Birthday Boy!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JOHN HAMISH DANGER WATSON!!

Everyone, I'm sure you'll all join me in wishing Danger the very happiest of birthdays.

And I shall risk Sherlock's ire ("the blog is for murders not boring stuff!") and say that I'm the luckiest bloke on the planet, because I have John in my life. So happy birthday, John, here's to the next 40 years.

polls

Well, thankfully the 60s managed to beat the 00s in the old poll. I can only assume some of you are too young to know better. You should rectify that.

The new poll, as at least 15 of you have noticed, is up.

I really don't know which my favourite is. The orange is striking - but it's matt, like the grey (apparently), and I'm not sure I'd like that. The grey is what I'd instinctively go for, but some pictures do make it look a bit boring. And the black is...well, black. but has gold accents - wheels etc.

You can look at the options here.

Also, it'd be hell to get Danger a jacket to match the orange.

where does the time go?

So, of course, the clocks choose to change just when I'm at my busiest. The gods wouldn't have it any other way.

I'm trying to get everyone sorted out for when I'm away, which means a lot of paper shuffling, meetings sorted out, checking people know when they should be in court, making sure different teams are chasing up different leads. Plus, of course, there's still fall out from the demo/riot at the weekend, and all the press interest that's kicking up. And then someone goes and plants a large bomb over in Londonderry/Derry, which puts us on even higher alert than we are anyway, and has the whole place overrun with the explosives dogs. All I'm trying to do is make sure everyone knows what they're doing for the four days I'm gone. I know in these modern times I'm only on the other end of the phone. But hopefully they won't need to call.

I've written about 30% of my seminar. And they found an arm on Sunday. For our torso, I mean, so as soon as the lab report is back on that (tomorrow, I hope) I shall be busy with that.

A new whistle...

Finally managed to buy myself a new suit. Of course, today chose to be a beautiful day, when the last thing I wanted to do was try on a whole load of formal wear. But didn't really have a choice.

John agreed to come with me and hold my hand, so at least I didn't have to face it all on my own. And Mrs H looked after the boys for a few hours, so we grabbed coffee and lunch too. It's not often I get him all to myself! And at least now I won't feel like I look like a tramp when I have to stand up in front of these bloody people later in the week. John said I looked okay, so all's well.

Then we had to get out and enjoy the sunshine a bit more. Ball games, frisbee, dogs, boys and John.

I'm a lucky bloke.

Going rowing...

GO OXFORD!!!

Well done the dark blues - been a few years since I've been to watch the boat race live, although I always try to catch it on the telly if I'm not able to get to the river. And I always cheer for Oxford - and this year they won by FOUR boat lengths. Fantastic.

Sherlock rooted for a sinking, Mycroft didn't seem to care who won, but was more interested in the technical aspects of the sport, and why Oxford rowed with a tandem rig this year. John was doing a fantastic job of remaining neutral and explaining winning wasn't everything...somehow I doubt these two boys have ever come second best at anything, but I guess it's a lesson they'll learn sooner or later. Hope John's around when that happens.

I tried to explain to Sherlock that the Thames really isn't much fun to be in...he seemed unconvinced. But I've been in it a few times (generally not through my own choice) and it's...nasty.

Crime and (self) punishment.

Any of you in the UK (I get the feeling quite a few of you aren't?) will have heard about the Night Stalker case. (Here on the BBC - It's a pretty disturbing serial rape/sexual assault case. Don't read it if you think it'll give you nightmares.) Anyway, glad that the suspect has been sent down for life (at least 27 years. Life doesn't mean life here.) I hope the Judge is right, and he won't ever be freed. I honestly can't see how anyone who does such things deserves to be free ever again. I'm all for rehabilitation, but if someone won't show any remorse, even when convicted, I think it's beyond that.

I knew a lot of people working that case, over the years. Even did a small amount of legwork myself, once or twice, helping out when I was still a Sergeant. And yes, the Met have apologised for missing the chance to catch him a long time ago.

