The Highways Department

Hello dear reader and welcome to a beautiful Sunday at Comb Towers. The sun is shining, the fish are taking their ease under the shade of the lilypads in the pond, the birds are singing and our resident crow has brought his latest kill to dismember in the bird bath, leaving me the entrails as my thank you present. Truly, I think I could live without them.

   For once we had a fairly uneventful week, until yesterday. More of that later. We travelled to Stockton, Teesside, home of the railways. We were visiting elderly friends. They were our farmer neighbours in the Durham Dales, when we all lived out in the wilds and had many adventures together.

   What struck me most on the journey was the vast amount of road furniture, as I think it is known. Signs for everything under the sun. The best one was Cats Eyes Removed. Yes, indeedy, there were several stretches of road where there were no cats-eye lights embedded in the road. But I think we might have noticed that at night anyway without having to be told about it. Nanny State! But what I think is that someone in the Local Authority Highways Department has a mischievous, possibly macabre sense of humour and knows full well that we poor saps will wince and say”ouch” when we pass the signs. Which we duly did.

   I think the Highways Department must think we need leading by the nose and/or don’t possess a brain cell between us.  In the absolute middle of nowhere there was a sign saying Pedestrians Crossing. As far as the eye could see on both sides of the road, there were rolling fields, full of crops or cattle. Not a house, a shack, a tin shed or barn in sight. So where are these hoards of pedestrians going to appear from? I am mystified.

   And another one that really gets my goat is Rumble Strips Ahead. We have already passed several Slow Down signs and then several 30 Miles An Hour signs and then flipping rumble strips. I think we are already well clued up by this stage that we are passing through a village and need to proceed at a sedate pace, but I have a suspicion that our much unloved Highways Department don’t have enough to do and sit in their offices dreaming ever more road furniture to delight us with - just in case we entirety lose all common sense and/or every brain cell we ever possessed and are completely unable to make a fair assessment of our situation vis `a vis obeying the rules of the road.

   There - rant over and I’ve got it off my chest. Dear reader, you may entirely disagree with me and absolutely adore signage, signage and more signage. Good luck to you in that case!

   In the meantime, I wish you a very happy week and I hope to meet you again in a better frame of mind next week.