First there was a really annoying noise, a door creaking or a rubber tyre skidding on an American road.
(If you’re wondering, by the way, yes: our road surface here makes a different noise and you really have to gun the engine and work the wheels to get it to happen. It’s one of those weird things about going to L.A. from London for the first time. You discover that all those cop movies you’ve seen where car tyres screech as they go around corners at twenty miles an hour are entirely accurate. Anyway…)
Then there was a lot of huffing and shouting, and the sound of someone walking around where there shouldn’t have been anyone walking around. So I peered out of my living room window and realised almost immediately that I was squinting like a myopic granny at a man and a woman who were standing on my garden wall.
Piss off, I thought. That’s my wall.
So I did what any red blooded Londoner would do: I went out onto the balcony where they couldn’t get me, and engaged them in polite conversation along the lines of: “What do you freaks think you’re doing standing on my goddam wall? (And don’t even think of standing on the other wall, it’s falling down and the council’s giving me agg about it.)”
Incidentally, they weren’t exactly Jack Bauer. They weren’t even Bodie and Doyle. They were a bit more Hot Fuzz…
They were all wearing jackets with HOME OFFICE: BORDER AGENT written on them. And they were… roomy. None of them would have looked out of place in a sitcom as the portly but good-hearted friend. So they didn’t feel like a SWAT team, is what I’m saying.
Anyway. Turned out they were hunting a fleet-footed illegal sushi chef. (There was a great moment where they requested – in a require-ish sort of way – permission to come over the back wall. I said fine. My back wall is about nine foot high from the other side. A brief while later, there was a knock at the door and they asked if they could please come through the house instead.)
Eight guys.
One sushi chef.
A great deal of equipment and time.
I cannot honestly tell you I believe this is the best use of the money it must have cost. Unless he’s a very, very dangerous sushi chef with terrorist connections and a charge sheet of sushi-knife mayhem as long as a halibut.
And if he is, by the way, they really should have sent a scarier crew to pick him up. I genuinely liked this lot. They were sweet and friendly. I wanted to give them tea. But if the business of the day were apprehending some kind of Eebil Ninja Master, I’d want someone a bit less affable and a bit more asskicky.
As they were leaving, one of them said “thanks for having us”.
