The Roberts Close man, who works as a drug guidance counsellor, had been away on holiday for two months, and missed the completion of both the Chav Superhighway and the guided bus.

“I couldn’t believe it when I got back to St Neots,” said Norway. “I got back on Sunday and needed milk, bread – the usual things that you’ve let go all mouldy in your fridge while you’re away. Little Tesco was really busy so I hopped on my bike and headed for Eynesbury.”

But as Norway approached the River Mill, a casual acquaintance riding the other way asked him if he’d been over the new bridge yet. “I was shocked,” explains Norway. “I never expected the Chav Superhighway to be finished, but it was, and I cycled all the way to the Eastside on it. The tarmac was smooth and the inclines on the bridge slight. It was amazing!”

Flushed with pleasure, Norway completed his shopping and repeated his journey in the opposite direction. “By the time I got home, I needed a sit-down and a cup of tea!”

The following day, Norway travelled by train to Huntingdon for a meeting then caught a bus to Cambridge. “I was annoyed at first because my usual 55 bus had been replaced by a ‘B’. I didn’t think much of it though,” he explains. But as the bus left St Ives, Norway noticed a change in surroundings. “You’d barely believe it: we were actually on the busway!” spluttered Dave. “By the time we got to Cambridge I was hyperventilating. I pretty much messed my pants!”

Doctors at Addenbrookes diagnosed Norway with Unlikely Project Completion Disorder and prescribed a heavy dose of sedatives. They expect him to be able to return to work within months. “I don’t know what I’ll do if they ever upgrade the A14,” he told the Citizen. “I’ll probably have a heart attack, I’d imagine.”

Just as that calmed down, rumours brewed that the store would soon feature a Drive Thru window for those too lazy to park their second-hand Audi TT for a peruse of the anal beads aisle.

Sawtry mother of four Brenda Taswachia, 15, told the Citizen “I dunno what all the fuss is about bruv, it’s like, well classy in there and that.”

However, Councillor Kevin Waters, former leader of CCC, is less enthusiastic. After campaigning against the opening for seven months, with only two toilet breaks and a short holiday last year (which involved dressing up as an old lady and putting a cat in a wheelie bin), cllr Waters now seems worryingly concerned with the fire resistance of the building. When asked for further comment, he jumped onto his desk and shouted at the top of his lungs, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!” before wrapping a bedsheet around his shoulders and leaping from a second storey window. He hasn’t been seen since.

Graham Smallgoat, MD of Pulse and Crabtails, had the follwing to say: “I just think the Drive Thru window is the next logical step. The world needs edible panties and it needs them fast, there’s no time for messing around with stuff like that. Did I mention we sell a vibrator in the shape of a midget’s arm and fist? Please buy something, everyone here is really old. We really didn’t think this through.”

There are as yet unconfirmed reports of a tanning salon operating in the back room.

“This situation is totally unacceptable,” says Warren Pearce, 22, who lives on the Oxmoor Estate’s notorious Kent Road and is the chairman of the local heroin and crack purveyor’s association, Huntingdon Ultra Super Narcs. “Our dealers are all independent businessmen, and are really starting to suffer in the recession. Working people just can’t afford hard drugs any more, and although there are more than ever on the dole, it just doesn’t make up the numbers.

“Just last week, one of the most prolific crack houses in our district, in Sandfields Road, St Neots, was shut down, and all the customers vanished. This put at least four badboy Yardie crack pedlars out of business.”

Seemingly unrelated is the news that Huntingdon is the UK’s most well-read town, in a survey by online book retailer Amazon. But local anthropologists have uncovered the shocking truth – namely that the town’s drug dealers have started pushing reading material instead.

“It’s an interesting find,” commented book shop employee Ras Prince, 40, of Godmanchester. “What’s happening is that the kids these days, people have been filling their heads with all kinds of nonsense about how ‘crack is whack’ and ‘heroin is not your hero’ and all that. So, the suppliers have diversified.”

The method, explains Prince, is the same as pushing Class A’s. “You butter some impressionable teen up with a few really good quality novels and such, and then once they’re hooked you can start emptying their wallets. It’s such a simple transition, I’m surprised it didn’t happen earlier.”

Certainly, this may be the only way to explain why Twilight was so popular. “After all,” says Prince, “here’s a pile of absolute dross which takes vampires from being the stuff of children’s nightmares to sparkly, flaky fairies who are scared of having sex. Only someone with a heavy addiction to the printed word would buy it.”

It appears that the unaccounted-for money, to the tune of a Rowley Million, has been put forward by a consortium made up of Bedfordshire Police and Cambridgeshire Constabulary.

Chief Inspector Kim Stonely-Bolton, from Cambs Police, released the following statement after presenting him with our findings.

“Cambs Police had help to co-fund this bridge with our colleagues over the border to help in our current campaign, ‘Operation Collar a Chav called Kevin’, or ‘CACK’. The St Neotian chav is not the brightest of the chav species inhabiting this island, and will always take the shortest, most direct route home after a bit of thieving, vandalism or fighting – not bothering to circuitously avoid the Rozzers at all.

“Regular trips into Little Barford to burn out a car prompted Beds Police to help in the bridge’s funding. Once on this highway we can easily pick them up at the other end.”

Mrs Moore from from Huddersfield, holidaying in the Eynesbury Camp Site, is not so convinced. “They will just run down the side of this lovely little camp site, ruining a good swinging session or an early night. The last thing we want is that blasted helicopter hanging over us”

Ex-councilor Julia Wayward thought the idea was “Excellent,” but added “Please don’t call me again. I only left the council so the Citizen would leave me alone.”

With the darker nights soon to be coming, it is expected the bridge will become busier by the day – once Darren and his mates have smashed all the lights, of course.

Bus company Ragecoach adjusted their legendary Mighty X5 service a fortnight ago after users complained that it stopped too often, especially on the Bedford-bound portion of the route. “It’s a joke really,” commented bus pass holder Lily Van Smith, 64, a couple of months ago. “The bus stops at the Spar shop, a few people get off, then it stops again at the corner of Manor Farm Road, and then a few yards later opposite the garage. These lazy fat bastards really could get off at the first stop and spend two minutes walking down,” she ranted, before alighting at Sandfields Road, a good hundred metres further down the road.

Indeed, the excessive number of bus stops is a legacy of times past. “In the eighties,” explains local historian John Black, “there was only the Oxford to Cambridge or Northampton to Cambridge via Bedford bus, and they had alternate stops. If you wanted to go from Eaton Socon to the train station you had to get one of these long-distance coaches. Back then you could still smoke at the back of the bus and a return to Bedford was only three shillings, AND we used to leave the back door at home unlocked…”

Abandoning that loose end, the Citizen visited the Market Square early this morning to talk to some real-life bus users. Sainsburys employee Sarah Red-Bull, 18, catches the X5 into Cambridge every day for her eleven-hour till tart shift at the city’s St Andrew’s Street branch. “Up until last month,” Red-Bull explains, “I used to catch the bus from outside the George and Dragon. Now I have to walk into town, it’s bloody hell.”

Olly Sandford, who works at nearby Cambridge Arsessment, agreed. “I used to alight on the way back at the Ford garage, which I live opposite. Now I have to get off in the Market Square and walk back. This adds a good five minutes of fresh air to my day which I’m not entirely pleased about.”

Ragecoach customer service director Zoe Page made a statement to the Citizen. “You lot are never fucking happy are you? First you said you needed town buses, so we got you all these incomprehensible sixty-something buses which no bastard ever uses. Then along cam bus passes and the X5 took an hour to get through town and was full of pensioners riding for free, and you said it stopped too often. So we took away some stops. And now you don’t like walking.

“It’s like when you said the buses were old and crap, so we got all these new ones with leather seats and toilets and that, and all you ever do is bitch about the WiFi not working.

“Frankly, if you don’t like it, stop being cheap and get a car, and we’ll take £2.60 off you at the Park & Ride. Can’t escape Ragecoach in Cambridgeshire can you!”

Whatever happens, it’s likely that passenger numbers on the X5 will remain exactly the same. A few really lazy people – or those who genuinely can’t walk that far – will probably start getting the bus into town. If they choose to do so, they’ve got about a million different buses that all follow roughly the same route to choose from; but you can rest assured that commuters won’t be happy either way. “The only way to please some people would be to have the bus stopping every three bus-lengths,” commented Page, “but then they’ll all just whinge about all the riff-raff hanging around in front of their houses waiting for the bus. Which, let’s face it, is always fucking late.”

Parking on the Market Square has been suspended for the weekend to allow for the time wasting SunFest, also known as the August Festival, Summer Festival or Sort-Of Carnival, to take place.

Residents of the further reaches of the town were enraged. “If I want to go into town I should bloody well be able to,” spluttered Belland Hill man Maurice Lichen, a 32-year-old IT professional who has recently moved to the estate. “I always park in the Market Square as it’s impossible to spend more than an hour in town, and I should be able to do that whenever I bloody well want to.”

Eaton Socon mum of two Lisa Aston, 24, said she had planned to take her three-year-old twins to Costa Coffee, despite the fact they are far too young for caffeine, and was unable to. “I don’t actually drive,” said Aston, unemployed, of Jellicoe Place, “but I was still annoyed that if I could then I wouldn’t be able to park.”

Conveniently forgetting that there are plenty of other car parks and that parking is only suspended for the weekend, councillor Graham Wellington-Boot railed against the organisers. “Businesses in the town are sure to go into liquidation at the rate of one every 33 minutes because of this,” the councillor spat. “Clearly those of us who organised SunFest are to blame.”

Other councillors were so conflicted that they were unable to comment on the issue, but as usual it seems they’re sitting on both sides of the fence simultaneously, and fiercely blaming each other.

It’s thought that approximately seventeen people will attend the free event on the Market Square, fifteen of which will have got lost looking for non-existent toilets.

The Citizen has always aimed to keep locals up to date on the terrible meteorlogical situation over the summer, as when we correctly predicted two years ago that it’d probably rain. “August bank holiday isn’t supposed to be pleasant,” said Michael Shark of the Met Office. “If it was sunny everyone’d be heading for the seaside and complaining that the roads were a nightmare – or worse still, a national embarrassment.”

Indeed, motoring organisations were the only ones predicting the opposite of misery over the last three-day break until Christmas. “Fuel has gone up so much that local garages are just writing ‘joke’ on their polesign where the price used to be,” explained AA spokesman Bill Flatyre, “and with the added bonus of all this rain we expect to see major routes pretty clear this weekend.”

RAC counterpart Andy Cambelt agreed. “If you can afford to head to Lowestoft or something you probably should,” he advised. “There’ll be loads of free parking and once you’ve filled the car up you might have enough cash left for a siggy bag of chips.”

Neotians, however, were nonplussed by this supposed good news. “They really must do something about this,” complained Irene Pavillion, 38, of Longsands Road. “I mean it really is not good enough.” When pressed on who “they” were and how exactly something could be done about the weather, Pavillion muttered something about the council.

Former council leader Julia Wayward was quick to retort. “I’m not a councillor any more, so I can safely tell you to stop being such a whiny bunch of bastards,” she said in a statement this morning. “Obviously it was going to rain – everyone’s already bought disposable barbecues and enough burgers to feed the Libyan rebels for a week. Idiots.”

“This isn’t on,” said councillor Harry “R” Rogerson. “They can take their horses and fuck off!”

Newmarket is part of Suffolk, although around 20% of it’s area is in Glorious Cambridgeshire. The town is the world centre for horseracing, and councillors wishing to push the border east say the extortionate rates of council tax they are planning to charge equines could shore up services and slush funds in the rest of the county.

However, even if Newmarket does join the UK’s most wonderful shire, there is confusion over which district it would belong to. “Geographically,” explained local town-moving expert John Hall of Anglia Ruskin University, “Newmarket should come into South Cambs. However, this district was recently voted one of the top-ten places to live in the UK, and has no towns. Newmarket’s a town so SCDC isn’t interested.”

St Neots residents refused to allow the town to become an outpost of Huntingdonshire, and it is thought that Newmarketeers would be less than pleased to be associated with people-eating Fenland.

“Ultimately, it doesn’t matter anyway,” said Hall. “Firstly, it probably won’t happen. And secondly, Neotians need to do their research – Newmarket is half the size of St Neots, as horses don’t, despite rumours, each count as 300 people.”

Angry fourteen-year-olds – up to five of them – gathered on the Market Square last night armed with pictures of petrol bombs and polystyrene bricks. “We’re gonna smash some shit up!” screamed Ernulf student Luke Moran, 13. “Obviously we don’t actually want to get in any trouble though, hence the lack of real bricks an’ ting.”

Police turned up after being called by a member of staff at the Corner House, looked at the snarling hoodies, chuckled and left.

A similar failure also occurred in Cambridge, after a gang of forty or so failed abortions tried to break into the Grafton Centre. Onlooker Steven Nicks, 50, said “It was hilarious. They were only armed with their arms, and when a PCSO asked them nicely to fuck off, they did.”

Prime Minister David Cameron said that hoodies around the UK could learn from Cambridgeshire. “We’ve all got the message,” he said. “You’re annoyed because you can’t afford to buy weed and trainers because you can’t be arsed to get a job. Bunch of absolute twats. There’s no need to actually use fire and knives in this situation – why not take the initiative from Neotian preteens and have a nice game of Let’s Pretend?”

Cameron today chaired another emergency Cobra meeting. Local man Dr John Renege said he “failed to see how snakes were going to fix this situation”.

All lame attempts to increase the profile of the product and the latest ruse by genial local councillor Steve van der Whitevanman to attract some much needed pre-election publicity.

Councillor van der Whiteveanman has re-branded himself a militant promising that if it ever became necessary he would stick a traffic cone on top of his head, in defiance of the law, to stop someone parking there!

Shock-waves of disgust have literally rippled at a snails pace throughout a single internet forum thread.

“WHAT A FUCKIN’ DISGRACE!” screamed fellow candidate Harry “R” Rogerson.

“I CAN’T FUCKIN’ BELIEVE THAT A LOCAL COUNCILLOR IS ADOPTING THIS ANTI-SOCIAL HOODIE BEHAVIOUR JUST SO HE CAN PARK HIS GEE WHIZZ OUTSIDE HIS FLAT. THE ARMY WOULDN’T HAVE STOOD FOR THAT AND THEY HAD TANKS! Did you know I was in the army?”

“Militant” Steve, as Cllr van der Whitevanman now wants to be known, was unrepentant.

“Call me militant! Please? Oh go on, just once. I’ll buy you a sweetie. Alright if you call me militant I promise I’ll get the town fence painted and and…and er I’ll do something else equally radical.”

The Citizen fully expects the next few days to produce some equally bizarre behaviour from all local candidates as polling gets nearer.