You know when it’s raining, but not really enough for a brolly so you just sort of grin and bear it? Yeah, it was wetter than that this morning which rather makes the decision not to deploy my ever handy umbrella somewhat silly and leaves me just a little damp. Still I’ll dry.
Anyway, my own stupidness aside, today I’d like to talk about ACAB. If you walk about around the cathedral you’ll see ACAB sprayed everywhere. They style is the same so it’s obviously someone’s tag and the work of a single yoof. ACAB is still active as his tag appeared, in marker pen this time, on a sign near work.
Now, ordinarily I’d just ignore the graffiti and not even bother commenting on it, however, nestled in the riverside walk is a gate bearing the phrase “All Cops Are Bastards”. The writing uses the same canmanship as ACAB and it doesn’t take a genius to realise that ACAB is more than a tag, but an acronym too.
And here we come to the crux of the post. Perhaps one day ACAB may google for his tag and find this post. Perhaps an acquaintance might find it and point him here.
ACAB, you may find cops are slightly more forgiving if you didn’t run round NR3 spraying every available surface with crap. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest you are probably involved in other antisocial, if not illegal behaviour but your low IQ means you are unable to cover your tracks which has lead to a number of run ins with the police. Furthermore, while there are regrettable incidents of police harassment, I’m going to suggest that yours is not such a case and any repercussions from law enforcement agencies is entirely justified.
Just in case that’s all to much for you to understand I shall break it down for you: You, sir, are a dick. Please stop.
That will be all.
It sounds so enticing, doesn’t it? “April showers”, a light sprinkling of warm rain on a beautiful spring day, perhaps taking shelter for a few minutes under a tree while it clears before continuing on with whatever you were doing.
Sadly it’s still March and this isn’t a shower, it’s rain. It’s cold, it’s wet and it’s miserable. One wonders if April will
live up to the dream given it’s less than 24 hours away. I suspect not.
I have, or rather had, two umbrellas. A large, automatic, wind proof, keeps me and the bag dry even in a downpour job and a little-un that lives in my bag. The large one is a bit unwieldy when strapped to my bag for carrying so I tend to only bring it if I know it’s going to rain. After all, if I get caught short there’s the small backup. That said the small one can’t really cope with wind… or heavy rain… or, it would seem, opening.
Yesterday as I walked home improperly attired for the freezing rain and biting winds I decided that deploying the small brolly (the large one having been left at home) might help mitigate some of the negative aspects of the weather. It had other ideas. I fished it out of the bag, pressed the latch to allow me to open it and promptly pulled the handle from the brolly. Since being armed with two halves of a brolly was counterproductive I attempted to reattach the handle, an endeavour that I was successful in but that would ultimately prove to be futile. The damage was now done and the handle would easily disengage from the brolly with the slightest gust of bitterly cold wind.
Faced with little other option I did what any hardened London commuter would do: I looked for a taxi. It’s unfortunate that, pretty though. It is, my route into work yields, on average, 0 taxis on any given day. Instead I thrust my hands in my hoodie pocket, hunkered down and set a new world speed walking record from work to the station.
Today I have the big brolly. And a coat. The little brolly is in the bin and I shall be taking no chances against this winter.
A month or two ago we had rain of biblical proportions which managed to soak me entirely despite having a brolly. I don’t seem to have blogged about it though which is remiss of me. I certainly bitched about it on Facebook a lot. Anyway, the upshot is that these days I take my bigger umbrella if it looks like more than showers. So consider this morning:
Me: Good morning rain!
Rain: Good morning Dom.
Me: You’re going to piss it down aren’t you?
Rain: *looks innocent*
Me: Well I don’t trust you so I’m taking my big umbrella!
Rain: As you wish.
Me: Yup, see, lovely and dry!
Rain: You sure about that?
[Cue more biblical rain that hits the ground so hard it then bounces up and soaks you from the thighs down.]
Me: Bastard!
Rain: You’re welcome.
Thankfully the point was proved on the quick 250m dash to the station so I was able to go from soaked to damp by the time I arrived in Norwich and was not made any damper on my walk to work. Poor old Zozo was out in it all day though 