The Aliens Have Landed!

The village where I live is pleasant, quiet, and low in traffic pollution. Five miles away is the nearest town. It is not pleasant, quiet, and low in traffic pollution. On a recent visit I noticed something peculiar. Aliens had taken over the town. Yes aliens!

The first wave started early in the morning with a few human looking types wearing reflective jackets operating under the guise of council workmen. They were digging dubious holes by the side of the road and this was without doubt the preparatory hideouts or lairs for the incoming invaders. These ‘workmen impostors', were so convincing that they even had lunch breaks spanning hours and left there cones unattended for days under the pretence of ‘men at work’.

Weeks later when their job was finally done, across the town, the aliens arrived, as predicted. Not exactly as advanced as I was hoping and the provisions I had made at home of six months supply of bottled water and canned baked beans may not have been necessary.

With a large yellow square head, one evil eye staring unflinchingly and standing awkwardly on a single leg, the aliens slowly and clandestinely came to life zapping all in their path. They were just like my 'legal eagle' wife, cold and calculated and picked on the vulnerable, those that had money in their pockets but would not bother defending themselves. It was, “the invasion of the speed cameras”.

My local town had surcome to their seductive powers of extracting cash from the middle classes while driving down a dual carriageway, coincidently and without prior warning, re-classed as a 40 mph limit.

The aliens had been strategically placed, not outside a school or a busy pedestrianised side street, but on a main un-urbanised, non-pedestrian thoroughfare into town, on the basis that there was once an accident on that very road involving a horse-drawn carriage and a rabbit in 1876.

Now why would one place a speed camera on a dual carriageway going into town ‘immediately after’ the speed limit reduces from 70mph to 40mph and not in the place where the alleged carriage/rabbit incident occurred? Let me guess!

More bizarrely, one of the other cameras is positioned on the opposite carriageway located just a yard or two before the 40mph increases to 70mph. They are so obviously and unashamedly placed in such a way as to generate revenue-on the pretence of road safety-that it would have been just as easy to place a Council ‘highwayman’ on the side of the road demanding, “your money or you licence”.

Being in the throws of a deep and invigorating midlife crisis I have decided to buy a chainsaw and rubber lined boots.