Caught on Radar

It happened on Friday afternoon. A nice sunny day and a short hill to climb in my noisy old Ford Fiesta on the road from Bordon to Petersfield. At the top of the hill that splendid road sign which denotes the end of a speed limit and beside it, a police car with camera. Bollocks! If I get a ticket I think I’ll appeal on the grounds that it is mechanically impossible to get my car’s ancient diesel engine over 30 mph in the distance between the mini roundabout and the top of the hill.

I was caught again on Saturday, but in a rather different way.

I took the day off to watch Hampshire versus Warwickshire at Lords. A great day for quaffing wine and champagne, lager and Guinness, eating lots and, given the amiable company of the older brother and his ex-lodger, every opportunity to rant away on any number of subjects. I recall the following in particular:

Whatever happened to Cheeselets? For years we used to munch Cheeselets with our midday glass of wine at cricket matches, and then a dreadful thing happened. Europa Foods (purveyors of Cheeselets to the gentry) were bought out by Tesco. The product range at the shop accordingly had to conform to supermarket rules and one of these is that Cheeselets are only sold at Christmas. Bollocks, again! At least my village pub still manages to sell them, but they’re damned difficult to find anywhere else.

Whatever happened to Warwickshire Supporters? I got really angry when, ten overs before the end of the match, the Brummies decided that they had lost and all went home. By the time poor Douggie Brown came out to bat (at number 7) he was greeted with almost total silence. Nick Knight’s impressive innings was warmly applauded, but mostly by Hampshire supporters and MCC members (I learned later that even the “dangerous looking crowd from Southampton” stood for him).

Business Rates were another rant. I had gone to Lords via Holborn and had detoured past my old shop in Sicilian Avenue – still empty and sad eighteen months after I vacated the premises. The landlords have money and can afford to hold out for exorbitant rents from the next tenants, while the London Borough of Camden allow them to go rate-free because the premises are unoccupied. How darned stupid. No wonder property prices are so inflated.

Being English, and yet all three of us avid readers of books by of Robert B Parker, the older brother and I challenged his ex-lodger to get his mind around “Box Scores”, we both having finished Parker’s book about Jackie Robinson (the first coloured American to play major league baseball in the US). I suppose it was fitting that we were watching cricket (a total mystery to most Americans), while agreeing that we couldn’t make head-nor-tail of the way baseball scores are reported in the American press.

Ranting apart, more light-headed buffoonery was provided by the brother as he showed how, as an umpire, he would signal a wide which also counted as four.

But what has all this to do with being caught on radar (unless Channel 4 captured the elder brother's antics)?

Well this morning, having recovered my health from the previous day, I strolled round to the Village Stores to collect the Sunday papers (head down lest I was spotted by worshippers coming away from the Family Eucharist service). The shop was bustling with people and all conversation was about the cricket at Lords. Peter (him behind the counter) spotted me and said, “Well I saw you on the train, yesterday, you must have been there, as well as all of us.”

I gulped nervously. “You mean you saw me going, or coming back?” I ventured. “Oh, on the platform at Petersfield station bright and early in the morning.” came the reply.

Phew! My condition on the return journey was not (if I remember at all correctly) much to be proud of. Dishevelled and very sleepy I only got two things right – waking up in time for Petersfield (rather than being thrown off the train at Portsmouth Harbour), and phoning the wife to come and collect me. But it does serve as a warning. More often than not, you are being tracked by someone’s radar, even if you are not aware.