NEVER INTERFERE

My first boss, name of Alex Hastie, an irascible old scarecrow of a Scot with a billiard-ball for a head and a hawk’s nose, who always wore a trilby in the railway ticket office where I worked, gave me some useful advice.  He said, responding to a report that someone had seen a severed head on the railway line: ‘Never interfere, laddie.’  I should have remembered that tonight when I took the dog for her evening walk.  At the top of our street lies an agricultural machinery business on a large site.  Its compound contains some extremely expensive equipment worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.  When I saw two youths clamber over the wire fence and into the yard, intent on mischief, I decided to act.  They saw me straight away, but they were in no way nonplussed.  They just carried on clambering over the combine0harvesters and seed drills that lined the yard.

I scrabbled in my pocket for my mobile phone, no easy task when holding a dog lead in one hand.  This phone is about the size of a bathroom tile, and I have cursed it ever since the day I got it.  It is especially mulish, never seeming to respond to any of the commands I give it.  

I held it high in my hand to show these hoodlums that I meant to call the authorities and have them apprehended.  You can imagine my surprise when the older and taller of the two, climbed nimbly back over the fence and walked breezily towards me.

‘What you takin’ photographs of me for?’ he asked, with a swagger.

‘I am not taking photographs of you.  How dare you suggest such a thing!  I was about to call the Police.’

‘Yer a creep, takin’ photographs of me. Creep!’ 

I lost my temper and lunged towards him.  He stepped back, the look of nonchalance disappearing briefly from his face.  

‘You..You… blackguard!’ was all I could think to say.

‘Go on, then,’ the youth said, recovering some of his composure: ‘Ring the Police.’ 

I looked at him for a second or two.  He was skinny, poorly dressed, with untidy unkempt hair.  He looked like James Bowlam might have in the part of Terry Collier from ‘The Likely Lads,’ at the age of thirteen.

‘I’ll show you!’ I retorted, and pressed the phone icon on the glass cover.  The torch came on. By now, young Bolam’s companion in crime had joined him.  He was about eleven years old and sat astride a decrepit BMX bike.

‘He’s got his torch on,’ laughed young Bolam: ‘He can’t make any phone call.’ It was then that I remembered that I hadn’t a clue what the number of Police Scotland was. I knew you couldn’t ring 999 for something as trivial as this and I knew there was another three-digit number that you could ring that put you through to the communications centre in Loanhead.  In the dim and distant recesses of my mind, I had an idea that the number was 111.  I pressed the icon again and the numerical keypad appeared.  I dialled 111. 

‘NHS 24 Scotland,’ came the reply.  I hung up.  

‘What’s keepin’ ya, creep?’ Young Bolam asked. 

‘I don’t know the blasted number of the Police,’ I rasped, angrily.

‘It’s 101’, he said, helpfully.

‘Thank you,’ I replied.  You must never forget your manners.  I dialled the number. 

‘Police Scotland’ a male voice said.  ‘How can I help you?'

‘There’s a couple of hooligans giving me lip, having broken into Henderson’s the tractor place.  I ordered them out. They’re standing next to me now.’ 

‘Can you describe them to me?’

‘One’s lanky, skinny, and undernourished, with gingery hair and freckles.  He might be thirteen or fourteen.  The other’s smaller, swarthy, mucky and younger, about eleven.’

‘Are they threatening you?’ I looked at the malnourished figure of young Bolam and the dirt-smeared visage of his mate and replied, softly, ‘No, they’re not threatening me.’

‘Did they cause any damage, break a window, anything like that?’

‘No, but from the way the leader’s speech is a little slurred and the blatant cheek of his attitude to me, I should say he might have been smoking cannabis.’  

He might have been smoking turnip-tops for all I knew, but I thought it might impress the chap on the other end of the phone. The Police representative seemed to lose interest at this piece of information.

‘Hold on to the line, sir, while I make the Police aware.'  I waited a few seconds whilst he tapped a few keys on his computer. 

'That’s it done, sir.  Where are the boys now?’  

They were where I thought they would be, speeding off in a westerly direction as fast as they could travel. 

‘I’m afraid that by the time a patrol car gets here they’ll be well away,’ I said. ‘They’re racing away towards Herdmanflat Hospital. Besides, it’s their word against mine. I’ll let the chap from Henderson’s know about it in the morning.  He can check to see if there’s any damage and he’ll let you know if there is.’

‘The Police are aware. They will respond. Thank you, sir, goodnight.’

‘Goodnight, officer’ I replied.

It was only when I closed down the call (I couldn’t turn off the torch, no matter how wildly I stabbed at the screen and it’s on even now, as I write) I realised I could have been stabbed or hit with a brick or suffered some other dastardly fate. Then, as I recalled the swagger replaced by blind panic when the pair of them realised I’d been as good as my word and had phoned the Police, I knew those two couldn’t assault their way out of a wet paper bag.  

I turned the corner into Dunbar Road and I suddenly recalled old Alex Hastie’s advice never to interfere.  

I made a mental note of it for next time.