Power Struggles. And Strippergrams

“Mum, why is it, that no-one ever arrests strippergrams for ‘impersonating a police officer’?”

I mean … I’ve always preferred the sort of kids who are interested in political and sociological issues, who chat about concepts such as the ‘police state’ and who possess an inquisitive mind, but …. this question did stump me somewhat.

 I was asked this because an extremely idiotic and dangerous driver had just road raged me. He had then stopped – not far from my car. For a few seconds,  I considered going over to him and scaring the crap out of him by saying that I was an off-duty police officer. But then thought better of it. Instead, I explained to my kids, why impersonating an officer isn’t a wise thing to do. Ever.

This led to a discussion about the role of the law, ‘who holds the power’ in society and I was reminded of a power related incident with a police officer, when we lived in Namibia.

I had parked my Hilux up on an urban street – and on returning to my car, a Namibian police officer was standing there. He took out his ticket book and told me he was issuing a ticket – because I had parked on the wrong side of the road.  In Namibia, they drive on the left – as  in the UK you see – but it turned out that unlike the UK, you can’t park on the right hand side of a road. Whoops.

So, he asked me for ID. I said that I didn’t have my driving licence on me, but I did have a photo ID. So, I pulled out the card and showed it to him.  He suddenly looked a bit… well. Fearful. And then he said ‘Oh… no problems, Madam. Everything is fine.’ And left.

After reflecting on this for a couple of minutes, I realised what had happened. It turned out that my British Council library card had been mistaken for a British Embassy card. And the police officer was clearly frightened of getting involved in a some-sort of sinister British MI6 assassination operation which was about to be undertaken at the local photocopying shop.

Moral of this tale? Never underestimate the power of a LIBRARY CARD…