TWENTY YEARS

A friend’s house got raided by the police at the weekend.
‘...they wouldn’t even let me get dressed,’ she said. ‘Not until they’d searched the place.’
‘Why they raid you in the first place?’ I said.
‘Well, apparently my son’s been looking on the internet about how to make a bomb and then he bought the ingredients online.’
‘So what happened?’
‘The police found a bomb in the garden shed big enough to blow up Horfield so they cordoned off the street because they had to make it safe before they left and let us back in the house.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I phoned my lawyer,’ she said.
‘And what they say?’
‘“Is he white? Is he middle class? Then he’ll be fine.”’
‘Really?’
‘He said if he was Asian he’d be looking at twenty years.’