Love is in the air...

After a day of trawling through files and files of gang-related violence, drugs, murders etc. and then finding out I missed out on frisbee and ice cream in the park, well, I figured I deserved to treat myself.

As a result I have to announce I might be a little bit in love.

Jets, frets and threats...

As I'm in my own flat (for once) trying to remember which way up you hold a guitar, in order that I don't embarrass myself completely when I play to Danger, it struck me that I haven't mentioned Jet Harris yet. He was a bass guitar player and a bloody good one. Played for the Shadows, most famously. RIP.

Today was one of those frustrating days.

Seminars, Celebrations and Dismembered bodies

I'm beginning to think I'll never get this seminar written. Largely because when I get a spare moment my brain point blank refuses to co-operate. Which in turn is because I don't want to do the bloody thing, because I hate standing up in front of people and speaking.

So filling an hour on 'High Profile Crimes - Crime Scene Procedure, Evidence and Press Management' (stop laughing Sally, I didn't pick this) is NOT my idea of fun. Obviously I don't have to speak for an hour, oh no, I get to think of stupid activities, too. Yeah.

The fact John's fortieth falls at the start of the bloody conference is doing little to help my mood, either. And I have no bloody idea what to get him as a gift. (all suggestions welcome. Send them on a postcard)

But right now I'm ankle deep in mud waiting for a search team report, as we had an anonymous phonecall during the night about one of my cold cases. Last year we found a body - a torso. Never found the rest, no head, arms, legs etc. So we've no idea who it is. (It's one of those cases you lay in bed thinking about at night. I hate cases where we can't identify the victim, therefore can't tell the family.) Just that the torso washed up in a quiet backwater. The call was a tip off about more bits of it (we hope) and a potential murder location. Which is where I am. Still, at least it's not raining. And the natives are relatively friendly, although a few seem to develop tourettes whenever they smell pig, so have been shouting abuse at us. Still, par for the course, in these parts. Around here if no one slashes your tyres or comes at you with a length of two by four you're doing well.

Dogs, death and Danger.

So I imagine most of you have seen John's post.

I feel I should perhaps defend myself and the boys explain, slightly.

I was supposed to be writing this seminar on Crime Scene Procedures. And Sherlock and Mycroft wanted to help (and ask lots of questions). So I decided a practical illustration was better than me just telling them. Sherlock 'just happened to have a recipe' for some fake blood (as you do), so we made that, then I sent them out of the room, set up a nice crime scene, with bloody footprints and a weapon and a body. My body.

And they did brilliantly. Set out the phonebooks to step on, so as not to contaminate the scene, took note of the 'weapon', and the footprints...and then started to examine me.

Which is when John came back. And all hell broke loose. He's got brilliant reflexes. Which isn't the most comforting of things when he's holding a gun, very vaguely pointed in your direction (not at me, but in my half of the room!). So he's shoved Sherlock and Mycroft behind him, to protect them from my attacker, Phobos has broken free to eat the 'blood', I've opened my eyes to discover John with a gun, a large dog in my face, Sherlock yelling to John that he's contaminating the evidence and Mycroft realising what's happening and trying to stop John doing anything serious.

Next time we do an experiment I shall give John forewarning. And ban dogs from the crime scene.

Poll quickie...

Well, Mycroft is very dissapointed in you all, as 'Pluto isn't a planet' won the poll, despite not answering the question in the slightest. But Pluto also got the (sympathy?) vote as people's favourite. Poor old Venus trailed in last.

New poll is about the hot topic of music.

It seems I won't be able to hold out for very long before I'm forced to play something for John and the boys. And Mycroft has been very interested in the whole guitar idea. Sherlock is more interested in the state of my hands, and what other instruments cause similar wear and tear on the body.

So what's your favourite musical era? Feel free to expand your answer in comments. I won't tell you mine, for fear of influencing the results.

