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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 -
The principal advantages of living in your station’s section house is that it is cheap, close to work and it’s not your parents’ flat. The disadvantages are that you’re sharing your accommodation with people too weakly socialised to live with normal human beings, and who habitually wear heavy boots. The weak socialisation makes opening the fridge an exciting adventure in microbiology, and the boots mean that every shift change sounds like an avalanche.
Ben Aaronovitch
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One of the first rules of police work is that trouble will always come looking for you, so there’s no point looking for it.
Ben Aaronovitch -
It’s strictly constables, sergeants, and lunatics. We’ll keep the kettle on for you.
Ben Aaronovitch -
It gave me “the eye”—the fearsome gaze that sheepdogs use to keep their charges in line. But I gave it “the look”—the stare that policemen use to keep members of the public in a state of randomized guilt.
Ben Aaronovitch -
Because were were both probationary constables, an experienced PC had been left to supervise us - a responsibility he diligently pursued from an all-night cafe on St. Martin's Close.
Ben Aaronovitch -
When I was a kid I used to drink from the tap all the time. I'd run back into the flat all hot and sweaty from playing and didn't even bother putting it in a glass, just turned the tap on and stuck my mouth underneath it. If my mom caught me doing it she used to scold me, but my dad just said that I had to be careful. 'What if a fish jumped out?' he used to say. 'You'd swallow it before you knew it was there.' Dad was always saying stuff like that and it wasn't until I was seventeen that I realised it was because he was stoned all the time.
Ben Aaronovitch -
We hit the Rotunda and we did a quick spin around the Museum of London and into the bit of Little Britain that runs beside Postman’s Park. The trees in the park still had most of their leaves, and the street was narrow and shaded and smelled of wet grass rather than the busy cement smell you get in the rest of the City. The office was based in a Mid-Victorian pile whose Florentine flourishes were not fooling anyone but itself. There was a brass plaque by the door engraved with “Public Policy Foundation” and beyond the doors a cool blue marble foyer and a young and strangely elongated white woman behind a reception desk. Because it’s not good policy to, we hadn’t called ahead to make an appointment. Which gave Guleed a chance to tease the receptionist by not showing her warrant card when she identified herself. The receptionist’s expression did a classic three point turn from alarm to suspicion and finally settling on professional friendliness as she picked up the phone and informed someone at the other end that the “police” had arrived to talk to Mr. Chorley.
Ben Aaronovitch
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So, actions were still being actioned and me and Guleed were actioning them, and the wheels of justice ground on. Albeit in first gear.
Ben Aaronovitch -
My milkshake brings all the gods to the yard.
Ben Aaronovitch -
Officially she was there to liaise with me on the case, but really she was there for the wide-screen TV, takeaways and the unresolved sexual tension.
Ben Aaronovitch -
Cicero wouldn’t approve of my writing style, but at least I pronounce his name with a hard C.
Ben Aaronovitch -
I'd been too intent on the room to hear her coming up the stairs. Leslie said that the capacity not to notice a traditional Dutch folk dancing band walk up behind you was not a survival characteristic in the complex, fast-paced world of the modern policing environment. I'd like to point out that I was trying to give directions to a slightly deaf tourist at the time, and anyway it was a Swedish dance troupe.
Ben Aaronovitch -
Most archaeology in London these days is rescue archaeology – projects designed to preserve as much as possible from the relentless cash-driven redevelopment. It’s not a new problem. Ask a medievalist about Victorian cellars or an Iron Age specialist about medieval ploughing – but take snacks, because you’re going to be there for a while.
Ben Aaronovitch
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Even in the 1980s your average young archaeologist would have had difficulty raising capital for a house. I knew this because it’s one of the things archaeologists will tell you about, at length, at the slightest provocation.
Ben Aaronovitch -
The word “bollocks” is one of the most beautiful and flexible in the English language. It can be used to express emotional states ranging from ecstatic surprise to weary resignation in the face of inevitable disaster.
Ben Aaronovitch -
Gaston was a short, bulky man in his late fifties who favoured tight jeans, studded belts and sleeveless T-shirts, the better to show off the tattoos on his own arms. Only the absence of a mullet or a purple Mohican saved him from a breach of the EU directive against egregious cliché embodiment.
Ben Aaronovitch -
Somebody doesn't know they're not in Kansas anymore,' said Stephanopoulos.
Ben Aaronovitch -
In some households you only have to turn up three times before you’re expected to make your own tea, draw up a chair in front of the telly and call the cat a bastard.
Ben Aaronovitch -
CO19, the Met’s firearms unit, whose unofficial motto is, “Guns don’t kill people, we kill people with guns.
Ben Aaronovitch
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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 -
Hyde Park Corner is what happens when a bunch of urban planners take one look at the grinding circle of gridlock that surrounds the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and think—that’s what we want for our town.
Ben Aaronovitch -
A romantic," said Nightingale much, much later. "The most dangerous people on Earth.
Ben Aaronovitch -
I left in a hurry before he could change his mind, but I want to make it clear that at no point did I break into a skip.
Ben Aaronovitch