Illustration by EUGENE CUBILLO

I’ve seen speed bumps all over the world, but only once have I been involved in making them. This happened in England in the old days. The roads around our little village in the middle of the countryside were becoming race tracks. They had always been very narrow, with wide grass verges, which made it very difficult to speed, but every time the highways department renovated the road, they ate up more grass, widened the road and speeded up the traffic. A friend called them the “speedways department”.

It is ironic that the speedways department supplied, unknowingly, the materials for the speed bumps. Traditionally when the  roads are being repaired, the workmen visit neighbouring houses to offer to remake the drives with “borrowed” materials. This time the materials were put to better use, and we built ten very fine speed bumps covering the entrance to the village from all directions, and painted them bright yellow as a warning. Speeds slowed dramatically, although a few cars suffered serious damage as they tried to hurdle the bumps.

When I told this story to a Filipino friend he said “Surely the highways people must have forced you to remove the bumps?” I replied “You foreigners don’t understand. Yes they tried, but all the villagers were there to defend the bumps and the workmen sent to remove them were the same ones who had helped us to build them. But the real credit most go to Gloria, the barmaid in our local pub, who got the head of the highways department drunk and then photographed him in a very compromising position. Faced with the  threat of showing them to his wife he backed down.”

Actually we reached a compromise, and removed six of the bumps, leaving the four key ones in position. But our local painter had learned how to make an imitation bump by painting a yellow grid on the flat road surface, and that did just as good a job. The peace of our village was safe.

Isn’t it an odd world that we live in?