|
585c3f9
|
sudden attack of culture snobbery is a common affliction among policemen of a certain rank and age; it's like a normal midlife crisis only with more chandeliers and foreign languages.
|
|
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
e2fdaad
|
The British have always been madly overambitious, and from one angle it can seem like bravery, but from another it looks suspiciously like a lack of foresight.
|
|
foresight
british
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
d7b53c3
|
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 li..
|
|
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
95116cb
|
The police never saw a noun they didn't want to turn into a verb, so it quickly became "to action", as in you action me to undertake a Falcon assessment, I action a Falcon assessment, a Falcon assessment has been actioned and we all action in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine. This, to review a major inqurity is to review the list of "actions" and their consequences, in the hope that you'll spot something that thir..
|
|
policing
jargon
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
647801f
|
The Metropolitan Police has a very straightforward approach to murder investigations, not for them the detective's gut instinct or the intricate logical deductions of the sleuth savant. No, what the Met likes to do is throw a shitload of manpower at the problem and run down every single lead until it is exhausted, the murderer is caught or the senior investigating officer dies of old age.
|
|
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
8c4cbf6
|
You shouldn't make jokes about these things," she said. "Science doesn't have all the answers, you know." "It's got all the best questions, though,"
|
|
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
050beec
|
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 |
|
18f90de
|
It took the Fire Brigade a day and a half to secure the remains of the house enough to recover Crew Cut's body, which was described by Dr Jennifer Vaughan as 'suffering from crush trauma' and by Dr Walid as 'mostly flat'.
|
|
humor
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
912dc0c
|
Boss,' I said into my Airwave. 'It's getting needlessly metaphysical out here.
|
|
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
ebf8b97
|
The Folly had last been refurbished in the 1930s when the British establishment firmly believed that central heating was the work, if not of the devil per se, then definitely evil foreigners bent on weakening the hardy British spirit.
|
|
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
bbdd64d
|
He threw a fireball at me. I threw a chimney stack at him - that's the London way.
|
|
london
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
7ce4ba6
|
Fuck me,' I said to Toby. 'We're living in Isengard.
|
|
nerdiness
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
dfef7af
|
This is where the whole ape-descended thing reveals its worth, I thought madly. Sucks to be you, quadruped. Opposable thumbs - don't leave home without them.
|
|
evolution
human
opposable
primates
quadruped
thumb
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
f738c49
|
I saw a dark void under the platform and had just enough time to think: "Fuck me he's a earthbender."
|
|
funny
pop-culture
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
3f5d141
|
NIGHTINGALE AND I did what all good coppers do when faced with a spare moment in the middle of the day--we went looking for a pub.
|
|
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
942f578
|
We'd considered wearing uniform but Lesley said, what with her mask and everything, she'd look like a plastic cop monster from Doctor Who. I managed to restrain myself from telling her their real name.
|
|
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
43a3e31
|
I think becoming a wizard is about discovering what's real and what isn't.
|
|
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
374c641
|
Rule of policing number one - when something good falls into your lap, pass it up the chain of command as quickly as possible before something else bad can happen.
|
|
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
813bbe5
|
Right from the start Abigail used to moan and fidget as her hair was relaxed or braided or thermally reconditioned, but her dad was determined that his child wasn't going to embarrass him in public. That all stopped when Abigail turned eleven and calmly announced that she had ChildLine on speed-dial and the next person who came near her with a hair extension, chemical straightener, or, God forbid, a hot comb, was going to end up explaining ..
|
|
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
6c262e1
|
Now, personally, I'd have been happier driving an armored personnel carrier in through the front door. But since we're the Met, and not the police department of a small town in Missouri, we didn't have one.
|
|
international-audience
militarization
police-brutality
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
394a890
|
We can't have your people fighting each other," I said. The 'royal we' is very important in police work; it reminds the person you're talking to that behind you stands the mighty institution that is the Metropolitan Police, robed in the full majesty of the law and capable, in manpower terms, of invading a small country. You only hope when you're using that term that the whole edifice is currently facing in the same direction as you are."
|
|
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
1881fab
|
Which meant I spent my spare time learning theory, studying dead languages and reading books like Essays on The Metaphysical by John "never saw a polysyllabic word he didn't like" Cartwright."
