BEYOND THE LIMITS
A welcome break yesterday: driving in the countryside conducting enquiries beyond the city limits, amongst the farmers. I must have spent half an hour longer than I needed to at each location, drinking coffee with the morning sunshine flooding into the kitchen. No televisions had to be turned off, the houses were pleasantly warm and not uncomfortably so, I was greeted by men who were not wearing tracksuits and women without tattoos. I had taken a risk in not telephoning ahead, but in the end it made no difference: only one person had to be summoned back to the farmhouse by his wife, all the others were taking advantage of the recent wet weather by tending to their gardens which had been neglected during the harvest.Most were anxious not to detain me, fondly imagining that I had better things to do, but almost all reported similar experiences of having small but valuable items of equipment stolen by gypsies. Unfortunately for them, a lack of fashionable racist or domestic crime means that I’ll probably not get back to these people any time within the next few years. Perhaps not though, Derbyshire Police have been working on a project to reduce prejudice against gypsies, it’s called “Moving Forward” although calling it “Move Somewhere Else” would have been more appropriate.Other issues discussed included fox hunting, which I was quizzed about at some length, and firearms laws, the intricacies of which they knew more about than me. Vast tracts of rural Canada are not policed, so having a policeman in the house was a novel experience for all of the people I met, the only other times they had seen a police officer was during the hunt or when they had their guns inspected.I’m not sure whether farmers are the last hope of this country, in the same way that Winston Smith regarded the proletariat as the only thing that could stop Big Brother, or whether farmers are the last inhabitants of a country which has already disappeared. Anxious not to go back to Newtown’s adult crybabies too soon, I took my lunch indoors at a country pub.Upon my return to the Church Road Estate I was at last able to continue with the proper tasks of the modern police officer and took a long statement from a fourteen year old girl about nuisance text messages she was receiving on her mobile phone from an ex-boyfriend. Ex! At fourteen! I’m getting too old for this.