Blue Christmas

When it's not the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Smile, you’re on double-time.

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I’m usually strict when it comes to Christmas, preferring to trouble myself with the whole thing on the 23rd December before putting away my (minimalist) decorations on the 2nd January. However, I’m taking a bit of a Substack break for December (bar book publicity stuff), so consider this an early present.

I thought I’d talk about Job Christmases.

My first two Christmases as a policeman, in the early 90s, were spent in uniform. I managed to get the third off, before spending my fourth working at Heathrow airport as a special branch officer. For the rest of my service, I only worked the occasional holiday - more often than not a time of office lunches and parties.

Then, by the 2010s, when the morale vampires won, having fun became less of A Thing. I’m sure my police readers will remember the annual email warning people about inappropriate behaviour at Christmas parties. I remember, working on DPS, seeing aftermath of festive Job piss-ups (often involving officers drunkenly offering their managers some candid 360-degree ‘feedback’).

We’re still Anglo-Saxons in spirit, really; a traditional northern European winter past-time.

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As a keen student of history, I’m sanguine about the English taste for boozy, lairy, Christmases. The Anglo-Saxons were a violent bunch, eking out a precarious existence on a gloomy, rainy island on the edge of the world. No wonder they drank too much and dabbled with magic mushrooms.

It was also a post-Roman, postcolonial society, influenced by the midwinter festival of Saturnalia. These were the so-called Dark Ages, a time of Viking incursion and religious tumult. During the winter, sewing themselves into their clothes against the cold, our ancestors would pray for the days to grow longer. As the darkest nights of winter passed, they’d makes sacrifices to Pagan gods, slaughter fatted calves and drink their fill.

As these pagan festivals segued into a Christian holiday, celebrating the birth of a foreign messiah, a truism springs to mind; the more things change, the more they stay the same. We still drink, fight, feast and offer gifts - but I would argue, as the religiosity of our society wanes, Christmas is now more authentic than ever.

Not great news for the Archbishop of Canterbury.

It’s why I chuckle when I hear the refrain ‘we’ve forgotten the true meaning of Christmas.’ No, if being a historically-minded copper taught me anything, it’s the midwinter festival simply reverted to its original, saltier, self. The Anglo-Saxons would, I suspect, approve heartily of Wetherspoons, Iceland pigs in blankets and fair maidens dressed in weather-inappropriate Santa costumes. Hail! Wassail! To Mariah Carey and Michael Bublé, sadly.

One thing the Anglo-Saxons didn’t have, of course, was police officers. In the halls and hovels of Olde England, people solved their own problems - nowadays they turn to benighted men and women of law enforcement, Widow Twankies in dayglow yellow. Revellers film their performances on mobile telephone cameras, for the delectation of the worldwide web. Images of drunken excess titillate from the front pages of the Daily Mail every Christmas, a truly postmodern pantomime.

Which means Christmas, for coppers, is a month (at least) of Saturnalian chaos; a whirlwind of loutish boozing, drug-taking, brawling, spouse-beating, drink-driving, sexual offences and acquisitive crime. Oh, and terrorism of course. How could I forget terrorism?

All of which is to say aggro at Christmas is baked-in. It’s part of the deal. It’s as Christmassy as mistletoe, mince pie and hangovers.

Peace to all Men; nothing says ‘21st Century British Christmas Market’ like heavily-armed coppers on reassurance patrols.

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It’s night duty, Christmas 1993. Boxing Day, I think. I’m standing in a tiny council flat with another Pc, who I shall call Gary. A woman called 999 to report she hadn’t seen or heard of her neighbour for a couple of days. Great, I thought as we mounted the stairs, another sudden-bloody-death.

Gary managed to rock front door open with his boot, popping the Yale lock without damaging it. Inside, we did our usual cop-enters-flat triage for potential hazards; knives. Dogs. Needles. Angry boyfriends. There were none. Just a little family of teddy bears, a tinsel decorated TV and a clutch of empty supermarket own-brand vodka bottles.

We found a woman in the tiny kitchenette, kneeling with her head in the oven. She groaned. “Are you alright, love?” I asked, immediately feeling stupid. You’re lying with your head in an oven on Boxing Day? You aren’t alright.

Gary helped the woman up. She immediately fell over and rolled into a ball on the floor, drooling watery vomit. She was paralytic - whether someone is drunk or not is the one thing on which all coppers may provide expert witness testimony. Gary smiled. “I haven’t got the heart to tell her,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s an electric oven. And it’s switched off.”

I stifled a laugh. I’d been to so many sudden deaths, I’d already developed my standard-issue dark humour defence shield. I’d also seen enough suicides to know you couldn’t kill yourself breathing methane gas from an oven.

I called the CAD room for an ambulance and began looking for clues about the woman’s identity. The absence of any family photos told its own lonely story. Once the ambulance arrived and took her away (in those days there were still mental health facilities where patients could be assessed immediately) Gary and I began gathering information to identify anyone we could contact.

