The police generally seemed fairly fraught and had taken to wearing ear protectors if they were close to the drums beating out the demand to free Palestine.
My dad told me that in the Second World War he came across police officers who had been drafted in from as far afield as Norfolk. He claimed he helped them find their new police stations.
They had been posted so far away from home because so many of the London bobbies joined the army.
But I doubt if they came from as far as Wales even then. The thin blue line must be unusually stretched.
Jonathan Brind