"police officer" - smiley culture

"me and my colleagues have got a few questions to ask ya. you'll be on your way as soon as we get an answer"


walking home from the pub. outside selhurst park a pair of cops are hassling some drunk, scratty woman. all i can think about is this song. if only that woman had recorded the song cockney translator she could have gotten away with anything.

this song has a special place in the hearts of everyone who lived at byron acres. it was the highlight of vh1's worst videos countdown and we all loved it. many's the time we drunkenly acted out the comversation from the middle eight, though i think we usually got the words wrong.

"here is what i dreamed" - mike keneally

"then i was jostled by police to hand my wallet over"



the strange, zappa-esque, mildly self indulgent hat album has been in my cd rack for some time and i'm not entirely sure how and why i came to own it. im pretty certain i wouldnt have bought (or even lifted) a cd by someone i've still never heard of in any other context, i dont think i know anyone who would have lent it to me for me to forget (deliberately or otherwise) to give it back, and its not something most people would give as a present. but however it came into my life, its an album i fairly regularly rediscover having forgotten it and there are some real gems on it.


i was reminded of this song, with its bizarre narrative of repeatedly being stopped by the police who gradually steal everything he owns, when i saw 3 policemen pushing a young black guy against a wall. despite his protests, he had the resigned look of someone to whom this happened a lot. its ages since ive been stopped by the police, but when i used to walk home alone late at night a lot it was fairly regular. i felt a strange, if fleeting, sense of solidarity for the guy, and then i started to think that maybe hed actually done something to warrant this treatment which made me worry about the moral implications of siding with a criminal.
before id had time to think about it much though, i had walked past the situation and away, got distracted trying to remember the lyrics to the earworm and forgotten everything else.

"shape of my heart" - the sugababes

"i know that the spades are the swords of a soldier, i know that the clubs are weapons of war"


this is my favourite sting song. i know to some extent thats a bit like having a favourite flavour of corrugated cardboard - it kinda tastes the same and its all very dull - but when pushed this was always my answer. it was a much cooler answer to give in the late 90s when this was semi-obscure and a lot of people hadn't heard of it, but the fact that thats no longer the case shouldnt be a good enough reason to stop it being my favourite - even though that cooler-than-thou-wannabe inside me still tries to insist it is. i remember this song being the background music to magic tricks on some inconsequencial kids tv show paul zenon appeared on - and it that context it had an air of mystery. this was before i had really heard of sting and started to disregard him out of hand for all the rubbish he comes wrapped up these days. atom and his package sang that sting cannot possibly be the same guy from the police, though i reckon he seemed to have a smug self-importance even before the whole rainforest thing.

sting, like a wasp, is a perennial annoyance - but he did write have a hand in writing both this song and "walking on the moon" for which you have to give him a little leaway.