bomb disposal unit called "as a precaution"... air pistol? other things found ....all very intriguing..

Wonder if this is connected to the incident near Black Horse Hill a few weeks ago?

More likely to be police overreaction.

They are currently on high alert and take no chances.

When at work I used to go regularly to a large government establishment. They always examined the hire car I usually arrived in with a mirror to see if I had a bomb underneath it, and on high alert examined the engine. On one such occasion, an alarm was raised by a green and yellow wire attached by a screw tag to the engine block. I said it looked like an earth wire. I was asked to move the car to a site with earth banks around it and an expert appeared.

He eventually pronounced it a 'temperature sensor' and I was allowed in.

Later I had a look myself and traced the wire to the battery, where it was firmly attached to the negative pole! Clearly, it was an earth wire as the colour implied. But had they not been satisfied, they were preparing to blow it up with a 'controlled explosion'. It wouldn't have worried me. It wasn't my car.

They get twitchy on high alert.

Just as well it wasn't on a ship in Liverpool docks. One of the many that used to get bomb threats about an hour or two before sailing. Not many took those seriously as how could they search a ship full of cargo ? They didn't consider blowing it up either, so the police would do a quick round and then sit waiting for something to happen for a few hours.