This is the kind of service we want

RAIL staff come in for a lot of stick but I have nothing but praise for staff at Weymouth railway station after one recent incident.

I’d driven down there late at night to collect my wife and daughter who were returning from a trip to a far flung university open day.

The site was dark and pretty deserted as I reversed into one car space only to hear a loud bang.

So I got out, walked round to the back of the car and found someone had discarded an empty beer bottle which had gone off like a bomb when I reversed over it.

There was a great chunk of glass embedded in one tyre and I cut my hand removing it and trying to shift other pieces of glass away.

Frustrated, I went and found a member of staff and warned him of the problem.

Not only did he immediately get a dustpan and brush and sweep up as much of the glass as he could get but he also offered me a plaster for my cut hand, logged the incident and said if there was a problem with my car tyre and I needed details of the incident then he had recorded it on the station’s register.

He also told me that discarded bottles and other even more dangerous objects were a problem at the station caused by drunks and drug addicts who left such rubbish about.

Another check and a polite question whether I needed anything else and he went on his way. Now that’s the sort of public service level many people all over this country never see, so we should thank our lucky stars in Weymouth that our rail staff are a cut above usual levels of helpfulness.

An act of such callous stupidity

OVER the 20 years I have lived in our road I thought I’d seen just about everything that could be dumped by idiots, drunks or people who just don’t care.

Regular sprinklings of sweet and crisp wrappers are rife, we also get plastic and glass bottles tossed into gardens and only this week I had to retrieve an isotonic drink can which had presumably been discarded by some athlete too exhausted to take it home with them.

I’ve seen road works barriers, double glazing signs, flowers and even bricks dumped in the road by people who you never seem able to catch in the act, possibly because a lot of this sort of thing is committed by people stumbling home in the wee small hours.

But I hit new heights the other day when chatting with a neighbour of mine who showed off an object she’d had to clear away.

When she pointed to the side of her garden I initially thought she was indicating some plant or shrub in a pot, but she was actually pointing to what was partially concealed by the greenery.

It was a wheelchair and we both shook our heads at the mentality of those who could first take a wheelchair, perhaps from a point where it was really needed, and then simply dump it when the novelty had worn off.

She said she’d informed the police who should be able to track down the owners via various information on the wheelchair itself, but that’s not the point.

Surely those who took the wheelchair must have some grain of humanity if not sense left in their brains because there are pranks and then there is callous stupidity and this act falls firmly in the latter category.

Where’s that bridge we used to have?

INTERESTING that a new bridge for pedestrians and cyclists is being put across Newstead Road in Weymouth.

It will bring to an end people using the Rodwell Trail having to come down the old embankment, across a dangerous road and up the embankment on the other side to continue on their way.

Just goes to show how certain actions can have their consequences since there used to be a perfectly good railway bridge on the same site, but the line closed and the stone arch bridge was demolished for a variety of reasons in 1987.

Now the county council has backed what it terms “a simpler design” for the new bridge which will cost nearly £1 million.

At that rate the money could have paid for maintaining the old bridge at a rate of £801.28 per week for the entire 24 years and we’d have had a much sturdier construction as well.

IT was love at first sight and there was nothing the man could do about it. His giant St Bernard dog probably outweighed him and there was no way he could stop its surge across a busy pedestrian thoroughfare to check out a female dog about ten feet away.

Tail waving like a banner, the St Bernard simply stepped over swiftly leaving his owner flailing behind on the end of his lead and looking slightly embarrassed by the whole scene.

And the female dog? Well she wasn’t too sure about suddenly being dwarfed by an admirer and grinning passers by were treated to a cautious touching of doggie noses before the female dog trotted off down the street with her owner.

Fortunately for shoppers the St Bernard decided not to follow.

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