As with everything in life there are certain situations that are highly amusing. Once such event occurred late one Friday afternoon (it was even close to early evening), the Streetskins installation team had arrived at the installation site in Cobham. This area is an extremely posh part of greater London, it is situated very close to the Chelsea Football training facility, so it is where most of the Chelsea footballers live, as well as the upper end of society.
The installation team had unloaded all the tools and welding equipment outside the Lloyds Pharmacy (which had now closed) and had begun to file down the side channels of the shutter. If anyone has any experience with an angle grinder, it makes an extremely loud noise, and small sparks fly in all directions. Halfway through the filing down of the one side channel the transport Police arrived, transport police are different to the normal police as they mainly travel on public transport ensuring there are no problems. The two coppers, asked what we were doing, and after a detailed explanation and few photos, they were extremely impressed with the idea and carried on strolling down the high street.
The installers were getting fairly close to the end of their filing when two police cars came roaring around the corner, sirens blearing, skidding to a halt diagonally across street, blocking all traffic in both directions. The one installer on top of the ladder got the fright of his life and nearly fell from his perch. 2 policeman leapt from their vehicles and screamed "What are you doing?". After a brief explanation they radioed to call off their backup that was on route to our location. Apparently they had received a call saying that a group of burglars were "carving their way through the Lloyds Pharmacy shutter, trying to steal drugs". They further stated that every police gun unit in Surrey had been mobilised and at this stage there were 8 squad cars, all armed to hilt, on their way to the "Battle of Lloyds". Talk about an over reaction if there had ever been one.
The police then proceeded to give us a lecture on notifying the police prior to our arrival. I told the police that two officers had strolled past 30 mins earlier, they didn't seem too bothered, and didn't think we needed to notify anyone about our actions and moved on. The police responded to that saying, "Yes, but those were only transport police". What he was really trying to say was, "The transport police spend their days catching trains and buses around, we are the real police we have cars".
The moral of the story is that cops in posh areas can also be snobs.
