A one-way ticket to drunksville

THIS is a Weymouth Railway Station announcement. The drunks blocking our entrance steps, swearing at each other and dumping beer cans on the pavement are the 1:57pm Lunchtime Special to Oblivion.

On departure they will almost certainly be calling at Unable to Halt, Much Quaffing, Sumoor Pleeesh, Missed in the Bog, Inmacups, Bellybelch, Swigton and, hopefully, Yawnicked.

Of course, there never is such a station announcement but, unfortunately, there very definitely are drunks displaying their lifestyle to anyone using Weymouth Station.

My visit to collect a passenger left me torn between finding out how his train was doing and keeping watch on my car, which had to be parked just a few feet from the drunks.

Their conversation was loud, incoherent and peppered with eff-this, eff-that and eff-the-other all tastefully stitched into spluttering arguments which seemed to flare up almost at will among the six men involved.

The only care they took was to avoid spilling their cans and there was much arm waving and finger-pointing to emphasise that their point – whatever the hell it was – was the right one.

I ended up being in the station for about ten minutes and I warned station staff what was happening outside, but as I got in our car and pulled safely away out of their verbal reach they left me with one more gem.

“Shut your f****** mouth before I f****** shut it for you!”

Now who could say fairer than that?

What goes around comes around

NOW is the time of year when you start finding all those things you lost last autumn and wondered where they had gone.

So far my haul includes a dice my neighbours lost while playing a board game on their decking last year. That turned up in one of my flowerbeds.

I’ve also found a football, a tennis ball, some sort of whirly copter toy, a dog’s rubber bone (we don’t have a dog), a baby’s sock (we don’t have a baby) and half an indelible pencil. I wondered where that had gone. It turned up somehow at the back of a stack of bricks.

Other finds have so far included a packet of vegetable seeds I spent 15 minutes searching for in my shed only to find them in the pocket of the garden coat I was wearing and a gob of shiny earth which revealed itself as the bell off a cat collar.

I’m just waiting to stumble across a few missing gardening tools and my haul will be complete although that probably won’t happen until the autumn when I no longer need them by which time I’m bound to have lost a few other things. What goes around comes around.

Go fly a kite!

IT’S the great annual kite festival on Weymouth Beach this weekend and for the first time ever the council has put in several entries.

One is called “Budget”, an unusual display which cuts across the sky bursting with vitality before slowly deflating to lie limp on the sands.

Crowds can also look forward to the authority’s stunning Pavilion entry featuring a giant inflatable replica of the Pavilion. It will be briefly held close to the ground by a winch before its mile-long line is unwound to send it soaring way above Weymouth. This offering entitled “Now Your See It Now You Don’t” portrays changing times in the town.

There is also bound to be a big cheer for the authority’s Condor entry, produced in collaboration with the ferry company and showing a gaily painted seagoing vessel in the shape of a gigantic pound sign. No spikes will be driven into the beach to secure the Condor entry on advice from structural repair engineers working on the nearby harbour wall. 

Instead it will be tied to the nearest laser light to provide a positive conclusion if the entry breaks free and blows away.

Finally children will be encouraged to join in the council’s spectacular Workforce entry by joining a workshop to make little inflatable figures which will later be gathered together for a mass release. Don’t miss it.

Keep calm and carry on complaining

PLEASE can you all be a bit kinder to council officials who seem to be under a great deal of stress in recent times.

That unfortunate incident at Preston where a mini roundabout was painted on the road twice as big as it should have been was a rare lapse and should not be held against them.

I know there was also a bit of confusion over cycle symbols painted all over a pavement off Chickerell Road but it could have happened to anyone.

Of course there were those tiny problems caused by road markings at the Boot Hill junction fiasco but a bit more paint and a few more daubs soon sorted that out.

Then there was also that blip where another sign painted on the road at Manor Roundabout directed town centre traffic out to Upwey.

Actually, now I come to think of it, keep on complaining.

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