-- A few minutes later a police car arrived.
---`Get in the back, ' they said. `Put your hands on the back of the front seat and don't move them. '
---They got in on either side of me. It wasn't funny any more.
---At the police station they questioned me for several hours. I continued to try to look worldly and au fait with the situation. When they asked me what I had been doing , I told them I'd been looking for a job. ` Aha, ' I could see them thinking, `unemployed '.
---Eventually ,I was officially charged and told to report to Richinond Magistrates' Court the following Monday. Then they let me go.
---I wanted to conduct my own defence in court, but as soon as rny father found out what had happened, he hired a very good solicitor. We went along that Monday armed with all kinds of witnesses, including my English teacher from school as a character witness. But he was never called on to give evidence. My `trial' didn't get that far.
---The magistrate dismissed the case after fifteen minutes. I was free. The poor police had never stood a chance. The solicitor even succeeded in getting costs awarded against the police.
---And so I do not have a criminal record. But what was most shocking at the time was the things my release from the charge so clearly depended on. I had the `right' accent, respectable middle-class parents in court, reliable witnesses ,and I could obviously afford a very good solicitor. Given the obscure nature of the charge ,I feel sure that if I had come from a different background, and had really been unemployed, there is every chance that I would have been found guilty. While asking for costs to be awarded, my solicitor's case quite obviously revolved around the fact that I had a 'brilliant academic record' .
---Meanwhile, just outside the courtroom ,one of the policemen who had arrested me was gloomily complaining to my mother that another youngster had been turned against the police. 'You could have been a bit more helpful when we arrested you,' he said to me reproachfully.
---What did he mean? Presumably that I should have looked outraged and said something like, ' Look here, do you know who you're talking to? I am a highly successful student with a brilliant academic record. How dare you arrest me!'
---Then they, presumably, would have apologized, perhaps even taken off their caps, and let me on my way.