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This is your brain on magic.

Ben Aaronovitch

My dad was a fairy,” said Zach. “And by that I don’t mean he dressed well and enjoyed musical theatre.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Dad Mean Musical
The worst part is staying in the room after you’ve broken the news, so that you’re forced to be there when someone’s life disintegrates around them. Some people say it doesn’t bother them – such people are not to be trusted.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Broken Disintegrate News People Stay Worst
If you just warn people, they often simply ignore you. But if you ask them a question, then they have to think about it.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Drunk People Thinking
I gave the prescribed Metropolitan Police “first greeting”. “Oi!” I said “What do you think you’re doing?
BEN AARONOVITCH

First Police Thinking
Landscaping is the great cardinal sin of modern architecture. It’s not your garden, it’s not a park – it’s a formless patch of grass, shrubbery and the occasional tree that exists purely to stop the original developer’s plans from looking like a howling concrete wilderness.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Garden Park Tree
The fact that it was entirely possible for someone to be all three simultaneously is why good-Samaritanism in London is considered an extreme sport – like BASE jumping or crocodile wrestling.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Country Jumping Possible Sport Wrestling
Being a seasoned Londoner, Martin gave the body the “London once-over” – a quick glance to determine whether this was a drunk, a crazy or a human being in distress.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Crazy Sports Wrestling
The study of the victim is called victimology because everything sounds better with and ology tacked on the end.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Sound Study Victim
Somebody doesn’t know they’re not in Kansas anymore,’ said Stephanopoulos.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Kansas Knows Said
Conflict resolution,’ said Nightingale. ‘Is this what they teach at Hendon these days?’ ‘Yes, sir,’ I said. ‘But don’t worry, they also teach us how to beat people with phone books and the ten best ways to plant evidence.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Books People Phones
It’s a sad fact of modern life that if you drive long enough, sooner or later you must leave London behind.
BEN AARONOVITCH

London Long Modern Life
What frustrated me was the thought that with three thousand years of history someone in China, some monk in a monastery halfway up a mountain, must have developed a magic kata.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Expression Magic Tree Years
Coffee arrived and the espresso was excellent, like an aromatic electric fence.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Coffee Espresso Excellent
What do you think you’re doing?
BEN AARONOVITCH

Lucky Charm Psycho Thinking
If you ask any police officer what the worst part of the job is, they will always say breaking bad news to relatives, but this is not the truth.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Broken Jobs People
Are they really gods?” “I never worry about theological questions,” said Nightingale. “They exist, they have power and they can breach the Queen’s peace – that makes them a police matter.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Police Queen Worry
The Metropolitan Police Service is still, despite what people think, a working-class organisation and as such rejects totally the notion of an officer class.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Character Educational Thinking
The media are doing this, not because they have a sinister motive, but because they love to feel that they are influencing events. That’s why they hate politicians so much, because politicians have direct power and they do not.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Events Hate Media
This I know for a fact: the reason African women have children is so that there’s someone else to do the housework.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Children Facts Reason
That which does not kill us has to get up extra early in the morning if it wants to get us next time.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Extra Morning Next Time
For a terrifying moment I thought he was going to hug me, but fortunately we both remembered we were English just in time. Still, it was a close call.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Call Close Hug Moments
The motto of West African cooking is that if the food doesn’t set fire to the tablecloth the cook is being stingy with the pepper.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Cooking Fire West
And once they start to think about the consequences, they almost always calm down. Unless they’re drunk, of course. Or stoned. Or aged between fourteen and twenty-one. Or Glaswegian.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Almost Always Between Consequences Start Unless
It’s a police mantra that all members of the public are guilty of something, but some members of the public are more guilty than others.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Guilty Member Police
He was calling it an atonic seizure because, even if he didn’t know why it had happened, it was important to give it a cool name.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Giving Important Name
Despite my mum being from a small village in the middle of a forest, I’m not a country person. I don’t like my bacon sandwich to be curiously snuffling at my fingers. But sometimes being police means holding your breath and fondling a pig.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Country Mean Pig
…don’t ask me why I know what an Edwardian smoking jacket looks like: let’s just say it has something to do with Doctor Who and leave it at that.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Doctors Looks Smoking

This is your brain on magic.

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This is your brain on magic.

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