Fats Navarro

This is one of my dad’s favourite trumpet players and had the kind of bright sad life that jazz historians get all teary eyed about. It’s the kind of life my dad might have had if my mum hadn’t come along and taken care of him.

Born in 1923 in Key West, Florida Fats muscled into the New York jazz scene in the late 1940s playing with greats like Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins and Benny Goodman. My dad says that he might have been the greatest horn player ever if he hadn’t got hooked on smack, contracted TB and died in 1950 aged just 26.

Sometime I wonder if there isn’t something about really great jazz musicians that attracts this kind of self destructive behaviour but my dad says that anyone can be stupid it’s just that when they’ve got a talent you miss them when their gone.

100% Brain

The incomparable constable Perky accused me of using the other 90% of my brain to do the things I’m not really supposed to talk about on a public forum. I asked her what she was talking about and she said it was a well known fact that we only 10% of our brain.

This, I suspect, is news to our brains or at least those of us who use to actually use them to think stuff. In the first instance it’s bollocks because keen people like Dr Walid have been attaching electrodes to people’s heads for years now and have found that we, surprise surprise, use all of our brain. In the second instance it wouldn’t make sense biologically since having a brain uses up some ridiculous percentage of our total energy budget and evolution doesn’t hand out free lunches to unnecessary organs – if you’re going to stay – says the organism – you’re going to work. So I don’t know about you personally but I’m using 100% of my brain all the time.

The Ford Asbo

In case you were wondering why I call it this...

University College Hospital

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University College Hospital takes up two whole blocks between Tottenham Court Road and Gower Street. Founded in the nineteenth century, its main claim to fame was as the teaching hospital for the University College of London and the birthplace of one Peter Grant, apprentice wizard. Since that momentous day in the mid-1980s, half the site had been redeveloped into a gleaming blue and white tower that looked as if a bit of Brasilia had crash-landed in the middle of Victorian London.

Chapter 6: The Coach House

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In 1848 it was the venue for the first ever operation conducted under a general anaesthetic and is currently a world centre for cryptopathology although only about three people actually know that. The eccentric Edwardian folly, known as the Cruciform Building, was built in 1906 but has recently been sold to the biology faculty of the University College London so that their students can do their strange and terrifying experiments in a suitably gothic environment.

And now for something mellow...

U-ing -illiant innit?

I wet myself.

Chocolate Valentine

I was looking for a cheap place to buy microprocessors but found myself browsing Ghanaian chocolate instead. Now for those of you who fell asleep during geography Ghana is a major producer of cocoa beans but like most developing nations gets itself royally screwed by the foreign companies that manufacture the actual product elsewhere. The real money in cash crops is what you do with them between the farm and the punter and the big mark up that involves. This is what economists call adding value and getting it done in your own country is the difference between actually being a developing country and being that shit poor place where bad things happen..

Obviously the Ghanaian Finance Ministry know this too and so to promote indigenous chocolate eating of indigenous chocolate they have declared the 14th of February as Chocolate Day. All over Ghana, they hope, romantic boys are giving romantic girls bars of Golden Tree chocolate (or maybe even the deluxe gift set). I on the other hand am spending Valentine’s day with my Police Officers handbook brushing up on my court procedure in case I have to give evidence at the magistrates court.

The TSG

Because sometimes more really is more!

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The TSG are the Territorial Support Group. These are the guys that tool around in Mercedes Sprinter vans with equipment lockers stuffed with everything from riot helmets to tasers. Every borough command has a couple of these buzzing around their operational area, especially at closing time, and there’s a reserve force held on standby just in case of unexpected events. I suspected that current events counted as unexpected.

Chapter 12: The Last Resort

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We may take the piss, and we do, but sometimes, when you’re facing off against a pub full belligerent drunks or a hen party that’s just gone very very wrong there’s nothing quite as comforting as a TSG van pulling up to the curb. Because they only turn up when things go pear shaped they have most complaints of any branch of the Metropolitan Police. This allows us ordinary coppers to don our halos and basically blame everything that goes wrong on them.

The Naked Ladies

Right next to Eel Pie Island, where my dad and Mick Jagger once played, is a council owned garden with a set of beautiful white marble statues of naked women. I looked them up on Wikipedia which gives the mundane story of how they come to be there but I have my own suspicions as to why they all got restoration treatment in 1989. My governor says that it’s an important shrine but he hasn’t told me who to yet.

More importantly the statues have inspired a local ale called, appropriately, The Naked Ladies. I’ve tried it and its very good. Now you don’t have to be half Sierra Leonean to appreciate the role beer plays in traditional religions as a libation and an outright bribe so I’ll let you draw your own conclusions. If you you’re down there why have a look, have a pint and pay your respects.

Father Thames?

I don't think so.

How to talk Proper

A good tutorial on how to talk proper if you unfortunate enough to be born posh or American. Study it well my son and you will find yourself blending in at any bleeding social event or appearing as an extra in 'Lie to Me'

The Iain West Forensic Suite

Its official name is the Iain West Forensic Suite, and it represents the Home Office’s best attempt to make one of its mortuaries look as cool as the ones in American TV shows. In order to keep filthy policemen from contaminating any trace evidence on the body, there was a special viewing area with live autopsies piped in by closed-circuit television. This had the effect of reducing even the most grisly post-mortem to nothing more than a gruesome TV documentary.

