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I got manhandled by the police last night. Handcuffed, put in the back of a police car, and told I’d committed a criminal offence. And you will NOT believe what for. My hands are still shaking. 😡 I’ve been lying awake since half four going back and forth on whether to take them to court. So I’m going to tell you the whole story, every detail, and you can help me decide. Please. I really need some honest opinions. That’s me in the photo this morning. You can still see the marks on my wrists. For those who don’t know, I’ve lived in America for nearly thirty years. I flew home to England last week for my grandson’s birthday party on Saturday. Last night I borrowed my sister’s car to go to choir practice at my old church, because I’ve missed singing with those ladies terribly. Driving back about quarter past nine, the dark stretch of road just past the chemist, radio up, singing away, minding my own business, and then blue lights flashing in the mirror. My stomach went through the floor. I haven’t been pulled over since 1998. I pull in. Hands on the wheel, just like my son taught me. The officer walks up with her torch. A woman, late forties, hair scraped back tight. She tells me my rear light’s out. I said oh goodness, I’m so sorry, it’s my sister’s car, I had no idea. She asks for my licence. I hand it over. The one I’d only renewed last March. New photo and everything. She shines the torch on it. Then on me. Then on it. Then on me. Far too long. I thought maybe she just didn’t trust an American licence. Then she says, “Madam, this isn’t your licence.” I said, I beg your pardon? Of course it’s my licence. She says, “The woman in this photo is 61.” I said, I AM 61. She says, “You’re not 61.” I laughed. I thought she was having me on. She was NOT having me on. She holds the licence up beside my face and says, “Look at the skin in this photo. That’s not your skin.” I said, it was my skin. It isn’t anymore. She said, “It doesn’t work like that.” Then she asks, “Is this your mum’s licence?” My mum died in 2019. I told her so. My voice had already started to wobble. And she says, cool as anything, like she’s reading off a card: “Madam, presenting someone else’s identity document to a police officer is fraud. That’s a serious criminal offence. I need you to step out of the car.” FRAUD. Me. I’ve never had so much as a parking ticket, on either side of the Atlantic. I said, for my own face?? She said, “Out of the vehicle, please, madam.” So out I get. Pitch black, lorries thundering past, me in my Sunday best and my good flats. And she turns me round and puts handcuffs on me. Right there on the verge. Behind my back. She said, “This is for your safety and mine.” I said, am I being arrested?? She said, “No, madam. You’re being detained until I can confirm who you are.” Detained. For my own face. Then she walks me to her car and puts me in the back. The BACK of a police car. At 61. The doors don’t open from the inside, did you know that? I didn’t. There’s a plastic screen between you and the front, and it smells of stale coffee and disinfectant. I could hear her on the radio asking control to check my licence. A voice came back: genuine, nothing flagged. I said THANK YOU LORD out loud. And she turns round and says through the plastic, “Genuine means the licence is real. It doesn’t mean it’s yours.” I sat there with my hands cuffed behind my back and I started to cry. Not delicate crying. Proper ugly crying. And here’s the part that finished me off. There’s a petrol station right there, and a man at the pump was filming the whole thing on his phone. Two cars slowed down for a nose. And one of them, I swear to you, was Pauline from choir’s husband. So half the congregation knows by now. 🙃 All I could think was, my husband’s about to get a call from a police station four thousand miles away. My grandson’s party is Saturday. And I’m going to spend it explaining to the whole family that I got arrested for looking too good. After about fifteen minutes, something in me snapped. I leaned forward and shouted through the plastic, I WANT YOUR SERGEANT. She said, “Madam, lower your voice, please.” I said, this IS my voice. Get me your sergeant. NOW. And fair play to her, she radioed for her supervisor. Ten minutes later another police car pulls up. Out gets a woman in her fifties with sergeant’s stripes. She has a quiet word with the first officer. Then she opens my door, takes my licence and shines her torch on it. Then on my face. Up close. Very close. And she says, “It’s her.” The first officer says, “It isn’t.” The sergeant says, “Kerry. Same mole under the left eye. Same scar on the chin. It’s her.” (I got that scar coming off my bike in 1971. Never dreamed it would get me out of handcuffs.) Kerry says, “Look at the photo, Sarge.” The sergeant says, “I am looking at the photo. It was taken last March.” Then she helps me out of the car, looks at me for a long moment, and says very quietly: “Madam. What have you done?” And ladies, I’m not exaggerating, it turned into a quiz show at the side of the road. 