I own what I’ve always assumed to be a fake army jacket: black, with a row of lapel pins across the breast. It’s occasionally struck me that the stall-owner might have nabbed it from a van but, then, I’m not a trustful fellow. Anyway, last sunday I’d taken to the sharp evening airs for a stroll when a panda car hooted balefully. It edged towards the curb, staking out its antisocial prey, before parking to let a tall, grizzled constable squeeze out.

“Are you ex-military?”

Well, perhaps I do resemble a battle-scarred veteran but if that were so it seems unlikely that I’d still get ID’d.

“Er – no.”

“You know it’s an offence to wear that?”

I glanced down to check I hadn’t donned a holster or crack pipe. No. Not that day, at least. It must be the jacket.

“You’re kidding! I got it at the stall next to the farmer’s market…”

“Well, they shouldn’t have been selling it.”

He was eyeing the lapel pins with a look of deep suspicion.

“These are real?”

“Gulf War, Bosnia, Afghanistan…”

He stabbed his finger at each one of the proscribed pins.

“‘S an offence to be wearing it.”

There was a brief impasse. I couldn’t tell whether he was going to cart me off or insist that I remove the jacket. The former was unlikely but the latter was unconscionable. Few things would drive me to outright rebellion but the idea of shivering in a t-shirt in the late Autumn is certainly among them.

He screwed up his face.

“Bit insensitive near Remembrance Day — take ‘em off when you get home.”

I was too relieved to do anything but grunt in a manner that could have been have interpreted as, well – anything. Frankly, I didn’t feel tremendously chastened. Should anyone spy the apparent meaning of the lapel pins – and nobody had before this copper – I suspect they’d realise it wasn’t serious. I look too young to have been alive during the first Gulf War, let alone fighting in it. Perhaps I should have stayed to detail this rule’s absurdity but – hey – I’d no wish to extend what had already been a waste of time.

What I should have guessed is that it’s not “an offence” after all…

A community service order imposed on a man for falsely wearing war medals has been scrapped after it was found he had been prosecuted under a defunct law.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) later found the Act under which he had been charged had been repealed 11 days prior to the offence being committed.

Why did I trust the fellow? Not that he was being malevolent – some coppers aren’t bastards – but the law is so convoluted, clumsy and dogmatic that it’s foolish to see a policeman’s word as authoritative, either on its virtues or details. As for me, I’m mildly disturbed by the whole affair. Not that it was traumatic, I just don’t know how to get rid of 20,000 “Free the Jacket 1″ badges.