can. You were driving a bit erratically earlier. You haven’t been drinking, have you?”
“Uh.. No, I haven’t, actually. I’m just a wee bit tired, I’m afraid”.
“Oh, okay. You wouldn’t mind just doing a quick breathalyser test for us, then, would you?”
“Uh.. No, of course not. No problem. But.. eh.. Would it be okay if I went to the toilet first? I really gotta go, you see.”
The police-guy looks at me as if I am suffering from leprosy, and as if the entire left side of my face had just fallen off.
“Excuse me?”
“Well, I had indian food before, and I think it may have been a bit dodgy. I really need to go. Come upstairs, if you like?”
So the police-fellow follows me upstairs into the house. As I open the door, the alarm goes off (it does that some times), and I fumble with the key-code, punching it in wrong twice (still trying to avert an underwear-disaster), feeling like a complete idiot. The police-dude looks at all of this as if I just broke into the house, and am trying to get away with it.
Finally, I manage to quell the alarm-whine back into silence, and I reset the alarm. I then point at the living-room, say something about making himself at home, dive into the bathroom, and perform a very loudly audible set of bowel movements. Never felt so relieved in my life.
So I wash my hands and stagger back into the hallway, where the police-fellow is still standing, with both his feet outside the threshold of the outer door.
“Oh, you shoulda come in! The sofa is quite comfortable”, I say, nervously trying to make conversation, which, in retrospect, must have sounded more like drunken ramblings than polite conversation.
“You didn’t have any alcohol with your food, did you?”, he says, eyeing me suspiciously.
“Nope, not a drop”, I say, in truth, as I only had orange juice
“In fact, i don’t think i’ve had any alcohol since I went to a concert on sunday - nearly a week ago!”
“Oh, well then this test shouldn’t pose any problems”.
I swallow, and proceed to follow the nice policeman’s instructions as to how I need to breathe calmly into the breathalyser.
Of course, the result is clean.
“Thank you for your time, Mr Kamps. Sorry to bother you. You weren’t planning on driving any more today, were you?”
“No, I’ll be hitting the sack immediately, I think”
“Sounds like a good idea. Good night, mr Kamps”
“Yeah, you too. Oh, and happy easter! Need help finding your way out?”
“No, I think I will be all right. Happy easter to you too. Bye”
… he said, and was gone.