There is an everlasting lack of coordination when it comes to digging up roads and pavements. Or so it would seem. I make an almost daily trek up from my house to the parade of shops nearby. It isn’t very far to go, but if working at home it does mean an outside venture at least once a day. The row of shops is much in demand and the parking spaces there are often full (especially bearing in mind it is also the parking for the flats above the shops). And people are more impatient now, and often don’t give a shit where they park their enormous beasts of cars. Quite often the open space on the corner of Wakehurst Drive and Southgate Drive will have at least one gigantic SUV abandoned there. Normally some tosser in the typically arrogant collection of high-end German cars. You know the types, BMW, Audi, Mercedes Benz. If you are in a wheelchair or having to steer a pushchair or pram around, they make it difficult. And it would appear all this abandonment adds up to damage the paving slabs there. Just before Christmas someone had been round inspecting the slabs and had spraypainted marks on a number that needed replacing / relaying. On Monday they were all replaced with fresh black tarmac. Two days later I go to the shops at lunchtime, and that new tarmac, and quite an area around it was all dug up and piled up as UKPN conducted planned work. Note. Planned works. So if they were planned, what the fuck were the council doing putting in fresh tarmac in the area being dug up just two days before it was dug up? And they moan about budget constraints. I think it would benefit us all if they spent a bit of the budget on learning how to read. And plan. Or how to read plans even. It really can’t be that difficult, can it?
From there it was off to hospital again, and the journey gave lots of examples of where some of that – now wasted – tarmac could have been put to better use. There are some potholes on the way to East Surrey hospital which would put the Grand Canyon to shame.
It’s strange that at quarter past four, they are only running five minutes late on appointments. Seeing (pun intended) as when I went in December and was the first scheduled appointment in the morning, they were running fifty minutes late. Both eyeballs injected again. The right one feels it more, and the pools of liquid moving around in the eyes is a weird sensation for hours afterwards. I was glad I’m not allowed to drive afterwards, as the journey back was during the heaviest of the local snow flurries. It did make our minds up about the possibility of going into the office on Thursday. Not happening.
With the now on roofs from overnight, and a heavy frost earlier in the week, the seat at the kitchen table when working at home gives a view out over the backs of houses on Malthouse Road. I can see the backs of three pairs of semi-detached houses. And on all three pairs it is easy to see that the one to the left as I look at them is well insulated, and the ones to the right aren’t. The snow and ice stays on he left hand ones well into the afternoon, but is gone by nine in the morning on the right-hand ones. If you were selling insulation, these kinds of days would be great for trying to suss out new business.
Just before Christmas one of the many, many, many food purchases was a box of dates. On the top of the box it says Dates From Jordan. And every time I pass the box, I have the same insanity running through my mind. That it should read Dates With Jordan, and be the ultimate in car crash (quite often literally) reality TV shows.