SHELTER FROM THE STORM

18-09-2006

It's not big and it's not clever, and it's not actually legal either but Pete Millington can see the positive side of pulling up a bus shelter. Don't worry, Pete, we'll come and visit you in the nick...

I loved the story in the papers the other about the pensioner in Heysham, Lancashire who tied the back end of his car to a bus shelter and ripped it out of the ground.

Mr Loryman, a retired musician (not quite sure of the relevance of that piece of information - only if he was a former member of The Who or Nirvana maybe and has a penchant for wrecking stuff), was so mad about the erection of a new bus shelter outside his house that he took matters into his own hands, lashed a thick rope round the shelter, attached the other end to his car and then drove back and forth across the road until the offending item had been uprooted.

Apparently Mr L and his wife Pat were cheesed off because the previous bus shelter (it doesn't say what happened to that one - presumably he set fire to it or something?) was used by local kids as a kind of youth club / drugs and drinking den.

Mr L said “they would smash bottles and throw rubbish everywhere and my wife and I had to be unofficial caretakers for it, cleaning up the vomit and the broken glass”.

I don't know about anyone else, but I don't quite fully follow that last bit about them “having to be unofficial caretakers” for a bus shelter, I mean, that is perhaps taking good citizenship a little bit far:

“I'm just popping out to clean up some vomit from the local bus shelter Pat, I won't be long dear”

“O.K. Keith, but be a love and run a damp cloth round the telephone box on the corner while you're at it”.

Mr L's solicitor, Mike Willey - hang on I'll just read that bit again, Mr L's solicitor, Mike Willey- defended his client by saying:

“He pulled it over in wet cement so there was no damage to the shelter”

Er…. Hello Mr Willie… no damage to the shelter, that's ok is it? The fact that your client drove back and forth across the road like a man possessed with a big length of rope tied to a bus shelter is perfectly normal because the cement was still wet?

But then, having said all of this and having had a bit of a snigger at Mr Loryman's expense, isn't there a side of us all that would just love to do something like this?

If I were only to share 10% of the plots that went through my brain for weeks after I got a speeding fine from the police about 2 years ago… they'd have me locked up.

I think my bitterness only subsided when I read about the senior policeman who got photographed giving a V sign to a speed camera as he drove by on the other side of the road

YeeeeeeEEEESS!

You see, it gets to all of us at some point and as much as we all try and think rationally about these situations, deep down we all have that little red-eyed demon just itching to start strapping a rope around the rear tow-bar of the car….