There wasn’t.

I spoke to the neighbour, who said there was a friend who visited occasionally. I took the neighbour’s number to forward to the hospital, so there was someone around when she got back again. “Funny,” said the neighbour. From her flat came the sound of kids screaming. “I’d give anything for a quiet Christmas.”

“Be careful what you wish for, eh?” said Gary.

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Night shift started at 22.00 hours, giving us time to prepare for the pubs chucking out. Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve were, unsurprisingly, the busiest shifts for drunkenness. In fact, Christmas Eve late turn (14.00 - 22.00) was probably busier than night duty. Then, our local street robbers would fleece the drunks. Or the drunks would get in their cars and drive into lamp-posts. More often than not, we’d turn up to the aftermath of these disasters, like industrial cleaners mopping up a toxic spill. No Christmas fisticuffs were complete without a mascara-smudged young woman in a Santa hat, sitting on the kerb bawling while we bundled her boyfriend into the back of the van.

I never worked uniform in what I’d call Very Central London (i.e. the West End), so my semi-inner city division seldom had the luxury of a dedicated ‘rowdy patrol’ or the TSG to deal with deal with violent drunks. Our custody suite only had capacity for six prisoners, so you’d find yourself escorting vomit-covered pissheads to other stations, like Mary and Joseph looking for room at an inn. Well, maybe not. As the old joke goes, this was London - good luck finding three wise men. Or a virgin.

Then there was drinking and driving. Most arrests, you might be surprised to learn (accidents notwithstanding), were made on early turn. During December we’d carry out rush-hour traffic patrols. Our orders were specific - if we smelt booze on anyone, or spotted any moving traffic offences, we’d require motorists to take a breath test. Many people struggle with how long alcohol stays in their system. We’d routinely arrest people at 10am, even though they insisted (probably truthfully) they hadn’t touched a drop since midnight.

A traffic officer uses an ESD (electronic screening device) on a motorist.

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Boxing Day involved domestics, although older sweats insisted the 27th was worse. By then, extended families (especially those of a ‘challenging’ disposition) had been cooped up together for three whole days; drinking heavily, watching crap TV, eating too much E-number laden food and going stir-crazy. Hitherto empty daytime cells were now full of angry, half-drunk men. Some were arrested for assault and, if they really failed the attitude test, for a Breach of the Peace (known as a ‘B.O.P’). This, actually, is a complex piece of common law, but suffice it to say it often involves being hauled up in front of a magistrate - which over Christmas might mean a bit of a wait. I remember on more than one occasion threatening people with a Christmas in the cells on a B.O.P, which would give some of our customers a reality check.

These were also the days when modern ‘Safeguarding’ nostrums didn’t exist. At the average domestic, we’d take a look around, check the kids were okay, ask the missus if she wanted to make an allegation and leave a referral card for the domestic violence unit. At the station we’d fill in a form for the child protection team. It was profoundly depressing - living rooms full of torn-up Christmas paper, overturned furniture and quiet, sad-eyed kids.

If we were able, a common tactic would be to broker a cool-down period, whereby the angry bloke (and 99% of the time it was a bloke) left the vicinity for a day or two or be nicked for a B.O.P. This, occasionally, worked. You’d deal with people at Christmas for losing their rag who’d never come to police attention any other time of the year.

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At the police station, in-between calls, we’d eat mince pies, talk shit and play pool. The majority of us were white men (I think, of our team of two sergeants and around fourteen constables, only three were women. None were from ethnic minorities). Night duties were busier than early turn at Christmas - on earlies, people would bring in food and we’d watch TV (when there were four channels to choose from). On the 25th, most duty officers (inspectors) would only order an Area Car to patrol while the rest of the relief ‘fire brigaded’, i.e. only responded to calls, rather than mooching about on the streets.

Off-duty, particularly on nights, felt strange. I lived in a flat share, but my flatmate was away, so I’d sleep in the day while Christmas sort of… happened. I felt like a low-rent Ebenezer Scrooge - an observer, detached from the world, peering through windows into the lives of others. Although, given the work I did, I was seldom jealous. One year, after Christmas Day early turn, Gary (another singleton) popped around for a curry. We sat watching TV, drinking lager from cans. “This is romantic,” he said.

“It could be worse. We could be on nights,” I replied.

“True, but have you seen the bullshit shift they’ve come up with for New Year’s Eve?”

On TV, I watched Steve McQueen crash his motorbike into a barbed wire fence for quite possibly the 60th time. “Yeah, 1800-0200. I’ve never worked one of those before.”

Gary had eight years in, and before that was a police cadet. He was well-versed in the Job’s mysteries. “It’s called exigencies of duty, mate.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means, despite New Year’s Eve falling on the same fucking day, every fucking year, the fuckers can still invent stupid shifts at the last minute when they run out of fucking coppers.”

