Crimes and misdemeanours on the city streets

DISPLACED IN MULLINGAR:I'M STILL a little nervous of the English police ever since a night in London years ago, when I could have been arrested and sent to jail for a crime I didn't commit.

I was staying with friends - a dubious term for lads I met in a bar, who worked on the buildings and promised me "a start". We were all sitting around in the flat one evening, drinking cider and smoking. In the centre of the room was a large lump of copper; a trophy which the heroes had swiped off someone's roof, earlier in the day. They claimed there was more booty downstairs; a cooker

stood on the street, they boasted, outside the door, because they couldn't fetch it up the stairs.

Suddenly the door burst open and a handful of Special Branch detectives pointed guns at us, and told us not to move, as they searched the flat. They kept stepping over the copper as if it was a coffee table or an art object. When they failed to find any well-known bomb-makers in the wardrobe they surprised us all by apologising for the inconvenience, and then left.

The detectives wanted to know if the cooker on the street belonged to our flat.

"Aye, it was delivered this afternoon," a Cavan man lied, "but sure you know yourself officer, we kind of forgot." He winked. The policeman just said, "Don't leave it on the street overnight; this is London." I love London.

Last week I dined out with a woman who remarked during her noodles, that if we could hear all the sounds in London, it would drive us mad.

"Just imagine," she exclaimed, "if we could hear all the terrible screams and groans of pain and suffering." I ventured to suggest that sometimes Londoners might groan with pleasure, but she could not be persuaded of much good in the world.

And I was standing outside The French Pussycat in Soho at eight o'clock on Saturday morning, while two fishmongers played poker. Their stalls were not yet busy. A thin woman with bad teeth and a long chin looked me in the eye and asked me did I want a girl? I said, "No thanks, it's too early in the day; I am just buying a few oranges and apples from the stall." In the bar of the hotel that night a man from Liverpool who must have been at least 20 stone tried to explain to me what scouse is. He said it's a soup.

He had a twinkle in his eye, which I read as playful. I asked him what he did for a living and he said he was just out of prison. So I asked him what was he in for. He said he did five years for beating up the wife. And then he gave me another glance, and there was nothing at all playful about it.

But that is London. If Shakespeare was still alive he'd spend his time tripping from one strange conversation to another, and feasting his eyes on the knee-length leather boots and the black suede shoes, and all the buckles and bows and black stockings, that are forever going up and down the escalators of the underworld.

I came home on Sunday. I got to the airport a few hours before the flight, so I idled the time in the departures lounge; the check-in desks on my left, and the lifts to the Underground on my right; I was just daydreaming, and watching the world go by; Shakespeare would have loved it; an

entire cast of tragic and comic figures flowing though the hall, pulling little cases

on wheels.

Love songs played at the coffee bar, and dozens of Romeos and Juliets sat hugging each other; enraptured and relaxed, and gazing into each other's eyes, and kissing eyebrows, and fingering locks of hair, and sharing little tubs of spicy nuts.

I went upstairs and tucked into a cream bun in the Cafe Italia, while two policemen sat at the next table. One of them kept his machine-gun in his lap, but the other fellow placed his big black side-iron on the floor, which astonished me. I wanted to say, "You shouldn't leave that lying around; this is London; someone might rob it." But I was afraid he might not have a sense of humour.

mharding@irish-times.ie