Hello again! I'm making up for lost time on this blog, that's for sure! :) But, it's been quite interesting around here lately, as I'm sure you can see...sometime last week, Kelly and I were over in Covent Garden and decided to stop and get some coffee (well, she got coffee and I got a diet coke, since try as I might, I don't really like coffee). It was about 7:30 at night at this time - not late at all. We came to this restaurant/cafe (if Uncle Larry or Katie are reading this, the restaurant we went to was Garfunkels - ah yes, good old Garfunkels). We decided to go there because we wanted to sit outside.

Here's where it starts to get weird. There was this old man slumped over face down in vomit at one of the tables. It was DISGUSTING. Anyway, we were looking at him and we couldn't tell whether or not he was breathing (the manager of the place had called an ambulance, because nobody knew what was going on). Since we couldn't tell whether or not he was breathing, of course I was positive that he wasn't and I was trying not to panic and also trying really hard not to laugh, because there was NOTHING funny about the situation. So anyway, finally these police cars pulled up because I guess here they send the police out before the ambulance. These two cops (one of whom was, as they say, quite fit) got out and went over to the old man. Apparently he was alive and just really, really, really drunk. Then two more cops come up, and this guy in plain clothes who was also a cop. One of the cops asked this guy in plain clothes what he was looking at, but I thought he was talking to me so I got really scared. He wasn't though, he was talking to the other guy and just joking around, and then they all saw how scared I got and the cute cop winked at me and told me not to worry, the other guy was a cop and they were just kidding around. (Sorry if that was confusing, I was confused too.)

Anyway, the cops finally managed to wake the guy up and he started trying to get up and when they tried to get him to sit back down, he tried to throw them off! I felt like we were on a Cops episode taking place in Chattanooga, Tennessee! They pushed him back down and he started pushing his chair backwards towards us, and I got really scared that he was going to throw his jacket (which had vomit on it) and it was going to land on me, at which point I would've begun screaming and jumping up and down. Luckily, though, he didn't throw his jacket. Anyway, the cops were chatting with us while they held him down. They were trying to make it so they didn't have to arrest him, and they were being pretty cool - much nicer than cops in the States would have been. Anyhoo, these two other cops came up, and they had the funniest hats on and I started laughing out loud because they looked so funny to me! I'll attach a picture of what they look like (it's the hats that crack me up, because they cover most of their faces and don't stay on properly when the bobbies start running). Anyway, eventually the drunk guy got really mad and started yelling at the cops that they were responsible for the war in Iraq and they've killed 200,000 people, then he passed out again. I think they got mad and decided to arrest him, so they called the paddy wagon and had to throw him in there, and then they all left, but we all waved at each other - we definitely made some friends! I've never seen anyone get arrested like that before! Very interesting stuff...and the cops here don't appear to carry guns, either!

A traditional bobby hat

Bobby with the traditional hat