Road Rage

I am so sick of road works in Northampton, it has taken months to be rid of the road works in the area around the station, so I have not been overjoyed to find new roadworks popping up like mushrooms all around the town. I know that roads have to be maintained, but it is so annoying. It wouldn't be so bad if you could actually see them making progress, but they are so slow that you would need time lapse photography to capture any movement at all!

There is a road that I use every day (along with thousands of other people) and they are doing resurfacing work on it. It has created chaos in that part of town and this has been compounded by the unhelpful notices that appeared to announce the impending road closure. The notice read “This road will be closed off peak from .....” what on earth does off peak mean? The train operating companies can't agree on a definition of off peak, telephone companies have their own ideas about it, and the fuel companies have yet another interpretation. I wasn't until the works had started that they decided to let us in to their little secret, off peak (according to them) means between 9.30am and 3.30pm. They are obviously not used to providing helpful information, so they redressed the balance (and caused chaos) by putting up a sign on the Billing Road to inform drivers that the road ahead was closed - with the arrow pointing in the wrong direction!

Day of The Triffids? 28.11.07

Laura was in the car with me a few days ago and for some reason we got on to the subject of road signs. I gave her one or two examples of signs that make me smile and I confessed to an overwhelming urge to punctuate them correctly. Her school is gradually being rebuilt (the operative word is gradually!) and they have been sharing the site with builders for well over a year. She told me about a sign that she didn't understand and she asked what it meant. The sign in question was 'Heavy Plant Crossing' and I explained that it meant beware of diggers. Laura laughed and said that she'd thought it was something to do with planting trees! She posed the obvious question, why can't they just say what they mean? Maybe it is just tradition, but perhaps it is time to have a rethink. If an intelligent A Level student who speaks English as her first language doesn't understand a warning sign, there is little hope for the many people living and working in our country who are not as familiar with the eccentricities of the English language.