Yesterday, strange swarms of dayglo-ed policemen milling around Hammersmith Broadway and the bus station during my morning commute.

I don’t mean to imply that they were there expressly because it was my commute - I haven’t quite got to the stage of requesting an armed guard (where “armed” means “truncheons”), however dodgy that bit of the city is these days.

Actually, for the record, Hammersmith has *always* been shit.

When I was at school near White City, a couple of miles up the road, we used to have our annual carol concerts in St Paul’s church in Hammersmith, the one that crouches under the overpass and has soundproofing plastic sheets over the stained-glass windows.

We members of the choir (hello, John!) would make our way there after school at three or so, have a practice singsong (Adam Lay Ybounden, I remember, along with the sussex carol, and various descants of well-known traditional festive songs) and then be free to roam around Hammersmith until the parents arrived and the concert kicked off at half seven. So we’d wander down King Street, and flick through the shops without buying anything in particular - though one year, I did buy a Housemartins single (Build, I think) from Our Price, which used to sit where Pret A Manger is these days.

There was little to do in Hammersmith then as now, and less still when you
a) have no money and
b) are in school uniform

In recent times, of course, the latter problem has been eased by the arrival of School Disco to the Palais, bringing hoardes of twenty-somethings bedecked in a tarty facsimile of how they remember school uniforms (even if they never wore one). Nowadays, there’s plenty do do if you are in school uniform. If it’s evening, stick your tongue down the throat of a person too old to be wearing a skirt/trousers that short. If it’s daytime, hang around the bus station dodging truancy officers and kicking old ladies.

So we’d hang around the shops for a bit until they closed, then we’d go and hang around the church. Rock and roll. There really wasn’t anywhere else to hang around, you see, except the bus station, and that was strictly off-limits.

As a teenager, I was at liberty to take the tube wherever I pleased, and most buses were also deemed fine, as far as orders from mother were concerned. But under no circumstances was I to go into the bus station in Hammersmith. No no NO. Not even a little bit.

In the mid eighties, it was a shithole, famous for drugs and stabbings and no buses, and grime and people looming around looking threatening. If memory serves, it was a low complex of grey and green prefab-like buildings, with not enough lighting.

Back then, it was called Butterwick Bus Station - I have no idea if the name has survived the demolition and building of the new bus terminus, on top of the District & Piccadilly lines station. Maybe it has. The reputation has certainly improved. Well, a bit.

It’s better now, of course. The bus station is pretty well lit, and there are generally people around. It sits on top of a mini-mall, containing various boutiques, some sandwich bars, a bookshop, post office (which always has queues out the door), at least three big name coffee outlets and a Tesco metro.

The bus stands, fringing a central island which floats above the shops, encircled by red predatory buses like sharks. The stands suffer from the same anarchic queueing system that affects about half of London: generalised nonchalent area-nonspecific milling and then every passenger for themself when the doors fly open. The other half of the city, of course - the nice bits - have the kind of queuing that only happens in fifties photo-essays about the suburbs. Orderly single-file lines stretching down the block, starting from the bus stop itself, with boarding in strict arrival order on pain of social ostracism. Believe me, you do not want to fuck with the bus people of Barnes at half eight on a Monday morning.

Funny to think that a place I was once barred from now sees me passing through twice a day.

On Tuesday morning, however, I was passing through something within the bus station itself: a metal detector, looking for bus passengers carrying knives, as part of the Met’s Operation Blunt.

Hang on, that’s lokking for people as part of the Operation, not carrying knives as part of it. If it was the latter, I expect the Met could announce that Blunt had been a resounding success already, and go home.

No, they were looking for knives, by making people getting off one of the escalators from the mini-mall below walk down a little corridor of yellow and black police tape, and between two thick poles, which looked like a limbo setup which had lost its top bar.

Now, call me cynical, but isn’t it a bit strange to tell people you’re going to be searching them from Tuesday to Friday in Hammersmith bus station, if the point is to catch them unawares? Isn’t that kind of ruining the surprise element? If London Transport put up posters and press releases saying that they were going to have ticket inspectors at the left hand gate of the exit from the District line at West Kensignton on Monday at, ooh, about half three until teatime, don’t you think hardened fare-evaders would simply get off a stop early, or late, or avoid that gate, or that time, or simply purchase a ticket, for once, in order to blend in? It seems a bit odd to tell people you’re going to be scanning them for knives, is all.

Mind you, you can all sleep well in your beds tonight, safe in the knowledge that the Met have been doing a sterling job with Operation Blunt in Hammersmith bus station, and if a knife-wielding maniac happens to pass through the detector at the top of the left hand escalator nearest the main door to the mall (the other escalators are fine, however, as is the lift) between now and Friday, and between about nine and sixish, well, then, the attendant forty-eight police officers in dayglo jackets (not to mention the mall security team, and the community support officers in their pretend police uniforms - aw, bless, let’s play dress-up!) will, I’m sure, be on hand to apprehend them immediately.

Because as with so many things in this country, this world at the moment, it couldn’t possibly be a publicity stunt, more focused on being seen to look like it’s dealing with a problem than actually dealing with it…

Nooo, that can’t be it at all.