😂 “Surgery. You’ve had surgery.” No. “Botox. I can always spot Botox.” No. “Fillers? Threads? One of those lasers?” No. “Then it’s collagen. Which one? The sachets? The powder?” No. Well, yes. But not those. “The ones every influencer’s flogging?” No. Then she says, “My sister’s had a tub of collagen powder on the go for two years and she does NOT look like you. What is it?” And there I am in handcuffs, mascara halfway down my chin, and I said: Sergeant, I’ve bought ALL of them. The posh powders in the big tubs. The little sachets you’re meant to stir into your coffee. The ones the lady in the health food shop swore on her life by. Twelve tubs. I counted once and stopped because it was making me feel daft. Nine years. None of it did a thing. She says, “So what did?” I said, I’ll tell you. But first you take these handcuffs off. She looked at me. I looked at her. I said, you want to know, and I want to go home. She turned to Kerry and said, “Take the cuffs off.” Kerry said, “Sarge, the rear light.” The sergeant said, “Words of advice. Take the cuffs off and give her the licence back.” When those cuffs came off my wrists were red raw and my fingers were tingling. I rubbed them for a good minute. Then I leaned into the car, grabbed my handbag off the passenger seat, took out a little purple pouch and held it up. I said, that. She takes it, reads it under her torch and goes, “These are sweets.” I said, they’re collagen gummies. Have one. She popped one in her mouth. Chewed. And I watched her face change. Kerry came over and leaned in too. “That’s passionfruit.” I said, yes. That’s the whole thing. That’s the entire difference. And then I told her what took me nine years to work out. It wasn’t that collagen didn’t work for me. It’s that I never actually took it. The powder went lumpy in the cupboard. The sachets tasted like pond water so I’d skip a day, then a week, then I’d bin the box. And the few gummies I could stand had about 1,000mg in them, a fraction of a proper amount. Nine years I fed collagen to my kitchen cupboard. These have 4800mg in five gummies, nearly five times what most gummies have. I told her, when my sister first gave me some, I didn’t believe a word of it. Then I realised I hadn’t missed a single day in six weeks. Not one. Because it’s five sweets with my morning cuppa, not a chore. She asked how long I’d been taking them. I said twelve weeks. She said TWELVE WEEKS?? I said, it’s the first collagen I’ve ever actually finished. Then this sergeant, standing at the side of the road at ten o’clock at night, tells me she’s booked in for injections in April. I said, darling, I nearly did that too. Couldn’t go through with it. Hundreds of pounds every few months for the rest of your life. And once you start, you can’t stop. I didn’t want a frozen forehead. I wanted my FACE. She asked, “What if it doesn’t work for me?” I said, then you tell them. They give you 30 days. You cancel in two taps. Nobody chases you. She took out her notebook and I spelled it for her. C-L-O-U-D. And when I got back in the car, I looked in the wing mirror. Kerry was standing by her car, touching the skin around her own mouth. She had no idea I saw. 😏 Now let me tell you how I even found these. My sister Jackie. She’s 63, lives in Leeds, never been near a needle in her life. Last Christmas I flew home and couldn’t stop staring at her across the dinner table, thinking, how does she look 45? Boxing Day I finally asked her in the kitchen. She said she’d given up on powders years ago because she never finished a tub, and her daughter put her onto these. She tipped five out of the pouch onto my palm and said, that’s it, that’s the whole routine. I took three pouches back to America in my suitcase. And now look. Ten months later I’m sat in the back of a police car in my own home town because my licence doesn’t look like me anymore. 😂 I rang my husband in America, showed him my wrists on video and told him everything. He was FUMING. He wants me to take them to court. My daughter says leave it, it’s a funny story. My son says at least make a formal complaint. Now, let me be clear. I’ve nothing against the police. My late brother was a copper for 22 years. I bake mince pies for our local station back home every Christmas. But last night I finally understood why so many people feel the way they do. I did nothing wrong. I was polite. I did everything I was told. And I still ended up in handcuffs, sobbing in the back of a car, with a stranger filming me, because one person decided she knew better than my own licence. If it can happen to a 61-year-old church lady in sensible flats, it can happen to anyone. So I’m asking you all. Be honest. Should I take them to court? Make a complaint? Or just let it go and laugh about it? Tell me in the comments, because I genuinely don’t know. 👇 And before anybody asks, because I KNOW you’re going to ask: yes, I’ll tell you where to get them. They’re not even expensive, which is the mad part. About £1.41 a day, less than the coffee I used to stir the sachets into. Here’s the link: https://usecloud.co/pages/collagen Nine years I thought it was my face. It was never my face. It was the sachets. And to PC Kerry, if you’re reading this: no hard feelings, love. Get the gummies. And sort your rear light jokes out. 😘