Love to love you...

Firstly, if you missed the beautiful picture Harry sent me yesterday, you need to go back to my last post and see it. Just to set the scene, of us eating lunch today...


Ever have those moments when you sit back, look around and just think 'Yep, this is it'.

I had one of those today. In the pub, between a massive Sunday lunch and a massive piece of Banoffee pie for pudding, stretched out on the window seat, sun on my back, feet trying to avoid two large docile dogs, who had doubtless been fed too many morsels from the table -  one arm around Danger, and Sherlock and Mycroft seriously discussing the whole 'big moon' phenomenon last night, and the inaccuracies in the press regarding the science behind it. Not arguing, but discussing.

And a pint of London Pride in front of me.

Perfection.

Which, of course, got me thinking about all sorts of things about relationships and families.

help! i need somebody.

Right, my appearance as a member of the living dead didn't do anything to put Sherlock's teacher off putting me in front of her class.

So what can I talk to them about? they are all intelligent kids, but not all up to Sherlock's standard. And I don't know anything about what children like. I'm fairly sure they won't all enjoy murders as much as Sherlock.

all help gratefully received.

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE!!

Harry has just been kind enough to send me a picture of Danger, when he was younger - in retaliation for the current poll on his blog

Grey, grey, grey

London has dawned grey, misty, drizzly and generally uninspiring. But the end of a run of nights can never be bad, so it may as well be a bright sunny summer morning, as far as I'm concerned! Although I feel like I'm about 150years old.

Spent the first part of the night wandering the estate where the lad was shot last night. Wearing my stab vest, Danger (which admittedly won't help much if there's a nutter with a gun, but I didn't think I'd have the mental capacity to step out of the way of a knife last night, so on it went.) anyway, usually we don't do late housecalls, but the sort of people we wanted to talk to are nocturnal. So there we were. No one told us anything, quite a few people yelled quite a lot of abuse at us, and told us to go and catch some real criminals - apparently having not listened to a word we said, and thinking we were just on the rounds for drugs again.

The lad is out of intensive care, but either he doesn't know anything or he's not saying. I think the former, but you can never be sure. His mother promises he's not into gangs, he's a good boy. But mothers are often the last to know about these things.

Anyway, now freedom, sleep, Danger, the boys, the weekend. Not necessarily in that order.

Oh, and the picture, as I mentioned in comments, has been taken down. Which is good in some ways, but it does give the impression I've died. Or been sacked. I daresay they'll put up a new hideous mugshot soon.

Caffeine, crims and coppers.

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Only the very best hallucinations

I'm not sure if it's too much caffeine and too little sleep causing me to hallucinate, or if Danger really is singing along to The Hollies 'All I Need Is The Air That I Breathe' in the kitchen.

I think its the former. I hope its the latter. He's got a nice voice. And there's something about doing work like decorating that means you have to sing along to the radio. It's the law.

Anyone got any classic tracks that brings the pop star out of you. Danger, clearly, does. (see previous convictions re Sparkles, R.)

Getting a man in.

I never sleep well on the day before nights. No matter how much I tell myself I should try and start my body adjusting, it just doesn't work.

So this morning I got up with the boys and Danger, we got everyone off to school/tutors, and then headed out to get some supplies.

Once back at the house things got very hot and steamy. And Danger helped me strip (or we helped each other strip, I suppose). Peeling back the layers was very very satisfying. And quickly followed by exploring some cracks and some careful filling.

We have loved the stars too fondly to be afraid of the night

So, new poll. I know that's not a very exhaustive list, and Mycroft rolled his eyes at me when I named it that. But I do enjoy a good heavenly body.

