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the face, they’re not very nice beyond their own kind – I remember the gusto with which some of us had cleaned up the secret wargames that some very similar folk had been playing some years back. They slapped a man who was quietly vomiting against a lamp-post on the back, then staggered into the bright interior of the Saxon Arms, though it was after time down here – not that it was anything to do with me.
    Next I came to a poor old church that I was sorry for, though I’m not religious. A notice said that it was seven hundred years old, but it was arc-lit at the taxpayer’s expense to show where council trendies had fiddled about with it. There was also a board at the lych-gate – gold lettering on a black ground announcing many a long sermon to be preached by a Reverend Eustace Disney-Smith. I built up a glimpse of this person, minor public school and jangling some change in his blue shorts as he pounded up the field on thick but futile legs, blowing a very thin whistle in the mist, ignored by the players and righteously refusing a second shandy in the bar after the match: holy to a fault, yet mingling blamelessly with the boys.
    Further on still stood a recycled cinema with space games on machines that paid out and bingo at street level, called the Lucky Jack Club. But I reckoned that the more spacious part of the building didn’t bother with the unemployed and the OAPs but concentrated on punters who wanted to play blackjack, stud poker, throw dice – win, lose, but grab a bird. I knew this from long experience by the two heavies I spotted leaning on the fake marble entrance, their fists in the pockets of their tight trousers, scanning faces.
    Yes, well, it was what passed for rural Britain now, once you had staggered off your RestRoads bus, whacked your way round some stately homes against the wishes of your ageing heart (‘you’d have done better not to go, George, you ought to have stayed at home and watched the film on BBC2, I told you you’dbe worn out if we did this’), gone round a final castle that let the rain in that was starting and anyway loathed the sight of you (‘No one to cross the white ropes into the Family’s area, please’) and had a look at the desperately fit tigers in the park. I finally got to the police station; it was brand-new. There was also a brand-new squad car, a three and a half Rover, outside to go with it, and two scarcely used young coppers in cheese-cutters sitting up front. We all looked at each other expressionlessly as I drove by. Through the main doors I spotted a young black complaining with his arms at the desk sergeant. It was just like Poland Street; the black might as well have been skanking to his own ghetto-blaster for all the notice anyone took of him. I looked for a place to park but it was solid, so I made a U-turn on to the yellow line in front of the station, braking bonnet to bonnet with the squad car; then I swiched off and got out. The moment I did so, the copper in the passenger’s seat of the squad car got out also, pausing to settle his chessboard hat in a slow and regulation way.
    ‘Evening, sonny,’ he said with a grin, ‘you ever heard of the highway code?’
    ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and I could beat you on it, darling; I’ve been driving since before you were in nappies.’
    The grin died. ‘Trying to be funny, are we?’
    ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but your act isn’t working, and mine doesn’t have to try very hard to beat it.’
    That got us straight to a silence. Into it I said: ‘There’s one thing about me, son. I react very badly to being called sonny – I really, really hate it, see?’
    His mate, the driver, had also got out of the motor and was wandering over, pulling the armchair creases out of his tunic.
    My bloke said: ‘Look, can’t you see you’re parked on a yellow line?’
    ‘I can,’ I said, ‘I’m by no means colour-blind, and where were you parked?’
    ‘Ours is a police vehicle,’ he said, ‘and besides,