While I was away, Mandi had an unpleasant incident while walking our dog. A bigger dog ran from an open garden gate and started to attack Jack. In the altercation Mandi was bitten on the hand. She reported it to the police who almost immediately visited the irresponsible dog owner to see if the dog was in a suitable home or whether it should be taken away. If I had been in Mandi’s position I would have kicked the dog in the head before finding a brick to finish it and the owner off with, but Mandi does things a little bit more by the book than I do. Having been to the hospital and given some precautionary antibiotics and an x-ray on her hand, today I went with her to the police station so she could give a statement. All very efficient you might think, and if you think that then hold on to that thought.

I recorded my American radio show today so that I didn’t have to interrupt Valentine’s Day/Mandi’s birthday tomorrow, and on a whim I decided to tidy my office. My recycling bin groaned with all the paperwork I ended up dumping, I am a bit of a hoarder but enjoy having the occasional clear out when I should be working. Having filed all my demo CDs and press releases in the right boxes, sorted out the paper work to keep, wasted some time reading old magazines and theatre programmes I happened across (when you should be working, there’s no better distraction than the 2010 Christmas edition of the Radio Times), I eventually found the reference number (written on a compliment slip) from the police regarding the time I was knocked off my bike by a careless driver, something that my blog from 2011 seems to have completely ignored although I wasn’t writing daily back then. Out of interest I decided to take it with me to the police station to see if anything ever happened with this case.

Mandi had rang me while I was on the train yesterday to keep me updated on the dog situation, and I had cynically suggested that the police were taking the case seriously because it was a low maintenance job for them. If, I offered, we had been burgled then very little would have been done to find the criminals or recover our stuff.

Are you still holding that thought?

I waited outside the police station with Jack while Mandi gave her statement, and when she had finished I went in. It turned out that the arsehole that knocked me off my bike wasn’t prosecuted because he, and this is their words, he hadn’t committed an offence. So now we know that driving your car into a cyclist isn’t a criminal offence. I wish I’d dealt with the driver in the same way that I would have dealt with the dog.

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