Peterborough - Stop Wittering and Smile

My friend was telling me about his family. His cousins had arrived "unexpectedly" - a day trip around the shops of Peterborough seemed like a good idea, "And maybe we'll strike lucky if we call in at the passport office after lunch," he said. They wandered around the town for a couple of hours, but he sensed that the women were not enjoying themselves. There were mumbles, sighs and mutterings, but it was difficult to say who said what to whom. Eventually he'd had enough, it was beginning to get on his nerves.

"Stop with the Wittering!" he shouted - they immediately fell silent. "For goodness sake, what is your problem? This is a good place, a fine community, everything you could possibly want is here - okay, the football team is not as good as Norwich City - but apart from that ... why do you keep grumbling?"

One of them shuffled nervously, "It's the uniforms," she muttered, "We don't like uniforms, they make us nervous."

"What uniforms?" he asked, "This is a normal English town, you are bound to see the occasional off-duty soldier walking around ... this is where they live, it's their home, it's their country."

"We don't like the way they stare at us," said one of the women, "It's the look in their eyes, they act as though they own the place."

He reached into his pocket and brought out a camera, "Look, just stop moaning and stand still, I'll take a your photograph - it might save us some money at the passport office," he said.

The women gathered into a group and he crouched down on one knee to steady the camera. "Uniforms, pah!" one of them muttered.

As he looked through the viewfinder an airman in a smart uniform stood behind them in the distance, he thought it would be a good joke to include him in the photograph. "Besides," he said, "Like the soldier over there, they all have the freedom of the city, they can come and go as they please - they even have the right to fix bayonets or something like that."

Sadly, his photograph was very blurred - and they never made it to the passport office.