Chapter 2: Ghost Hunting Dog

The forensic suite is attached to Westminster Mortuary and is named after the cheerfully flamboyant pathologist Iain West. A man who’d had his gloved fingers inside the vitals of such luminaries as Robert Maxwell and Jill Dando and it’s down to him that we have a computerised database of injury photographs – never access this on a full stomach by the way. I personally could do without ever going in there again – thank you very much.

Our Founder

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Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light.

Alexander Pope

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Slang: Old Style

Jack: a detective.

Lurcher: Essentially your basic greyhound crossed with a collie or similar in order to produce a fast dog with brains that can be used for poaching, racing and hare coursing.

Lush: An alcoholic beverage .

Lushery: A place where a lush may be had. A low public house or drinking den.

Plant: A victim.

Put the jack on: Inform to the police (see Jack).

Slag: A person of low self esteem, a woman of loose morals, someone Ray Winstone doesn’t like.

Metropolitan Police Ranks

PC or Police Constable: the brave men and women that are the back bone of the Police Service, out in all hours and weather to be selflessly spat at, abused and vomited on by members of the public. I for one salute them especially since I'm now no longer one of them.

DC or Detective Constable (DC): someone who has passed their detective exam and got a nice job in CID or a specialist unit. Try to get here as soon as possible in your career unless you've got your eye on ACPO (1).

Sergeant or Detective Sergeant (DS): Even more exams, even more paperwork, even more responsibility but on the other hand you get to boss people about. If you're friendly you can call a Detective Sergeant by their first name but I like to stick to sarge, guv or boss - just to be on the safe side.

Inspector or Detective Inspector (DI): this is where you get to be in charge of stuff, a shift, a specialist unit, one third of a murder squad. I've been told it's not as much fun as it sounds but I think I'll wait and see.

Chief Inspector or Detective Chief Inspector (DCI): Here you walk the razors edge between the light, ordinary plain speaking coppers, and the darkness, business speak obsessed control freaks. You will be a running a nick or a murder squad, people below you will be coming to you with their problems and will expect you to know what to do, your superiors will be coming to you with their problems and will expect you to sort them out!

Superintendent or Detective Superintendent (DSI): My boss is a DCI, in fact everybody I know's boss is a DCI. I don't know the precise purpose or function of this rank I just bloody well do what I'm told.

Chief Superintendent or Detective Chief Superintendent (DCS): Congratulations you are as high as you can go without selling your soul to ACPO(2). You are in charge of a entire Borough Command or a major specialised unit you definately have your own parking space that much is certain.

ACPO(3): stands for the Association of Chief Police Officers, a dark and sinister conspiracy that is part trade union, part coordinating committee for all the police forces and part NGO. You are inducted into ACPO when you reach the rank of Commander, beyond that are Deputy Assistant Commissioners, the Assistant Commissioners who stand at the left and right of the Commissioner himself, the Deputy Commissioner and finally the Commissioner himself.

(1) I'll explain later.
(2) Patience.
(3) See I said I'd explain later.

HOLMES 2

Every police station in the country has at least one HOLMES suite. This is the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System, which allows computer-illiterate coppers to join the late twentieth century. Getting them to join the twenty-first century would be too much to ask for.

Everything related to a major investigation is kept on the system, allowing detectives to cross-reference data and avoid the kind of cock-up that made the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper such an exemplary operation. The replacement to the old system was due to be called SHERLOCK, but nobody could find the words to make the acronym work so they called it HOLMES 2.

You don’t get to use HOLMES for every day crime that’s what AWARE is for, as MERLIN is anything to do with kids, CRIS is for crime reports and ENCOW is for training programmes. The POLICE NATIONAL COMPUTER (PNC) is something else entirely. When you log in into HOLMES you have to use your warrant number which means the operators can track you make an unauthorised inquiry.

Extracting the Michael

Cockney, as it is spoke has several ways of expressing disbelief.

Bollocks. (Not to be confused with ‘bollocks!’ – with the higher pitch; indicating an unwelcome surprise or ‘bollocks’ with the lower pitch; indicating extreme dissatisfaction – Cockney, in some instances, can be regarded as a tonal language.)

Do me a favour! – don’t think of me as being so stupid as to believe that.

Are you taking the piss? (This must be differentiated from the statement; ‘You’re taking the piss!’ which shouldn’t be used in an aggressive fashion unless one is prepared for physical confrontation.)

Are you extracting the urine? Favoured by Police, Ambulance and Fire Brigade personnel so as to protect the delicate ears of the media.

Are you taking the mickey? Another euphemism employed to insulate those of refined sensibility from the rough honesty of the everyday world.

Are you extracting the Michael? A recursive elaboration of the above to impress upon the refined that despite one’s rough hewn manner one has a ready wit and a extensive vocabulary superior to that which you gained from your expensive private school you posh bastard.

Scene of the Crime: Hampstead

Estelle

Eusapia Palladino

Eusapia Palladino was a famous Italian spiritualist who tooled around Europe around the turn of the 20th Century giving séances and displays of levitating tables to the obviously gullible and to people who should have known better, like Pierre Curie.

She was married young to a conjurer, which should have been a bit of a clue, and maintained a coterie of supporters despite the number of times she was caught cheating. Her name became a byword for spiritualism. Hence ‘a touch of the old Palladino.’