Ticket well worth the price

THE EDITOR: An amusing thing happened to me on a sunny, Saturday afternoon a couple of weeks ago on leaving my studios in Chaguanas. I was speeding, for no apparent reason, along the Solomon Hochoy Highway, heading towards Port-of-Spain, and drove right into a police speed-trap. A tall, thin policeman came out hurriedly from behind a concrete pillar and ran into the road beckoning me to stop and pull aside.

“Are you a police officer?” He asked. “No Sir, I am not.” And I continued, “I knew I was speeding Sir, but...” and before I could finish my sentence, he interrupted by telling me to reverse a few metres to the other policeman I hadn’t seen standing there, and give him my explanation. So, I reversed. A young, slim built, good-looking constable with a boyish smile of innocence and a spotlessly clean uniform, stood erect, and said, “You were speeding sir.” And I decided to give him a cock and bull story to avoid getting a ticket. “Sir, I just received an urgent call about a possible confrontation in my office at Belmont, and I was trying to get there before anything serious could happen.” He held up his clip-board in one hand, and a pen in the next, looked me straight in the eye and said, “I’m sorry to hear that sir, I’ll do as quickly as I can.” And he gave me a ticket. I laughed to myself all the way to Belmont, while thinking, “At last, an educated policeman.”

PERCY PARKER-WILLIAMS
Westmoorings