THE BATTLE AGAINST MOTORISTS ' Sia,—Strix's difficulty is easy of
solution. The mobile motorist is dealt with by ringing up the Chief Constable, at his private number. When this gentleman has been woken two or three times in the middle of the night, he will make sure that the nuisance is abated.
, The parked motorist is more of a problem. They leave bottles, tins, polythene bags all over the place. Every roadside copse becomes a latrine, every lay-by a dormitory. One summer I asked a man with a car and caravan in the middle of a field full of sheep, and exercising his dog, what he thought he was doing and he replied: 'You can't talk to me like that. I'm a bank manager.' I asked him of which bank, and I must say I received a very civil letter of apology from the chairman. Matters are not always so easy.
'Beware of the Bull' and 'Danger—Adders' have outworn their usefulness. But one weekend last summer, after I had found a cow worth £75 dead from eating a polythene bag, I hit on the answer. I let the culprit's tyres down, all four of them. The operation takes about ninety seconds per tyre, and requires one matchstick. It is therefore cheap in both man-hours and material. My greatest single success was to let down all four tyres of a car and the two of its pendulant caravan. The prospect of the criminals having to walk five miles to the nearest garage open on that Saturday evening was more conducive to gaiety than a bottle of champagne. However, we must progress. A single matchstick and ninety seconds may be good enough for some, but we live in an age of scientific advance. The best I have done, with a matchstick, in one crowded afternoon was only seven cars and two caravans, and I missed my Sunday nap. I have therefore developed a sharp, pointed device, which is fired, by compressed air, into the side wall of the lyre and evacuates the air, contained within, at least as fast as the worst blow-out. The added advantage is that the tyre is permanently ruined, so that, in addition to having to find 'a garage, the criminal has to buy new tyres all round, which are unlikely to be available on cars and seventeen caravans immobilised, miserable, I have achieved over one weekend was forty-nine
wet and dreary, their occupants bedraggled, filthy and hungry, and the father-criminal having to ring' up his office to explain his absence on Monday morning. (The bill for new tyres cannot have been less than £2,500.) This device I have patented, and will supply to accredited sufferers, without liability, at twenty guineas a time, As, for obvious reasons, I must remain anonymous, application should be made to the Spectator office; unless one of the tyre companies buys my patent, in which case they will probably advertise it. I sign myself, in all humility,
CND
PS: It has now been suggested (on the telephone) that Which? should test my &Vice against a match- stick and an open razor. To this, I cannot agree. There would be no profit in the patent if such a test were permitted.
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