It's mostly behind me now but as my adventure draws to an end I might was well share a positive experience I had with police halfway through.

In 2021 I was photographing my own back garden mid-summer, partly for the benefit of the landscape gardener and partly to show off to colleagues the "home office" I had constructed for myself at the bottom of it.

As I stepped out the front door later in the afternoon, the neighbour came out and accused me of photographing his children -- who had been barely discernible though the narrowly single-slatted fence. "you're suspect, keep away" etc. I was so dumbfounded I didn't even find the time to explain "well i was photographing for the landscape gardener etc". I honestly barely even remembered there had been any photographing of anything.

This was infinity percent the worst possible on-the-nose bad thing that could possibly have happened to me at that moment, given my historic conviction.

When the PPU turned up the next day (the neighbours must simply have phoned the police and it defaulted to them), they spoke to me as if they didn't believe a word from the neighbour. Even the division chief (my visitor's immediate boss, whatever we call it) had snorted derisively at the complaint, even though on paper at least, it is a type of activity I'm supposed to have form on. I handed them the digital camera with its digital "reel" still intact, showing the garden, chair setup etc, and it revealed the primary motive for photography and a fence through which nothing could be discerned from that many metres away. I even escorted the PPU to the kitchen to view the fence out my window and observe just how opaque it truly was.

When I remarked on how impressed as I was that they were so understanding so soon, they said something  to the effect of "it's a lot more common nowadays" (referring to this type of paranoia).

I wonder if I ever suffered at all because of the complaint? I am a little surprised that after nearly 10 years their visits have remains consistent -- not decreasingly frequent like you often hear about --  from the 2nd to the final year (this happened after 5 years). But there was no followup or anything, not even in terms of questions asked in future visits, except one question sometimes came up -- "no problems with the neighbours"?