We’re all in it together

MOST of the moans about Weymouth’s extensive roadworks come from car drivers but lorry drivers have an even harder time of it.

Spare a thought for this one driver who wound up in an enormously long artic facing the Chickerell Road railway bridge.

Traffic is supposed to go under the bridge and then turn immediately left down towards Asda which was clearly impossible for a 40 feet lorry.

I don’t know why he ended up there because there are signs warning HGV drivers about this insurmountable problem.

Whatever the reason, the driver missed the warning and had to make the best of the situation.

I found myself watching all this over a cup of coffee and a thick slice of chocolate cake in the Full Gamut art gallery opposite the bridge so I had a grandstand view. It didn’t take long.

Traffic was forgiving but the driver was certainly a master of his art.

He quickly pulled his concrete-block-laden monster away from the bridge, teasing it into a side road with a scrubbing grate of tyres on tarmac before apparently heading down to the Marsh.

He then swung the cab round at the last minute to ensure that when he headed back up Chickerell Road he wasn’t dragging the remains of one or two houses with him as well and he was away.

This was an extreme case but it brought into perspective that for every few hundred irate car drivers there is at least one lorry driver enjoying life in Weymouth as well.

Watch out for the phantom vacuum cleaner!

GETTING up early for work means that over the last 35 years I’ve had to think of other people’s sleep and do my best to navigate my home in the dark until I’m downstairs.

You get used to it after a while unless someone moves something and I confess that I’ve not spared it a second thought for longer than I can remember. You just do it.

What I’ve never considered is the reaction of other people in my house on the rare occasions they try and navigate our home in the dark.

The recent experience of my daughter reduced me to laughter when she related one terrifying incident at night when she disturbed an intruder. She’d been walking along the landing when a menacing figure came into focus and she was scared out of her wits… only to discover shortly afterwards that it was our vacumn cleaner! Thank God we don’t have a hat stand.

Squirrel gardeners

AUTUMN is nicely advanced and squirrels are out in force.

I counted 11 in a nearby cemetery but their food stores seem to be everywhere.

For instance, I found a hazelnut rammed into a mossy area in my garden and there isn’t a hazel tree anywhere nearby, so a squirrel has clearly hidden the nut away for hard times.

They are in a frenzy of activity at the moment, darting everywhere and poking food into every nook and cranny before hastily scurrying off to bury the next item.

Their efforts can lead to a different harvest and last spring I began to find strange plants growing strongly in my vegetable patch.

So I pulled one up and found it was growing from the remains of a peanut. Clearly a squirrel had grabbed one from a birdtable or somewhere, buried it in my garden and never come back for it.

It would be interesting to know just how many strange plants in people’s gardens have sprouted from food stored away by these industrious creatures.

It could be worse!

IF you think we have a few road problems then a Weymouth man told me of his experiences in Armenia where they scarcely have any decent roads.

What amused him was one section where he said there was a pothole the size of a swimming pool.

He found out that the Government only occasionally filled in this hole and that it kept being gouged out.

He felt the number one suspect might be the tyre repair business which just happened to operate next to this monster hazard!

Roads over there are appalling and during one trip he went on to view a monastery he saw the tour guide put her hands over her face until they were safely there the road was so dangerous.

Maybe Weymouth isn’t so bad after all!

Fitness for fanatics

DORSET is a magnet for holidaymakers and one cyclist I saw recently was extremely well kitted out.

He had panniers for this and panniers for that, various parcels and objects were roped on to his machine and there were a couple of what looked like packs.

Yes, there was scarcely space for him to sit on his bicycle, but what does the well travelled cyclist include in his load for a bit of relaxation once he’s parked his bike?

The answer seemed to lie with the squash racket attached to the back of one pack. Clearly a very fit man!

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