Human speed controls

Had you heard that such things are currently being trialled around the country? Me neither. But I am living proof of the fact that they exist. While many towns and villages have one of those lit-up display signs to monitor your speed on entering (no inuendoes please), one place not too far away from here is obviously trying to cut costs by using bored pensioners instead. I was driving along at 52 kmph, just behind someone else who was proceeding in an equally stately and legal fashion, when our eyes were drawn to a bespectacled personage - I think female, but you can never be sure with the German pensioner's penchant for unisex haircuts and drab trekking clothes - who appeared, at first glance, to be waving. But only for a second, as his-her fingers were splayed, as you do when signalling the number 5, and then he-she theatrically mouthed the word fifty and gave us a beady, reprimanding look.

I could tell that the driver ahead had, like me, assumed he-she was kindly warning us about an upcoming speed camera, so we continued through the village at camel's pace*, eyes scanning the road for the offending object. The village petered out and I found myself on the other side. No speed camera, no policeman with scary gun thing... nothing at all. I realised that I had been well and truly had by an archetypal do-gooder, someone who, when they aren't doing evening courses in serviette folding or watching slideshows of a cruise to the Arctic Circle, derives pleasure from patronising others in the interests of community, or whatever. Resisting the temptation to turn my car round and race past him-her at 70 kmph in the other direction, I carried on with my journey - to where I forget now; probably to some dimly-lit supermarket where other busybodies would be waiting to crash their trolleys into my ankles, or tut audibly at my family-of-five groceries as they pay for their one cabbage and stick of salami ("this'll last me at least a week") in one-cent coins.

But as I've often said, I'm not bitter. Without such characters my life would be nothing but a rich pasture of gaiety and carefree happiness. Wouldn't that be dull?

*Just to clarify, I mean camels walking, not when they're doing that wacky running across the desert with a person bumping around on their back.