Its not all gloom

A grossly fat policewoman in blue and grey battledress boarded a Kombi at Musika, planting herself in one and a half seats next to the driver, and started berating him for waiting to fill his minibus. She was in a hurry. He wasn’t, so she sat there complaining loudly.

Then she took out a phone and started shouting into it as if it was broken. Maybe it was.

When we got moving, the driver decided to make up for lost time. The roads were full of traffic, and a lot of it seemed to be big lorries or buses, so he nipped into every gap, overtook all he could on the inside, went into the oncoming’ lane at the top of Ardbennie Road, slipped between a couple of juggernauts and started racing town-wards on the leftKhand verge.

There were people trying to board kombis on the roadside and the monstrous apparition next to the driver shouted abuse at those she thought weren’t jumping out of the way fast enough. Here, I thought, was a fine example of the kind of cop Chihuri won’t purge. He doesn’t want any who can read the Highway Code, or any other rule book; he certainly doesn’t want any who care what those rule books say.

And so across Cripps Road, with the lights not working and the competition more than average. A short stop at Pedzanhamo brought new outbursts from the cop. Bad news all round, you’d say.

I never thought I’d regard a police roadblock as good news, but I changed my mind when we met one just beyond the railway bridge. They were stopping all the kombis and giving them a good search. The noisy pachyderm shouted at them that she was in a hurry to reach Morris depot, giving a story about an urgent case. They might have been deaf for all the notice they took of her. That made the wait worthwhile for the rest of us.

I suspect that by now, if Chihuri wants a police force made up of ignorant aggressive pachyderms, he’s going to have to make do with a very small one.

Reflecting on that incident, I was ready for the news that the army want to raise their retirement age. It seems that nobody under 50 is reliable’. And I doubt whether many over 50 could catch a running teenager. Nor could an overweight cop, so the future, as always, is in the hands of the young.

Being well past the retirement age for everyone except Popes and Presidents myself, I’m happy to leave it in the hands of the young, even if I still offer a bit of grandfatherly advice and support from time to time and appreciate the occasional Shake-Shake in exchange.