.the desperate diary of a Yorkshire housewife.: "Strawberry Traffic-Jam"

Blogpost No.2
Friday 27/07/2012

Living in the beautiful wiles of the West Yorkshire countryside you are probably expecting to hear that I walk everywhere, only shop in my local village and that mylife is a statement of perfect rural bliss and that when I do have to travel that I only hopon my vintage sit-up-and-beg. That said we are trying our best, Mr N and me toreduce our carbon footprint and improve our health by riding our bicycles roundthe village. But being completely honest, us included, most of us tend to use ourmotor vehicles to get from A to B.

When it comes to getting about onething in particular springs to mind,

‘Road-Works’

This made me think….

Helpful. Are they really?

Do you often find yourself saying “They’re ALWAYS digging the roads up.It’ll take me AGES to get to work. This is CHAOS. Half the time I go past there’sno one actually working there - those so-called workmen drink tea half the dayand knock off by 3.30. And it’s bound to over-run.”

Wherever wego we seem to be stuck in giant queues of traffic as a result of some form of road-works.Whether its road re-surfacing, traffic light repair work or new road layouts,that no one ever really gets the hang of despite living in that area for years.

Wherever wego, we always seem to be affected by some sort of ‘road-works’. I use the termwe as not just us as drivers but us as passengers to feel the frustration andinconvenience caused, when you’re running late and an un-expected diversion sendsyou miles out of your way and you end up lost as a result of an unpreparedTom-Tom. Ours goes by the name of Jane and she is forever screaming at us takethe next Left when there is clearly no left turn in sight. Once she told us togo Right on a country lane it was pitch black with not a street lamp in sight,we were new to our lovely little village so had no clue where we were and wealmost drove straight over a ledge. Had Mr N not been so quick to react I mightnot been here telling you this. Word to the wise; be careful when relying solelyon your sat-nav to get you home.

Let’s be honest it is only ever the minority amongus that is actually super organised enough to allow for long traffic delays andtemporary traffic lights that seem to be endlessly on red which ever directionyour seem to be going in.

Dare I ask howmany of us drivers out there actually drive slowly and cautiously enough toavoid what these days passes for a pot-hole, more like uncovered man-holes?Seriously when you do drive over one you can’t guarantee that your car, van,certainly not push-bike will make it up over the ‘Grand-Canyon sized craterslittering our countries roads.

Really it isonly the BMW drivers and other overpriced car drivers alike that can’t bear eventhe slightest of scuffs on their precious ‘pride and joys’ as my father wouldput it, him being one of those BMW drivers.

I honestlyfear for the safety of our push-bike riders, each time I see one I can’t helpbut grimace when they drive a little too close to one. You can’t help but checkin your rear view, not knowing if you’re going to find them face down in thetarmac.

For the rest of us mere mortals’ road-workswreak havoc with our journeys and schedules making us late. Not to mentionleave us feeling fraught and considerably more stressed than we really shouldbe when operating a large piece of machinery thus creating what is commonlyknown as ‘road rage’.

On a finalnote; thank you our dearly devoted local councillors for not standing up to thegiants that are government bullies, therefore not being able to make your owndecisions about your local area and the running of it. For this I say grow apair, break away from convention and pay your civil servants a respectablewage. This being said they would then perhaps be prepared to work for a livinginstead of leaning on their tools constantly like they are glued to them insome unfortunate way, having yet another tea-break. Or more importantly theyperhaps would be prepared to work through the night when the roads of ourvillages, towns and cities are at their quietest; instead they only ever seemto work during rush hour and in the most inconvenient parts of town just whenyou need to be somewhere. Having road-works restricted to out of hours wouldrespectably create fewer traffic delays, less disruption and even less stressto your everyday man and woman a-like.

I rest my case.

-MrsNx

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Found this whilst on the world wide web, it made me chuckle: