Well, do you feel lucky, punk?
OH joyous day! At last the police have relented and given community-minded members of Neighbourhood Watch the “teeth” to combat what little crime there is in our rural backwater. They’ve armed us.
Not before time, either. Once those lads see the body-bags piling up, I’m sure they’ll think twice about apple-scrumping. Spitters, blackberry pickers, litterers and dog-poo non-pickers – they’re all drinking in the last chance saloon.
“So,” I asked our portly Pc while fingering the trigger, “how do I switch this baby from ‘stun’ to live rounds?” Pc Green cast a bemused glance. “You’re aware, Mr Lockley,” he said testily, “that this is a speed gun? Its function is smply to monitor the speed of traffic travelling through the parish. It doesn’t fire live ammo.”
“Not even,” I ventured, “those, like, electrode things that hit someone in the chest and go ‘buzz’ and the person convulses, like in Star Trek?” “No,” he said pointedly. ‘‘Damn – I was looking forward to trying that out on the wife.’’
The sole CCTV camera in our parish has been ineffective, mainly because it is trained on my living room.
“You are snooping into my house,” I ranted at a council official, “which is disgusting.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” soothed the council bod. “The carpet’s seen better days, but it’s not a hovel.”
“It’s an invasion of my privacy,” I railed.
“We are not here to pry,” he assured, adding: “At 7pm, could you put Emmerdale on the telly - the guy in the control room is a bit of a fan.”
This gun, however, is money very well spent, although I’m surprised we got it.
We’ve had very few accidents, the last one involving a tractor trailer haemorrhaging its payload of potatoes into an open-top vehicle. The spuds may have been speeding, the tractor wasn’t.
But the Colonel put in a request after a number of motorists “stared at him in a funny way” as he walked his ferret.
“Grasp the gun like so,” instructed Pc Green. “Point at the chosen target and the vehicle’s speed will appear like so.”
I held the weapon nervously, waited for an oncoming mobility scooter, screamed “freeze, Turkey!” and made “pow, pow, pow” noises.
“Perhaps we could try that again,” croaked Pc Green, his mouth open, “this time without lying on your belly, rolling across the carriageway while firing the gun, then hiding behind a hay bale.”
He ran towards stroke victim Gladys whose scooter had careered into a hedge. She sat trembling at the helm of the machine, muttering: “He asked me, ‘do you feel lucky, punk?’.” Mrs Brown, 87, was next to try the crime-fighting kit.
The gun slewed from side to side in her trembling hands as she targeted an oncoming sports car.
“Do you feel lucky...”
“Just point the bloody thing,” bellowed the exasperated constable, quickly adding: “How fast is it going?” “Oh, golly,” wheezed the OAP. “It’s travelling at .03 of a mile-per-hour, now it’s 500mph. Hold on, back to .03 again.”
The policeman wrestled the gun from her hand.
“Please try to keep the thing still, Mrs Brown,” he seethed. “At the moment you’re wavering between a passenger jet overhead and your slippers.”
The joyrider laughed and extended a finger in a show of defiance.
Pc Green gathered himself before asking: “Any questions?”
“Can I have a holster?” I piped up, “and are we OK to put notches on it?”
The officer cast a glance to the heavens.
“On a personal level,” boomed The Colonel, “this equipment will be utterly invaluable, but then I race pigeons.”
After a swift decision that I should be official speed gun keeper, the meeting was adjourned.
“Are you missing something?” laughed Colin down the phone the following morning. “Specifically, your speed gun? You left it on the table in the beer garden.”
The blood drained from my face. “Don’t worry – I’ve got it,” he chuckled.
“You haven’t been messing about with the thing, have you?” I warned. “Of course not,” Colin promised. “Mind you, you’d be amazed how fast someone can spend a penny. That was a very informative pub game. I won.”
Heard about the man who took an airline to court for losing his luggage? He’s lost his case