Yesterday's papers part two.

continued from yesterday


Elsewhere in the Sunday-paper-that-should-have-been-this-blog’s-Sunday-digestive there was news that Paris Hilton got herself arrested for possession of cocaine.

I must confess I’m not particularly interested in what Paris Hilton gets up to on her day off, in fact I know very little about her thinking that she was a singer or something like that.

Apparently, and I guess you know this, she owns a hotel somewhere.

What caught my eye though was the fact that the arresting police officers pulled her over because they saw “what looked like marijuana smoke” coming out of the car window.

Now, I’ve been pulled over by the police just for driving past them so I understand that they can be zealous, but is smoke from a joint and smoke from a cigarette really any different?

Or were they just exercising a right to be fascist?

A very, very long time ago – before Paris could utter the words “room service” – I was sitting in a legally parked van in Soho London. It was a summer’s evening and as the van was equipped for living I was drinking tea and chatting with a friend who, incidentally if not coincidently, lived in Paris.

Paris the city, not the woman.

And not in her Hotel.

My friend had spent some time previously in Tibet where she had developed a taste for Beedies – a potent cigarette – and as she was smoking and I didn’t we had the door open.

Two policeman walked past.

Two policeman walked back.

“We have reason to believe we can smell marijuana.”

“Ah, good evening to you too officers.” I couldn’t resist that, though I swallowed the urge to add “and how do you know what marijuana smells like?”

“No good sirs” said my French friend in impeccable English, “what you can smell are Beedies - issuing from the distant nation of Tibet which is, as we speak, brutally occupied by the Chinese”.

“You realise we could search this van.”

I did. A group of six plus nasty looking dog had done just that as I had had the affront to recently drive past the Stonehenge monument in S.W. England.

“You know we could sue you for wrongful…”

I put my hand over my friend’s mouth, “she’s French’, I said, “doesn’t speak English very well.”

There was a pause.

I showed them the footprints the police boots had left on my duvet cover.

We offered them a Beedie.

They walked away.

I wonder if Paris tried anything like that?