Being a bit daytime these days, I often find myself surrounded by retired people of the aging kind. They seem to like sitting motionless in the sauna, pretending to have passed away. The only time they move is when you are about to expire from heat exhaustion, and wish to crawl into a cold shower. That’s the time that they decide to strike up a very slow moving conversation with you, trying to trap you into a steamy death. Conversation is perhaps too kind – more of a monologue of woes that they tie you up with.
A young crowd from Leicester turned up last week. Their conversation was a little different, about a phone call for a job application form.
“So it’s a good starting salary. About 20K now – up about two grand.”
“You’re young, you got a good opportunity there.”
“So they ask me if I have a criminal record. So I ask them, ‘Does drink driving count?'”
“What did they say?”
“They said it’s fine as long as you didn’t kill anyone. But then they ask about any other criminal charges.”
“Did you tell them?”
“Well I had to. They got access to your criminal record. So I told them. I asked, ‘Does hitting a copper count?’ And they said, ‘What?’ So I said, ‘I punched a copper once, does that count?’ So they asked me about it, and I told them, that I’d been drink-driving and had a big smash, you know, head through the windscreen. Then the police show up and one of them swears at me, and tells me to get into his fucking car. So I punched him in the face.”
“What did they say to that?”
“They said they thought it would be alright, under the circumstances. They sent the application forms through, so it must be alright.”
It turns out the guy was applying to be in the police.