Men at work? Where, exactly?

Timesaving tips #1

Radio Five, and anyone else giving out traffic news in the mornings:

Only make an announcement when the M25, anticlockwise, through the roadworks between junctions five and six (with the M26 / A21 and Godstone) isn’t tailing back due to a broken down vehicle / broken down lorry.

I took a detour to avoid that section last Friday morning. Fortunately, Radio Five had yet to have the benefit of my timesaving tip, or they may not have bothered saying anything, as it was situation normal. Unfortunately, the world, his wife and their dog also took the detour.

Then, on the way back, clockwise, there were two broken down vehicles slowing everything down through the roadworks. I’m starting to wonder whether the recovery and highways blokes don’t plant them to justify their existence or cream off a bit of overtime. Not only that, but the ‘works’ in roadworks is open to question. Over the first few slow, stop-start miles, I passed just two blokes in the middle bit where the so-called works are supposed to be happening. Both were sat in small diggers. Neither digger was moving. One bloke appeared to be asleep (he may have died on the job, or been an inflatable put there to make it look as if something is being done, but if they’re using inflatables, then they need to get some skinny-bloke models, this one would have taken some serious inflating), the other was eating a sandwich with one hand, and demonstrating the manual dexterity required to work such earth-moving equipment, scratching his belly with the other. Eventually, after a long slow frustrating lack of progress, there’s a middle bit where all the high-viz hardhats hang out, measuring, taking datum levels, smoking and chatting. It’s like a Village People fancy dress party at which everyone’s turned up in the same costume. Like those population maps showing vast wastelands then huge dense urban sprawls near seas and rivers, maybe the central section is naturally where road builders congregate. Maybe it’s the portaloos. Maybe it’s safety in n umbers as a defence against road-raging homicidal drivers seeing the same broken down vehicles day after day. Maybe only one of them has a lighter. Then there’s another long slow section with nothing happening. Long slow entry and exit stretches, short frantic bit in the middle. Like all those songs on those prog-rock albums in the 70’s. See ‘Selling England by the Pound’ and similar.

The Fall

One good thing about being an old git. You sometimes get to revisit some magnificent music you’ve all but forgotten about. I’ve been listening to The Fall’s Shift Work. Among their albums, this is relatively laid back easy listening. It still has more teeth than several day’s listening on a popular local radio station.

Disgrace…

…for D the Dog, who has destroyed some books. There’s a saying, something about do what you like to the ageing non-politicals, but brace yourself for outcry if you close a library. I love books. Ripping them up is the canine equivalent of those fundamentalist nutters burning them. A stiff talking-to is needed. A more secure lock for the kitchen door, too. More the lock than the talking-to, actually.