Published at 09:38, Friday, 20 November 2009

I SPENT much of the weekend with my fingers thrust so deeply into my ears I believe I may have tapped into a seam of wax which had lain undisturbed since 1957.

Even then, I was still unable to completely blot out the insistent shrill of a burglar alarm, which sounded non-stop for somewhere around 36 hours.

It started off quite urgently, but as the hours wore on the shriek gradually reduced in volume to a howl, and then a fairly feeble but still irritating tinkle which buzzed on like a dentist’s drill until finally petering out.

The thing was, apart from complaining about the din, no-one actually turned up to deal with the burglary that was supposedly going on.

Neither the owners of the property, nor the police, seemed unduly bothered by the cacophony, so the men in black masks and stripy jumpers could have carried off as many bags helpfully labelled “swag” over their shoulders as they could get their hands on.

There was a time when a furiously clanging burglar alarm would bring every poliss from miles around, blowing whistles and puffing portentously along the street, but it seems our modern bobbies are obliged by statute to fill in forms rather than feel collars.

I have had more dealings than most with the boys in blue over the years, virtually all of it, I have to say, in my professional capacity rather than as a ne’er-do-well.

By and large, they have been a canny bunch, until red tape and regionalisation took over.

Like most children of the 1950s, I held policemen in total awe, and felt guilty for days should I have perchance ridden my bike without lights on my way to my paper round.

I quaked at every knock on the door, should t’bobby have belatedly arrived to carry me away to the Naughty Boys’ Home.

As a trainee reporter, it was one of my daily tasks to call at the police station, and have a personal audience with the duty inspector, who would painstakingly go through the daily log of every single occurrence of the previous 24 hours, from lost cats, minor road accidents, UFO sightings and suspicious persons seen loitering, to unexploded bombs and dogs being run over.

All names and addresses were freely provided, and were duly published, without a single complaint to the best of my recollection.

Now you need to know of any incidents in advance, and prise the information out of a press office reportedly briefed to tell the press nowt, for fear of alarming the public.

We also got to be quite pally with individual officers too, who would tip you the wink if anything major was happening on the patch, in return for a cigar and a half-bottle of whisky at Christmas.

I was once crossing Hexham Market Place around 8.30 one night, when the exhaust dropped off my car. As well as emitting a fearful noise from the unsilenced engine, the exhaust was trailing on the floor.

To make things worse, a uniformed constable appeared, striding purposefully towards me.

But, instead of licking his pencil and quoting the Vehicles (Construction and Use) regulations, he got down on his back on the wet road, and used his truncheon to remove the dangling exhaust, before loading it into the boot, and sending me on my way with a Dixon of Dock Green salute.

I have never had much luck with alarms myself, as one once caused me to be brayed over the head with an umbrella.

My insurance company insisted I had one fitted to my Fiat Tipo, which I parked in the Wentworth car park while I went to make some purchases at Presto.

When I returned to the car, a woman was just getting into her car parked in the space next door, and I bade her a cheery good morning as I opened the boot.

There was a blaze of ear-splitting sound as my new car alarm burst into action, and my screech of shock was followed by the angry roar of a baby, and the anguished wail of its mother.

She advanced on me with eyes ablaze, wielding her umbrella like Saladin’s scimitar, and shouting between blows: “It’s taken me an hour to get the little bugger to sleep, only for a cretin like you to wake him up in a single second.”

There was more – much more – but I disappeared to nurse my bruises.

Published by http://www.hexhamcourant.co.uk