The Metropolitan Police Service is still, despite what people think, a working-class organisation and as such rejects totally the notion of an officer class. That is why every newly minted constable, regardless of their educational background, has to spend a two-year probationary period as an ordinary plod on the streets. This is because nothing builds character like being abused, spat at and vomited by members of the public.

Ben Aaronovitch

Categorized in : Thinking Character Educational

This is your brain on magic.

Ben Aaronovitch

magic brain

In the winter she curls up around a good book and dreams away the cold.

Ben Aaronovitch

dream winter book

My Dad says that being a Londoner has nothing to do with where you're born. He says that there are people who get off a jumbo jet at Heathrow, go through immigration waving any kind of passport, hop on the tube and by the time the train's pulled into Piccadilly Circus they've become a Londoner.

Ben Aaronovitch

immigration dad people

It's a sad fact of modern life that if you drive long enough, sooner or later you must leave London behind.

Ben Aaronovitch

london modern-life long

My dad once told me that the secret to a happy life was never to start something with a girl unless you were willing to follow wherever it led. It's the best piece of advice he has ever given me, and probably the reason I was born.

Ben Aaronovitch

dad girl happy-life

Coffee arrived and the espresso was excellent, like an aromatic electric fence.

Ben Aaronovitch

espresso excellent coffee

The clever people at CERN are smashing particles together in the hope that Doctor Who will turn up and tell them to stop

Ben Aaronovitch

doctors clever people

That which does not kill us has to get up extra early in the morning if it wants to get us next time.

Ben Aaronovitch

doe want morning

For a terrifying moment I thought he was going to hug me, but fortunately we both remembered we were English just in time. Still, it was a close call.

Ben Aaronovitch

close-calls hug moments

Actually I'd always thought he sat in the library with a slim volume of metaphysical poetry until the commissioner called him on the bat phone and summoned him into action. Holy paranormal activity, Nightingale - to the Jag mobile.

Ben Aaronovitch

library bats phones

Not being invited in is one of the boxes on the “suspicious behavior” bingo form that every copper carries around in their head along with “stupidly overpowerful dog” and being too quick to supply an alibi. Fill all the boxes and you too could win an all-expenses-paid visit to your local police station.

Ben Aaronovitch

police dog winning

The general public have a warped view of the speed at which an investigation proceeds. They like to imagine tense conversations going on behind the venetian blinds and unshaven, but ruggedly handsome, detectives working themselves with single-minded devotion into the bottle and marital breakdown. The truth is that at the end of the day, unless you've generated some sort of lead, you go home and get on with the important things in life - like drinking and sleeping, and if you're lucky, a relationship with the gender and sexual orientation of your choice.

Ben Aaronovitch

drinking home sleep

...don't ask me why I know what an Edwardian smoking jacket looks like: let's just say it has something to do with Doctor Who and leave it at that.

Ben Aaronovitch

doctors smoking looks

If you find yourself talking to the police, my advice is to stay calm but look guilty; it's your safest bet.

Ben Aaronovitch

police advice talking

Questions would be asked. Answers would be ignored.

Ben Aaronovitch

ignored would-be answers

The study of the victim is called victimology because everything sounds better with and ology tacked on the end.

Ben Aaronovitch

study victim sound

On the plus side, there were no rioters in sight but on the minus side this was probably because everywhere I looked was on fire.

Ben Aaronovitch

fire sight sides

What frustrated me was the thought that with three thousand years of history someone in China, some monk in a monastery halfway up a mountain, must have developed a magic kata, a physical expression of formae. Or at least have got close enough to explain all those legendary swordsmen and their inexplicable desire to roost on the tops of bamboo trees.

Ben Aaronovitch

expression tree years

It's a police mantra that all members of the public are guilty of something, but some members of the public are more guilty than others.

Ben Aaronovitch

members guilty police

Despite my mum being from a small village in the middle of a forest, I'm not a country person. I don't like my bacon sandwich to be curiously snuffling at my fingers. But sometimes being police means holding your breath and fondling a pig.

Ben Aaronovitch

pigs mean country