The road where we live is reasonably straight, then there is a bend and the road changes its name. This causes some confusion especially for delivery companies because it seems like one long road. Anyway, the 'powers that be' decided to have the road resurfaced, something which is long overdue it was more like the surface of the moon than a road. Each morning they closed the end of the adjoining road and they closed our road part way along to stop traffic getting stuck. Unfortunately it caused problems for me and many other residents trying to reach their homes, so I hoped that it wouldn't take too long. By the end of the first week my hopes had been dashed, they had taken the surface off the road, but there was no sign of a new surface. It is only a short road, not the M1 so I don't know why it took so long, maybe they were digging it up with a teaspoon!
After a second week of road closures and no significant action, they have managed to produce a road surface, still unfinished and not the smoothest I have driven on, but after waiting for two weeks I was glad to be able to drive along the road at last. Robbie had paid keen attention to the road closures because it altered the bus route slightly, and we all know that he loves to obsess about timetables! I wasn't really surprised by that, but I was amazed by his reaction to driving over the new road. His excitement about driving on a road with no marking was just plain weird, he still manages to surprise me!
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!
Robbie had terrible journeys to and from work yesterday. His train arrived at the station more or less on time in the morning but it remained rooted to the spot for over 40 minutes as it lacked one vital ingredient - train crew. Apparently there was some sort of obstruction at Coventry and they had been stranded. His homeward journey departed on time but it terminated at Rugby due to multiple signal failure. I received a series of increasingly frustrated calls from Robbie, but eventually they were on the move again and Robbie estimated that he would be at Northampton by 7.35pm. I was having my own day from hell, car problems, road works causing massive delays and children needing me to be in two different places at the same time, but I agreed to collect him. More phone calls and the time was gradually pushed back, until at 8pm I had to abandon my wait for Robbie and dash across town to pick up Sam from his school. He had been helping at a parents evening as a science representative. He should have been ready by 8.15pm at the latest, but after the impossibility of trying to park I found that he still wasn't ready, and after waiting around for 20 minutes I had to get extremely assertive to force someone to go and find him. Having got into the car park, getting out again was even more of a challenge!
Finally I was able to head back to pick Robbie up, his train had eventually arrived at 8.20pm - two hours late! He was now cold, tired and ravenously hungry. I expected him to be furious about the chaos, but thankfully his spirits had been lifted slightly because his missing trousers and his new briefcase had been delivered to work that day. I'd been quietly insistent about Robbie needing a briefcase on wheels because he gets so much pain in his back and legs, but I had to wait until Robbie accepted the idea and ordered it himself! He made a very good choice, he is almost as fascinated by briefcases and bags as he is by trains and he spent a very long time telling me about all the features of the bag - apparently it even has a light inside!
By the time I got Robbie and Sam home, I didn't even have time for a cup of tea before I had to go out again to collect Laura. It must have been about 10.40 before I finally got home. Robbie was still talking about trains and in the course of his very detailed account of his home bound journey, he explained that the progress between Rugby and Northampton was painfully slow because the hand signaller had to walk ahead before the train could leave. After a day like that, a completely different kind of hand signal sprang to mind!
