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SLEEPING POLICEMEN This morning council workers dressed in green overalls, yellow pvc jackets and blue hard hats descended on our street looking for all the world like an incoming flock of migrant cockatoos, but making a lot more noise. They are here to install sleeping policemen on our street as part of the town's traffic calmng scheme.      We residents have known for some month of the planned coming of the sleeping policemen and the prospect of having them has met with divided opinion as to their desirability. Broadly speaking all the women, and in particular the ones with young children, have welcomed the idea, as the sleeping policemen will slow down the traffic, and as a consequence of this the street's children will be in less danger of being involved in a road accident; whereas the men dislike the idea because they don't like the bloody things.      In my experience any benefits a traffic calming scheme may bring with it are more than offset by the fact that although they may well calm the traffic they do exactly the opposite to the driver whose car is being calmed, as he gingerly picks his way through the urban obstacle course blocking his path. This is of course assuming that the driver is aware that the sleeping policemen are there, and has wisely taken the precaution of slowing down. It is even worse when he doesn't know that they're there and doesn't slow down and consequently hits one at about forty miles per hour. When that happens you end up with an extremely uncalm driver, who, given his new state of mind, is much more likely to cause an accident than he was before he had been subjected to traffic calming.      On one occasion that I failed to spot the first of several sleeping policemen the jolt I received loosened my false teeth, causing them to almost shoot out of my mouth, and although a little gum shrinkage over the years was probably a contributory factor to this it was by no means a major factor. Quickly taking the preventative measure of jamming my mouth tight shut, thus trapping my false teeth and managing to retain them in my mouth, I got away with a cut lip. When I hit the second of the sleeping policemen the teeth fortunately slotted back into position but that was pure luck as the jolt could just as easily have shot my teeth out of my mouth altogether. By the time I hit the third sleeping policeman I had slowed down so I encountered no more problems, false teethwise, but you can readily see why I hold little love for traffic calming schemes in general and sleeping policemen in particular.      Atkins Down The Road, having had several run-ins with the law, thinks even less of sleeping policemen then I do; Unless, as he remarked, the sleeping policemen they put down in the road happen to be real sleeping policemen, and preferably dead policemen. I pointed out to him that if the policemen weren't already dead after they had layed down in the road and nodded off then they very soon would be, and he laughed that laugh of his an sniggered.      At the moment I see out of my front window that of the twelve council workmen who arrived this morning three are working and nine are watchng. About par for the course I would say. No wonder my council tax bill is so high. A WEEK LATER With the sleeping policeman firmly established in its position directly outside my house I put in a lot of thought as to how I might facilitate its disappearance, either by fair means or foul. Fair means seemed to me to be an impossibility as I am in no state to remove the sleeping policeman by myself, not with my bad back, and the cost of paying somebody to remove it would would be prohibitive, even if I could get anybody to undertake the task. So it had to be foul means.     "I wish to report a man behaving suspiciously," I said to the policeman at the other end of the line. "Last week I happened to be taking a stroll in the early hours of the morning when I happened to notice a dark hooded figure digging up a sleeping policeman. He then proceeded to bury in it what looked to be suspiciously like a body bag." I then told him the exact location of the sleeping policeman. Naturally he wanted to know who I was but I just said "A concerned resident" and hung up.     I made the call at 8.30 a.m. and by 9.00 a.m. the police had started arriving, soon to be followed by enough mechanical digging equipment to build a small motorway. One of the policemen, still rubbing sleep from his eyes, knocked on my door and asked me if I'd seen or heard anything suspicious in the early hours of March 10th. I told him that oddly enough I had. He perked up immediately and asked me what I'd seen. I told him I'd heard the sound of digging, and when I'd looked out of the window to investigate I'd seen a dark shape in the middle of the road acting suspiciously. No doubt sensing promotion Plod now produced his notepad and pen in a flash. He asked me how tall the figure was. I told him about five feet ten. He asked me what colour he was. I told him white and probably tanned. He asked me how I knew he was probably tanned. I told him because he was probably Spanish. He asked me how I knew he was probably Spanish. I told him because I happened to be on holiday in Majorca at the time. Thoughts of promotion dashed he disappointedly returned the notebook to his pocket and left, and I, my alibi now firmly established, returned to the comfort of my living room to watch the digging up of the sleeping policeman from my front window.     That was last Thursday. They went down to a depth of six feet - maybe suspecting that the mysterious figure had been a gravedigger I suppose - then having found nothing filled the lot in and were away by lunchtime today. Re-creating sleeping policemen after they have dug them up is not apparently part of the police's remit, as I suspected might be the case, and they simply levelled the road with tarmac, which suited me fine. Problem solved