Last night the Royal Observatory at Greenwich held one of their Observing Evenings. So it seemed only right to let Mycroft get along there and have a look through their massive telescope [A 28-inch refracting telescope] Shit! how do you even DO that, Mycroft? I'm typing - it's scary to see words I'm NOT typing coming up on the screen! Stop it! Get your own blog if you want to.

result! (almost)

So the poll has nearly closed, and it seems everyone has a lot of faith in Mycroft (well done, mate, you're obviously making a very good impression on here, which is more than most of us manage!). And not so much faith in Danger's ability to stop future trouble.

Today had been mercifully quiet at work, and now I have a wonderful weekend off, before nights next week. I don't mind nights too much, as long as you can fit stuff in during the day. So if Danger doesn't kill me for attempting to support his love of terrible pop acts we might even manage some time spent together.

Any suggestions what we should do?

Everybody come and play...

Can't you just imagine Danger dancing around the room, singing into a hairbrush?? I can. I wonder if he had jelly bracelets and a cool graffiti coat? Harry?

Sherlock, Mycroft, you two should get on the case, learn how to play it on the keyboard/violin, he'd be SO happy!

testing

Mycroft is doing his very best to teach me how this works. It'S AN ic'm smarter than you phone. His fingers are a blur on the screen, and he's set up my emails a nd this blog and John's blog onto it. He's also pointed out numerous flaws in the software.

I feel very old. We didn't even have a phone in the house when I was little. Now I've got a work one and this thing the Yard set up the blackberry though. Only so the can bother me day and night though.

Well igot this far , now to change to the laptop. Did I do well, Mycroft?

Flippin' 'Eck

Want to come over to mine for Shrove Tuesday? I've got all the ingredients, all the toppings. I just need a tosser.

Hey, no one ever said policemen told good jokes. I must have heard that one about 100 times today though.

Anyway, right now Sherlock is picking egg shells out of egg. This is because he's convinced that if I can crack an egg in one hand, he can. Well, he probably could, if he had eggs four times smaller than I had. But he doesn't, so he just taps the egg, then crushes it in his fist.

Mycroft's helping him now, in the interests of us not all getting crunchy pancakes. I'm observing, complete with ice-pack rested on my hand, courtesy of the good Doctor.

Had a far better day today, even if the Guv did have his arse in his hands all day, and gave me two cold cases which are glacial they're so old. Still, I'd like to think I might solve them.

Fudge has been put off in favour of pancakes, by the way. Pancakes giving far more instant gratification. (And the thought of the fake-cheese-fudge has put me off for life. I once investigated an industrial fatality in a factory that made those fake cheese burger slices. I will never ever eat one again. Believe me when I say the body floating in the stuff was the only bit you'd want to eat). Although Sherlock's already managed to give more to the dogs than we've eaten, with miss-placed attempts to flip them - and out of an entire bag of flour I estimate only about 50% has gone anywhere near the bowl. Mycroft is far better at flipping them, but far softer on the dogs, so they still win, as he feeds them little bits he rips off the edges.

Still, I love pancakes, and will go through anything to eat a few. Quite a few. At least six. Heck, it only comes once a year, right?

Any suggestions on what I should give up for Lent?

Mini-me

So some of you will have been following today's saga via John's blog.

Basically, at some point between getting to their place yesterday night and leaving this morning, Sherlock took my warrant card (badge, to you Americans) out of my coat.

By some miracle this morning, instead of every door into the Yard slamming in my face, there was a sudden bout of manners, so I didn't need my card to swipe into the building - doors held open all the way.

Operation Blog

So some people were curious when I mention the Sapphire Team the other day. And wondered if all the police teams were named after precious stones (no).

There are various different ways Teams are named. I'm in a MIT - Murder Investigation Team. Simple.

Sapphire are the rape and serious sexual assault/violence team. Sometimes we work closely with them, as they aren't really equipped to deal with serial offenders, so we help out. We're all under the umbrella of SCD (Specialist Crime Directorate), murder, rapes, armed robberies and other serious crimes.

The Hangover

Not the film, but the brain-crushing-eye-watering-vomit-inducing real thing.

John has one.

