I took to speed bumps like a duck2flight.

Yes, I took to them rather too fast actually. I was driving down a narrow street which approaches a leisure centre and they had handily tried to disguise their road humps as flat carriageway. I looked for discernable road markings after the incident I am about to recall and found that they were faint, but I somehow must have missed the large sign saying "Speed Humps - Slow".

I took the first one at rather a fast pace, and launched the car quite literally two feet into the air. When my passenger and I had recovered I said, "I'll take the next one a bit slower" and I did.

After we had negotiated a further three humps and parked in the car park, I was locking up when I heard a male voice.

"Excuse me," he said politely, "I think this dropped off your car when you went over the speed bump."

He handed me the maker's badge from the radiator grille of my car.

"Oh," I said, the colour rising to my cheeks.

After a moment of staring blankly at the hole in the front of my car I mumbled, "Thank you."

I put the offending badge deftly into my large coat pocket and carried on into the centre. My teenage daughter passenger was mortified. Of all the things a parent could do? I mean how much more embarrassed could she have been? And when I unveiled my new swimming hat with the chinstrap and floral design she just wept with… joy - I'm guessing.

Image © Jo Jakeman, via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence