A WEYMOUTH street feature is so unwanted that it is literally bringing people down.
The hole several feet deep near the junction of St Mary Street and St Alban Street started life as roadworks, was demoted to a fenced off hazard and has now sunk to the level of “work in progress”.
It is crudely protected by a large piece of soggy cardboard over which a piece of fencing has been roughly laid but, as one passer by told me, “it is a broken leg waiting to happen”.
This is because there is a large gap in the middle of the piece of fencing and anyone treading on the apparently solid surface of the carboard could suddenly find themselves plunging through at least knee-deep.
The passer-by knew all about concealed hazards and regaled me with this yarn. He said a woman visited a building in the process of being converted and happened to walk along a darkened corridor and through a doorway only to find it was a lift shaft.
She fell screaming for 15 feet but was fortunately saved from serious injury because her fall was broken by sawdust and wood chippings that builders had stored at the bottom of the shaft. Unfortunately she was then injured by someone who heard her cries, rushed to help and fell down the same shaft on top of her!
Perhaps the authorities should deal with the hole before it creates its own accident yarn.
To Hampshire ... on foot via St Malo!
EVER been in a car having a row about wrong directions being given?
I have, so I was determined get a clear idea of the route before we set off when I received an invitation to a birthday party for a friend I started out in journalism with back in the 1970s.
He works for the Daily Mail and has written various books but he still prizes the quiet life in rural Hampshire where the party was staged at his home.
How to get there, I thought, so I switched my computer on and keyed in direction guidance to where he lived about 100 miles away.
Now I already knew roughly how to get there. It was something like M27 and up a bit. Google quickly confirmed this but a map window caught my eye which also offered directions for walking there!
Mildly amused, I clicked on it just to see what it would suggest and it produced the following. First catch a ferry from Weymouth to Guernsey, then catch a ferry to Portsmouth and walk in from there.
It got better. There was a second choice involving taking a ferry right over to St Malo in France and then one back to Portsmouth before walking in.
But the icing on this ocean wave direction cake came with a slice of helpful advice for your two ferry journeys.
It read: “Use caution on this route. May be missing sidewalks or pedestrian path.”
Hello Alan, how are you today?
AS a keen gardener I’m always pottering about doing this or that on my hallowed plot. One job which reared its head recently was hanging basket repair and I found that one of mine needed an entirely new lining.
So off I went to B&Q in Weymouth as I also needed other things not available at a garden centre, but once there I hit problems.
I searched and couldn’t find a basket liner for love nor money, so I asked for advice and a helpful member of staff paged a colleague to attend the garden section.
I waited and waited but no one came as I paced up and down in frustration.
Finally I became aware of someone behind me, swung round and began to curtly explain what I wanted only to trail away into an embarrassed silence.
A hasty glance round the immediate area revealed no one nearby for which I was mightily grateful….because I had just started a conversation with a large cardboard cut-out of television gardener Alan Titchmarsh! I felt like hanging myself not my baskets.
Some are more equal than others!
DRIVERS who flout parking laws and get a ticket have only themselves to blame for their stupidity but sometimes the penalty itself is stupid.
Take Lodmoor Country Park in Weymouth for instance where I found three consecutive identically sized spaces near the entrance.
I’d walked a good 20 yards past them before the bizarre range of financial warnings attached to each space registered with me.
The first had an official notice: “Please pay at meter at all times. Penalty £50.”
But in the next space was another official notice: “Please pay at meter at all times. Penalty £60.”
And just to round the confusion off, the next space over was for disabled badge holders complete with an official notice warning them that they must display a valid blue badge….or face a penalty of £70!
As George Orwell might have said: All parking spaces are penalised equally but some are penalised more equally than others.
www.viewfromonline.co.uk
No comments:
Post a Comment