(I don't. 'Bad beer' as self-diagnosed by Dr Danger just means  'too much beer'. I fear I had something to do with that, making him worry with my stories of drug dealers. He wouldn't be the first person to decide going out with a Rozzer wasn't worth the stress. Not by a long shot.)

I think this is a fine lesson for the boys about the evils of drink. John grunted something at me about smugness.

But he did relent last night and not make me sleep on the sofa. Although I'm not sure he remembers. Or knew I was there. His snoring was making Phobos whine.

John and Jam

It was entirely Danger's fault that my mind was elsewhere today.

And now he's err...a little bit tipsy. So it seems the perfect time to post this.

A picture of John+Jam.

With age comes experience...

You know when, at the time, you laugh about something like a lunatic, but when you recount the story to someone else, they just get all worried and make it sound like it really shouldn't be fun at all? Well, I haven't quite got around to telling John about this yet...for exactly that reason.


So today at work - which promised to be nothing but a dull interlude between watching Danger eat jam-on-toast for breakfast and coming over and cooking up a storm later - I was expecting, well, boredom layered upon boredom layered upon tedium.

But the day dawned crisp and bloody cold, so it seemed a perfect time to go an annoy some drug dealers. Sgt Donovan and I have a very annoying old case on the books (all unsolved cases are annoying). We know roughly who did it. They know we know. Everyone else knows that they did it AND that we know they did it AND that they know we know.

Contrasts

Well, today's been great. And is quite possibly about to get better.

Enjoyed a nice long mooch around the market, stopped at a cafe to warm up (there's a bitter wind today), ate lots of tasters and bought...well, quite possibly enough to feed either a small army or two small(ish) boys. Lots of my favourite olives and John's favourite bread, some brilliant cheeses, and, of course, for Doctor Danger, some sausages (don't look at me like that, they did look very tasty! The nice lady on the stall knew exactly what I meant!) and some jam (I'll have a camera at the ready, people). And I change my answer to 'is John mean?' because there was no need for him to try to pinch me, or elbow me, or stamp on my foot when we were discussing sausages....or jam. Or cream. Or some rather phallic shaped vegetables. Whatever he says. And he does look cute when he blushes and his ears go pink.

Mycroft, got you the best cheese we could find. I made John carry that bag, then slowly edged away from him on the tube to fully appreciate the dirty looks people were giving him. Hahaha.

Now we thought about having lunch - but have both eaten enough! So onto more...pleasurable and relaxing ways of spending a free afternoon, before we walk up to Sherlock's school to pick him up in a bit.

And I really AM fine, people. You do, sadly, get used to crimes like that. And I've been dealing with them for a very long time. But it was nice not to go back to an empty flat, I'll admit. Sometimes you get too caught up in your own thoughts if you don't have any distractions.

Midnight calls.

Right. The Met's shrink always says it's good to write things down. And John does it. I've got to admit I'm more a 'go down the pub and sink a few pints with your mates' sort of guy usually - given that in this job your mates usually saw the same stuff you did. But since you all seem to have been following this saga since John posted about it in the small hours I suppose you don't mind hearing about it. It'll probably make the local press tomorrow anyway.

It's good for you! Bollocks.

Rather rashly, in a moment of feeling like I shouldn't eat as many take aways and, now I've almost entirely given up smoking, deciding I could be healthier, I decided yesterday I'd run to work this morning. Left work gear here yesterday, took my running stuff to John's.

And yeah. Ran. Jogged. Well, most of it was faster than walking pace. Just about.

But I got here, still breathing and in no need of emergency medical treatment. I may have taken the lift when I got here though. Legs weren't quite up to the stairs.

And since then I've been stuck in a seminar on dealing with the press, a liason meeting about a serial rapist with the Sapphire team and a meeting with my team about a murder. And through every second I can feel my body getting older and stiffer (not like that, Danger.).

I think I need a doctor. One with healing hands.

(see how I've optimistically tagged this 'sport'?)