RIP BROMES U R IN HEVEN NOW WIV DA ANGLES N PRICNESS DI N HER ANGLE CLEANER

Two years ago today, villains – name and motive unknown – snapped a broom in two in the village of Eyam in Derbyshire.

Eyam is a village still recovering from the Great Plague, which struck locally just 350 years previously, and the snapped broom was the last thing they needed.

And a mere 15 months later this happened:

Derbyshire Times: Broom-snapping ghouls strike for a second time in the county, leaving their victim stuck into the ground like some sort of sick trophy

As the paper pointed out at the time: “The [modern flat-headed] broom was invented by Massachusetts farmer Levi Dickenson in 1797 for his wife. Brooms are an important part of many households.”

And now, on the 220th anniversary of the invention of the modern broom, there are calls for the curs behind these unsolved crimes to be apprehended and given a punishment to fit the crime.

Derbyshire Times: Still no charges for broom destroyers two years on

“Brooms were even mentioned in the Bible” – but they were shite old-fashioned brooms and we don’t care.

If you know anything about these dreadful crimes, or are approached in the pub by somebody offering to snap brooms for you at a ridiculously cheap price, that all-important phone number is 999.

That’s 9, double 9.

But are the people of Derbyshire living in the past? Maybe – just maybe – they should see this as a sign that they should abandon their brooms and stride confidently into the 21st Century.

Westmorland Gazette: Carnforth Civic Hall gets a new-fangled “vacuum cleaner”

Come on, we can do this. Together.