In 1944 I had my first serious brush with the law.

You'd think they'd have better things to do, what with the war.  Anyhow, officially my nose was clean.  I had a note from the doctor to say so.  And they'd tried it before.  The first time was when I was only 12.  Some trumped up charge like 'Possession of bread with intent to supply'.  Well, I was a part-time delivery boy for the bakery, after all.  Anyhow, possession is nine parts of the law, isn't it?  Nothing had come of it.

But now PC Clam decided he was going to get me.  I think Lord Silver-Darling was getting onto him about the amount of game he was losing.  But Clam could hardly creep up on me.  He was six foot two, and the same round.  He didn't really need a bike.  He could roll from place to place.  And he didn't like me calling him 'Clammy', either.

So one day I noticed he was following me.  Wherever I went, whatever I did, all that day he was there.  Which was a bit inconvenient.  It meant I couldn't get on with things that needed doing.  But I put up with it until he finally followed me home from the Goat.  And that, I thought, was the end of it.

Imagine my shock, then.  When the next day I was summonsed to the police station in North Walsham.  They took my fingerprints, photographed me, and charged me with 'Wasting Police Time'.  I told them I'd done nothing wrong.  They said that was the trouble.  They said Clam had followed me all day, and as I'd done nothing wrong then I was wasting his time.  It had me worried at first.  But I soon realised it was just a try on.  A warning.  What my Uncle Albert used to call 'a shit across the bows'.  So it was just a matter of sitting out the day in the cells, until they threw me out and left me to walk home.

From 'A Mandatory Life', part of George Kipper's songbook 'Man of Convictions'.