Beverley Brook

Beverley Brook is a river in South London. She(1) rises in Worcester Park and meets the Thames opposite Craven Cottage(2). Unlike most of her sister tributaries most of Beverley Brook flows above ground and thus has a suburban character and isn't lost in any way whatsoever. In fact given that she runs through at least two Royal parks she's not nearly so 'street' as she likes to make out.

If you fancy a walk along her mossy banks where the newly reintroduced water vole gambols in a life and death struggle with the local domestic cat population then here is a map...

View Beverley Brook Walk in a larger map

(1) Definately female - trust me on this.
(2) Home ground of Fulham F.C.(3)
(3) F.C. stands for Football(4) Club.
(4) Football is the English word for soccer.

Ugly Buildings: Horseferry Road

The City of Westminster Magistrates Court is around the back of Victoria Station on the Horseferry Road. It’s a bland box of a building built in the 1970s and is considered so lacking in architectural merit that there's talk of listing it so that it could be preserved for posterity as an awful warning.

Inside, the waiting areas maintain that unique combination of cramped busyness and barren inhumanity that was the glory of British architecture in the second half of the twentieth century.

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.

Things Not To Do: Losing Your Warrant Card

According to PC Perky our friend Special K managed to lose her warrant card while having drinks in the pub with five senior officers. Now she has to go down NSY and ‘explain’ what happened to the powers that be. Whatever else happens – there will be forms.

Warrant cards are very important because a) they identify you as a sworn constable with powers of arrest and detention and, in my case, a member of an organisation with more people in uniform than the Swedish Army. This can be a very comforting thought when you’re confronting belligerent drunks at three o’clock in the morning – especially if they’re from Stockholm.

They also b) get you free travel on the tube, trains and buses. That’s why most officers working in Central London live in the suburbs and commute, bigger house, cheap commute and the only draw back is that you’re living in the suburbs. Not me I now have the best rent free digs in the history of policing – with free food thrown in.

EDIT: NSY stands for New Scotland Yard.

While Using the Tube

A few do’s and don’ts while travelling on the underground.

Do not stand around chatting to your friends while blocking the entire width of an access tunnel. Many commuters are desperate to get home and they wont mind if its over your crushed and bleeding body.

For the love of god when going up the escalator do not stand on the left. You walk up on the left and you stand on the right – it’s that simple.

If you are carrying a large rucksack try to make sure your hands are clearly visible at all times or you will find that your fellow passengers will slowly drift away towards the other end of the carriage. Do not leave your rucksack, or any other bag, unattended in the station or the carriage as having your luggage destroyed in a controlled explosion often offends.

Anita Blay Has Some Good Advice

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.

Oriemtation III: Richmond