yellow vans attract the wrong sort of attention.
We went out in the van, en famile , today to have a look at typical Kent villages. Not, as you might think to conduct an audit on the rates of genetic abnormalities and the effect of small gene pools (although we did see some fine examples). No, we were in Kent to have a look for houses - or more specifically, places we’d like to move to that are pleasant, rural, have space for me to grow veggies and be no further than an hour from London.
Well, Kent is lovely. although the weather was great also, so pretty much every where we went (Horsmonden, Gouldhurst, Marden etc) looked idyllic. We ate lunch in the van, overlooking a field of sheeps and visited various estate agents in each village we stopped at. I drank a pint of beer at one point too.
The high point for me though, was being pulled over by two police cars. One was the classic traffic cop car, the second was unmarked (although the copper was in uniform).
Putting into action my late father’s advice - get out of the car before they do, go to them and be polite - I walked towards the first of the two cops.
He assured me that there was nothing to worry about - then I felt a sharp pain in the pack of my head. I came to in a darkened room with the smell of damp and decay in my nostrils. My hands and feet were bound and a light shone in my eyes…..
No. Actually he said - “Nothing to worry about sir, it’s just we don’t see many big yellow vans in these parts and we like to check this sort of thing out.
He asked if I was from London - I am - and what I was doing here. I explained that we were looking for a house and that the big yellow van was a camper. Behold! (I opened the doors and pointed at the baby). They seemed a little embarrassed and explained that there have been a number of robberies from some of the big country homes. Last week a couple of ‘urns’ went missing from outside something manor, and they must have had a van to put them in. Classic police logic.
He asked me my name - I told him. The cop in the unmarked car confirmed that mine was the name my van was registered to.
I asked the unmarked car cop if they were allowed to do speculative PNC checks on vehicles before pulling them over - he said that they can if they have a good reason. Apparently, having a van in Kent qualifies.
Now, I’m not going to go on about the erosion of civil liberties… but I wander if this is another example of the police overstepping the mark and using the perpetual state of terror [alert] we find ourselves in as an excuse.
Still, Kent is very pretty.
Written by exmonkey on June 3rd, 2006 with 3 comments.
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