John Gibson: A touch of the Tasers in Rose Street?

Published on Thursday 25 June 2009 09:14

I'M reconnoitring Rose Street (if you've not had a good old-fashioned reconnoitre in a while, try one now, you won't go blind) and I've padded into the Bad Ass in my plimsolls.

"As well you weren't in here last night," a customer chum tells me, "you'd have choked on your beef and ale pie."

Apparently a couple of the lads in blue had dropped by, two of East Fettes' finest and uniformed, for a can-we-have-a-word-with-you-sir? with some of the clientele.

Something short of "anything you say might be taken down and used" and some people enjoying a glass were sternly asked if they'd eaten on the premises.

The Bad Ass is a restaurant, as opposed to a pub, and the law says you can't have a swallie without a scoff.

But to have a couple of coppers – cuffs and pacifiers at the ready? – stride up to you in a restaurant I'd find grossly intimidating.

Disturbing enough for locals. What must tourists think? You won't find gendarmes giving you a hard time in similar circumstances in Paris.

There's enough off-putting stuff about central Edinburgh as it is right now. Enough to send visitors from home and abroad packing, never to return. Enough to divert them instead to Glasgow and Peterhead without lads in their size 12s striding into restaurant in 'ello-'ello-wot's-all-this-'ere mode.

Bottom lines: the law's the law and we're only doing our duty. But do they have to turn up with Tasers, stab-proof vests and night sticks? (jesting, of course).

When I turned up next night, they confiscated my plimsolls.

The Capital's restaurateurs are having to endure a torrid time. Did you ever meet one who's not skint? The Ayatollah's starting a relief fund for them as I weep.

Going Dutch

Not a lot of people know this . . . the Dutch were starving when, by special arrangement in late April 1945, the occupying Germans agreed to allow the RAF's Bomber Command Lancasters to fly over Holland and drop food.

David Bremner, now living in West Linton, was a navigator in one of the Lancs and, 64 years later, he has just received from Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands a commemorative medal and certificate. David after demob managed Rossleigh's car showrooms in Shandwick Place.