Dear Assistant Chief Constable
I hope that you and Mrs. Assistant Chief Constable are able to enjoy a lovely weekend in the first of the summer heat.
Happily, if you are, you won’t be alone. For the ancient county of Sussex that you police so diligently is host to a nationally important motorcycle race track, known locally as the A272, and you, like me, will have noticed those fearless denizens of the tarmac are back again, and back with a vengeance. You just might have heard them yourself? For them, it is a lovely time of year. For us, it is like the returning cuckoo, a sure sign that God is in his heaven and summer is returning.
What could thrill us more, I ask myself, than the sight and sound of a middle aged man-mountain wriggling his way into a set of leathers just the three sizes too small, arousing his tiny penis astride the throbbing engine of a Ducati Monster 1200? What could inspire us more than the heroic sight of him, or her, roaring up behind our cars and overtaking us on blind corners and summits, on the unselfish off-chance that they might meet something coming the other way. Like me, you will surely have seen their hordes parked up among the assorted ‘lifestyle’ gentlemen at Bury Gate car park, tiring the moon with their philosophical talk. Oh! The secrets they could tell.
And it is lovely that your force choose largely to leave them to it. Entirely to it, most of the time. They perform a vital service to society, I agree. Men and women of standing, and with a sense of adventure that we can all learn from. Fifteen years ago, I was privileged enough to be the first on the scene when one of these good people crashed at high speed, and I re-learned more forgotten first aid in the fifteen minutes I held his head still waiting for the ambulance to arrive, than I could have imagined. It made the world a safer place. Another one collided with my wife and son ten years ago next weekend, and their busy lives were calmed for the next four hours whilst they watched successive air ambulance crews go through strange medical procedures that they would otherwise never have seen. A third kicked the offside door panel of my car as he passed me after I had waved my arm to slow him down. How rude I had been, and how kindly he showed me the error of my ways.
Anyway, as a force you have plenty of things to be getting on with, men with table legs that look like guns, and Gatwick drones aside.
However today I actually called your 101 helpline on the subject. You see, down at Benbow Pond near Midhurst, there is occasionally a man from a company called Biker Pics, who take pre-arranged pictures of them blasting past, and back, and past again, until they are sure they have a decent image in the raciest, riskiest, quickest pose possible. I just worried that Biker Pics might possibly act as an incitement to dangerous driving, and I simply wanted your advice. Here’s a snap from today https://www.bikerpics.co.uk/p560445974
What an alternative to 999 you have given us in that 101 system! The nice lady I initially spoke to asked, rightly, if my call was strictly necessary and then, rightly again, alerted me that there was ‘at least’ a 30 minute wait for an operator if I reallyneeded to speak to one. I mean…really. You are taking cost saving seriously, and I applaud you for it. Austerity, after all, is austerity.
So I waited on the line. In the occasional break in the ring tone, I was assured that my call was important, which was a nice touch, and that I shouldn’t hesitate to email quickly if I was the victim of domestic violence, or a road traffic accident. Being the start of a four day bank holiday, the minutes would just fly by until one of your colleagues read my message on Tuesday morning. If I was being beaten up at the beginning of the weekend, I would surely have learned how to fight by the end of it, or have usefully perished for the Darwinian advance of the species! If my garden shed was being emptied of machinery by the local burglar, surely they would leave less damage if they were unhurried by any prospect of the police intervening. I have to admit, it’s genius.
After a mere 38 minutes, I got the point, realised that I was over-worrying again, and hung up. Who was I, the silence had politely suggested, to apply my nanny-state-gone-mad values on other road users? And who am I to hold back sales of those great British job creating brands like Suzuki, Ducati and Honda? Our emergency services benefit from the work experience, and the rest of us should simply enjoy the thrill.
Let’s let sleeping dogs lie, as the expression goes. Or sleeping policemen, as my wife wittily pointed out. Life is boring enough, and I will try not to trouble you again on the subject
Yours affectionately
Roger
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