DIARY
Last week our car was snatched by the police. Actually it was not our car. The week before the roof of our car, a converti- ble, was slashed by a thief. It was a rented car that the police grabbed. We had parked the car legally, but four days later, when we next wanted to use it, we found that some utility had started to dig up the road, in particular under the tarmac which sup- ported our hire car. The police, called to remove the vehicle, made no attempt to tell us, or the owners of the car, that it had been impounded. Economically this was rational of them, because they charge incrementally for every day a car is im- pounded. We were required to hand over £109 at the Kensington car pound in Warwick Road before we were allowed to drive our borrowed car through the auto- matic gates of the pound and back on to the mean streets. A girl ahead of us in the queue to pay the police for their services found things less easy. Unlike us she did not possess a credit card. Her fee was over £50, the limit of her cheque guarantee card. She was an attractive, very well- spoken woman, somewhat weighed down by many shopping bags. She had obviously had a very tiring day. She needed the car badly because she wanted to fly to the airport the next day, she explained. Couldn't she write two cheques? Not with- out giving more evidence of her identity, said the police employee behind a glass screen. She said she had some airline tickets with her name on (`the same as on my cheque book') and some envelopes addressed to her, which might be in the car. She went off to the car and returned with these items. The police employee, all the more sinister for being very softly spoken, said no, that was not enough, although our identity was accepted by his colleague on the strength of an addressed envelope. At this point the woman burst into tears. The man looked on, unblinking. We cracked before he did, and asked the girl how much more money she needed to Pay the fine. 'Fifteen pounds,' she said, in a shaky voice. We handed her this sum, and she wrote a cheque to us for the same amount. I don't know whether the police employee had enjoyed humiliating his ele- gant, but now mascara-stained victim. I don't even know his name, since when I asked him for it, he refused to answer. I suppose I should have asked him what proof he had of his lack of identity, but Instead I reflected that it was difficult to make a complaint against someone em- ployed by the police if he refused to give his name or number. And I further re- flected that if the police are seriously worried about the diminishing esteem in which they are held by the British public, the remedy lies in their own hands. DOMINIC LAWSON The result of the escapade in the car pound was that we were an hour late for dinner with John Simpson and his girl- friend, Tira. When we told them of the reasons for our late arrival, John instantly responded with a story which returned the smile to our faces. A friend of his, whom he described mysteriously as 'one of the heroes of the Gulf war', came back to London from an assignment overseas, to find that his car had been impounded. But his heroic friend was determined not to pay. He skirted the car pound on foot, and observed that the fence around it could be scaled, unaided. He scaled it. He found his car, and drove it very quietly towards the automatic gates. When another car began to leave, he followed speedily getting out before the gate fell. The staff at the pound didn't notice, and the driver in front didn't care. Some weeks later just back from another foreign mission our hero was sitting at home when his door bell rang. It was the police. Two of them. One of them then told him that something very embar- rassing had happened. They had impound- ed his car, but it had unaccountably dis- appeared while it was in their charge. They were very sorry, and would gladly be prepared to reimburse him for the cost of replacement. The Gulf hero said that this was all very surprising. For while it was true his car had disappeared one day, a few days later it had most mysteriously re- appeared. Wasn't that strange? The two policemen looked at each other. Suddenly they knew. But there are some cases in which it is too embarrassing for the police to prosecute. So they left the Gulf war hero with his urban victory.
0 ne of the most unfortunate consequ- ences of the Clarence Thomas affair is that even we in England have had to put up with interminable leading articles propos- ing new codes of conduct between the sexes. None more interminable than a gigantic lecture from the Times preaching that 'society must evolve new expressions of respect for women' and that the law must promulgate 'attitude of mind legisla- tion.' But there were some facts in the Times' awesomely serious lecture entitled `SEX AT WORK'. The Thunderer tells us that 'a third of those who call sexual harassment help-lines are men'. The paper does not say why the men are calling these `harassment help-lines' in such numbers. I fear they are ringing up to find out how to do it.
Areader of The Spectator, Mr Eric Clark of Hove, has won a million dollars. Or rather he has received a promotion from Time magazine which tells him that, 'If you return the grand prize-winning number in time our list of prize winners and their guaranteed winnings will be as follows: MR CLARK / HOVE MILLION DOLLAR WINNER! MINNIE REBEC- CA HOOD / PA MILLION DOLLAR WINNER! THEODORE SIMPSON / CA $50,000 WINNER! BECAUSE HE RE- TURNED THE PRIZE-WINNING NUMBER IN TIME!' The letter goes on: `MR CLARK, CONGRATULATIONS, YOU'RE THE FIRST IN THE UK TO TOP THE WINNERS' LIST. YOU'LL BE RECEIVING ONE MILLION DOL- LARS! MR CLARK, DON'T MAKE US GIVE THE CLARK'S MILLION TO SOMEONE ELSE! Mr Clark,' however, being a Spectator reader, is far too shrewd to fall for this old time-share lark. Or perhaps it should be called Time-share. He didn't even send away for 'THE CLARK FREE EXECUTIVE INFOBANK', which is Time's way of describing a cheap pocket calculator with the Time logo on it.
Naturally all these apparent goodies seem linked to taking out a subscription to Time (`YES, please enter my numbers in the Sweepstakes and send me Time Interna- tional for the next 13 weeks). The bit I like best is at the bottom, in which Time admits that it may pass on Mr Clark's name to `other reputable companies'. How reput- able is Time?
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