LETTER: The joke's on you

I was told the story of the police and the roadmenders, as a happening in the remote past, when I went up to Oxford in 1963. At a guess, I'd place it in the frivolous Thirties. Unless some future research turns up a discarded draft for one of The Canterbury Tales: Ye Sheriff, ye heweres of ye rodway and a clerk of Oxenforde.

gill linscott

Leominster, Herefordshire