Real life | 18 October 2012

The roads seem to be rigged to detect particularly low grade offences nowadays. And when you’ve done nothing wrong at all, the police seem to get ferociously cross. I was once read the riot act by a bearded cop on a motorbike who banged on my window as I sat in gridlock on the Albert Embankment and told me that I was not paying sufficient attention to what was going on around me.

When I asked what he would like me to do he didn’t seem to have any specific ideas; he just thought I didn’t look adequately focused. I pointed out that I had been sitting motionless for half an hour and so letting my hands drop from the ten to two position and staring despairingly into space until the car in front moved again seemed entirely reasonable.

But he was incandescent and warned me that I was lucky he was on his way to an urgent incident or he would book me — presumably for the well-known offence of ‘not driving without due care and attention’.