|
|
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
fa005c5
|
Can you sacrifice people?' I asked. 'Take their magic that way?' 'Yes,' he said. 'But there's a catch.' 'What's the catch?' 'You get hunted down even unto the ends of the Earth and summarily executed.
|
|
magic
human-sacrifice
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
5616d1a
|
the rules of English grammar are largely an artificial construct with little or no bearing on the language as it is spoke.
|
|
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
c6c9ed1
|
Here's a comforting thought for you, Peter,' he said. 'However long you may live, the world will never lose its ability to surprise you with its beauty.
|
|
comfort
surprise
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
019ba41
|
Blackstone's Police Operational Handbook recommends the ABC of serious investigation: Assume nothing, Believe nothing, and Check everything.
|
|
investigation
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
fbf795b
|
Once the telephone had been invented, it was only a matter of time before the police got in on the new technology and, first in Glasgow and then in London, the police box was born. Here a police officer in need of assistance could find a telephone link to Scotland Yard, a dry space to do "paperwork" and, in certain extreme cases, a life of adventure through space and time."
|
|
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
9c644cb
|
I texted Nightingale to let him know our change in disposition and then I picked up my Pliny, because nothing says stuck all alone in your flat like a Roman know-it-all
|
|
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
b995b22
|
That's because they don't know,' said Tyburn. 'It's like economics. Everybody's got a theory, and some people make it their religion.
|
|
religion
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
660b0c3
|
As Conan the Barbarian famously said, "That which does not kill us does not kill us."
|
|
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
3a4e787
|
In the 1960s the planning department of the London County Council, whose unofficial motto was Finishing What the Luftwaffe Started, decided that what London really needed was a series of orbital motorways driven through its heart.
|
|
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
df95f2b
|
When the Treaty of Ghent ended the War of 1812, the British, in time-honoured fashion, abandoned their allies. Who were subsequently wiped out by the Americans along with any other tribes that happened to be in the same general vicinity - even those that had actually been allied with the US government during the war. It's exactly this sort of thing, of course, which gives colonialism a bad name.
|
|
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
ec5e578
|
Five hundred years ago the notoriously savvy Henry VIII discovered an elegant way to solve both his theological problems and his personal liquidity crisis - he dissolved the monasteries and nicked all their land. Since the principle of any rich person who wants to stay rich is, never give anything away unless you absolutely have to, the land has stayed with Crown ever since.
|
|
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
1880df8
|
If you overdo it, there are consequences. What kind of consequences? Strokes, brain hemorrhages, aneurysms... How do you know when you have overdone it? When you have a stroke, brain hemorrhage or an aneurysm.
|
|
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
1011f58
|
A major investigation, once it gets underway, is as exciting as watching reruns of Big Brother, although possibly involving less sex and violence.
|
|
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
a5f7236
|
I think you're going to find Marcus Aurelius particularly useful.' 'For what?' I asked. Nightingale hesitated. 'Quoting, mainly,' he said. 'And thus maintaining an air of erudition and authority.
|
|
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
984035a
|
The mark was from the glue that once held a folder into which a library card would have fitted back in the day when dinosaurs roamed the earth and computers were the size of washing machines.
|
|
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
3d50ecb
|
Murder investigations start with the victim, because usually in the first instance that's all you've got. The study of the victim is called victimology because everything sounds better with an 'ology' tacked on the end. To make sure you make a proper fist of this, the police have developed the world's most useless mnemonic - 5 x W H & H - otherwise known as Who? What? Where? When? Why? and How? Next time you watch a real murder investigatio..
|
|
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
27363d4
|
There's nothing quite like Latin for disguising the fact that you're making it up as you go along.
|
|
latin
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
48ab70a
|
Ethically challenged magical practitioners," I said."
|
|
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
f4ad75d
|
Despite my mum being from a small village in the middle of a forest, I'm not a country person. I don't like my bacon sandwich to be curiously snuffling at my fingers. But sometimes being police means holding your breath and fondling a pig.
|
|
humor
country
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
76430e8
|
I've already told the police what happened, they didn't believe me. Why should you,' he said. 'Because we're the people that believe people that other people don't believe,' I said. 'How can I know that?' he asked. 'You're just going to have to believe me,' I said.
|
|
trust
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
412a875
|
Peter Grant,' I said. 'Recent arrival, slacker and man of very little fame.
|
|
|
Ben Aaronovitch |
|
1131065
|
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 |