The Calming of Mrs Heppleheimer

Mrs Heppleheimer’s ‘Draconian’ views on traffic calming measures had stemmed from her frustration at the speed with which ‘outsiders’ hurtled past her quaint little cottage on their way to the nearby town. She’d petitioned for, but failed to have traffic bumps with remotely activated sharpen spiked to be installed, she’d tried for stingers to be used to burst offending speeders tyres but had had that refused on humanitarian grounds when she’d suggested running 40,000 volts through the device. And since that day she’d been hounding PC Wuruld, the village policeman, for use of his hand held speed gun in her capacity of ‘Village Traffic Officer’ (a fictitious title she’d ram raided through a parish council meeting) Initially he’d been very dubious but had acquiesced through attrition more than civic duty

So it was that on a bright, frosty morning and with a hoar frost lying gently across the meadows and hedges of Sleepy Hamlet, Mrs Heppleheimer finally got custody of the speed gun. PC Wuruld’s heart sank as Mrs Heppleheimer licked her lips with a reverence that an object of this kind should really not have elicited. He was just about to take the gun back off her, due to a sudden attack of cold feet that had nothing to do with the frost, when Mrs Heppleheimer’s head jerked to the sound of approaching horse’s hooves. She glanced back at the whitening policeman’s face, grinning her intention. PC Wuruld lunged forward to stop her, but with an agility that belied her eighty plus years she shot through a gap in the bushes, scattering a fine dusting of frost as she went and landed with a thud in front of M’Lady, Lord Hamlet’s horse. She pointed the speed gun like a magnum .45 and screamed maniacally in Bavarian “GO ON PUNK, MAKE MY DAY!”

M’Lady reared up, thrashing about like Bambi on ice; Lord Hamlet reacted to stay on his horse and when he turned her aside M’Lady was once again startled, this time by the panic ridden tingle-ingle-inging of Rev. Batwing’s Church of England bike. He swerved to avoid the flaying hooves and with a “Dear Lord” hit the curb and somersaulted into the water feature of her at No. 42’s garden. Lord Hamlet eventually brought M’Lady under control as Mrs Heppleheimer headed in one direction and PC Wuruld and the speed gun, in another.

Mrs Heppleheimer, wanting to extricate herself from the situation, leapt onto her customised electric scooter and disappeared in a cloud of frost.
PC Wuruld, on the other hand, with his ability to know what you were thinking before even you did, was hiding in the bushes and clocked Mrs Heppleheimer going past at the exact co ordinates he knew she would, doing 80mph in a 30mph zone.

That next morning the official speeding ticket landed on the mat of Mrs Heppleheimer’s cottage with a large thud of irony.

And as a car sped past her house, she screwed up the ticket and plotted her next move. This was not the end of it, she thought, this was most definitely not the end of it.
Sleepy Hamlet © Karl Dixon 2010