A single police officer’s Christmas.

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New Year’s Eve.

New Year’s Eve is shit. And that’s even if you weren’t sent to Trafalgar Square on crowd control duties. I was posted to the High Street on ‘licencing patrol’, which meant standing around waiting for drunks to start fighting. One of our older officers, Chris, had been banished to divisional duty after some sort of drama on the TSG. He was a font of street wisdom. “Dom,” he said, pulling on a pair of black leather gloves. “You might find a few young ladies will want to kiss a policeman at midnight.”

I raised an eyebrow. “And?”

Chris nodded at a shabby pub, popular with feral Aussie backpackers. “I’ve seen a few who think it’s funny to vomit in a copper’s mouth.”

“Understood, Chris.” Like I said, New Year's Eve is shit.

The Australian backpackers were, I think it’s fair to say, a handful. Half-lovable scamp and half-utter pain in the arse. Do you remember that old movie Gremlins? They were like those after a few drinks. By 23.00 one couple were energetically copulating in the flower bed outside the police station. They were arrested, whereupon a delegation crowded the front office to protest our lack of a sense of humour. The Duty Officer told them, in no uncertain terms, to fuck off. Which, being Aussies, they understood.

I mingled with the crowds on the street, chatting with good-natured revellers spilling onto the street. Then I saw a scuffle - doormen kicking a lad out of the Aussie pub. He was lanky Australian, pissed but not legless. I told him to bugger off, to which he complied. By the time I completed a circuit of the pubs I was sent to keep an eye on, I saw him again, this time rubbing his head and arguing with the same pub doormen. I sensed trouble - the doormen looked like they were about to fill him in. “Is everything alright?” I asked.

“We chucked him out earlier,” the doorman grumbled. “Then he tried climbing up a drainpipe to get back inside. He broke the bloody thing.”

“Do you want to press charges?” I asked. “It’ll get him out of your hair.”

The pub manager, who was watching proceedings, shook his head. “No, it’s fine. But he’s barred. Understand?”

I looked at the crestfallen-looking Aussie. Midnight loomed, the pub packed to the rafters with drunk Australians and South Africans. The kid was drunk enough to be arrested, I reasoned, and he’d already had a warning. Two thoughts crossed my mind;

(1) If I nicked him, I might get the coveted first custody record number of the year. 01! This was deeply childish, but I’m just being honest.

(2) On the other hand, if I nicked him, we’d be one officer down for closing time. There would - imminently - be lairier, more troublesome people to deal with.

I made the decision to let him go. It might have been the wrong one, but I was young and stupid. “look mate,” I said. “Will you just fuck off home? You’re gonna end up in a cell otherwise.”

“Alright,” he wheedled annoyingly. “I’m on my way, mate, keep your hair on.”

I joined Chris on the pavement opposite the pub. And, as if by magic, a troupe of drunken Aussie girls asked us for a kiss. “Ladies, do yourselves a favour and go away,” Chris growled. “Throw up on someone else.” Screeching at us like witches, they stalked off.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a scuffle at a bus stop. Chris and I decided to investigate to find - you guessed it - my favourite stupid Aussie being thrown against a wall by a bigger guy. “What’s the problem?” Chris demanded.

“This bloke,” said the big guy. “He’s bothering the girls.”

I looked at my drunken Australian and he looked at me. “You’re nicked,” I said. “You’ve had two warnings.”

“Don’t warn people, nick them,” said Chris, snarling at the Aussie. It was a good lesson. Some people simply don’t deserve an even break. Some people really are incurable idiots. Police officers understand this in a way too many others don’t.

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At the custody suite, I booked in my prisoner. Someone had beaten me to the coveted number one spot. The Aussie lad genuinely believed he was hard done by. “I bet you’re a fucking poof,” he spat as I closed the cell door.

“You can’t even summon a decent insult?” I replied, having heard them all. I’ve spoken to a few Australian cops, especially from small towns in the middle of nowhere, who’d shaken their heads when I told them the tale. Back in the Lucky Country, he’d have taken a shoeing.

I went back outside for the rest of the shift. The high street was quieter now, a doorman hosing blood off the pavement outside the pub. An ambulance was parked nearby, blue lights reflecting off shop windows. Chris stood, arms folded, watching the last party-goers and revellers wobble home. “You didn’t miss much,” he said.

“No arrests?”

Chris shook his head. “I seem to have one of those faces,” he replied. “People seem to behave when I ask nicely.” It was true, the man had a grid like a medieval gargoyle.

“And I don’t?” I asked.

“Not really, mate. You’re too reasonable. Mind you, every team needs a reasonable copper or two.”

“Why?”

“It saves people like me from having to bother.”

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Happy Midwinter Festival, of whatever type you prefer. Just bear a thought, for a moment, for the Blue Light services working through it.

They have my gratitude, and thanks.