The South Holland Hood

And there was me thinking that life in the sticks was going to be quiet!

Last week, as I approached school, I spotted a policeman by the side of the road ahead of me. I quickly checked my speed. Just above what it should be, but hopefully, as there was a human at the end of the camera, I would get the benefit of the doubt. But as I approached further it bacame clear that this was no speed camera. In fact it was a STINGER!
I briefly felt guilty and tried to think what I might have done to warrant this contraption. I quickly considered the possibility of claiming four nice new tyres off the constabulary. Before I knew it I was past him. I slowly turned the corner, aware that all the parents from school were gazing on speculatively. Imagine the gossip if I had been stungered. I slowed down to a halt and watched as the policeman readied himself and flung the stinger out across the road to nab the car which had been coming along the road behind me.
For a small community, this sort of thing is pretty exciting stuff. I continued on into school and went about my teaching as usual, but come play time it was clear that a bit of a search operation was ongoing. There were police dogs barking,  a house alarm was going off, someone had been cuffed. We never experienced this sort of thing in South-east London, even if the sound of sirens was pretty much constant.

But that's not the end of it. Tuesday just gone I was heading off to help butcher a couple of sheep (another story) when, at the bottom of our road, I again briefly thought I'd been nabbed by a speed camera. I quickly realised that the camera was pointing the other way. I turned another corner and there, sat at the next junction, was another police car, and another parked up along a tiny road at the back of a field. Overhead whirred a helicopter.
It seemed that, whatever was going on, they had all exit routes from the village covered. I didn't think much more of this until I saw what was basically a wanted poster on Facebook. Somebody had been pursued all the way from Spalding after an assault. At some stage he had crashed his car and it was found abandoned in the village just down the road. Apparently, by the state of the car, it was unlikely that the wanted man had escaped without significant injuries. Maybe he's lying in a ditch somewhere.

After seeing a group of men with dogs and guns off my land a few weeks back, it's been quite an eventful month here in the South Holland Hood!