Watch where you are walking

CHRISTMAS is proving too much for some pedestrians who have not just grown careless in traffic but almost suicidal.

The problem revealed itself when one woman loaded with bags, festive wrapping paper peeping coyly out of one of them began to cross the road about 100 metres ahead of me.

She didn’t look left and she didn’t look right, just continued her slow plodding way right in front of my car which would have hit her had I not pulled up. Even when she reached the pavement there was no realisation of what she had done and she simply turned right up Commercial Road and carried on walking.

Some people, I thought, but over the next week I saw several other ludicrous traffic incidents either from my car or while I was a pedestrian myself.

A man carrying a large cardboard box but in such a way he couldn’t see the traffic he was stepping out in front of, two woman walking out into the road with their heads bent over a  package with a bow on it instead of with their eyes on the cars braking to avoid them and an elderly man with what looked like a large box of Christmas chocolates in his bag.

He at least had some of his wits about him and waved a walking stick at cars to encourage traffic to stop as he stepped slowly across the road… less than 30 metres from a pedestrian crossing.

Do Christmas pedestrians have some sort operation to remove their sanity? I’ve kept the best one for last.

A mother quite rightly reprimanded her young daughter who she’d grabbed just as she was about to run out into the road… but as she bent over to deliver the reprimand into her daughter’s ear they had already started to cross the road right in front of a van which they’d missed seeing. Sort of spoilt the safety message a bit!

Waking up to a frosty message in the morning

WALK outside on many mornings now and chances are that your car will be covered with ice.

This tells you it is winter, not because it is freezing cold but because of all the messages scratched into icy car windows by children on their way to school.

You get the usual smiley faces, smiley snowmen, smiley Father Christmases and even the occasional mutant reindeer with certain bodily parts given greater care and attention than others!

Then you get the “fun” messages which really aren’t that much fun at all which means, with due apologies to Shakespeare, “now is the winter of our discontent”.

I really don’t want to know the likes of “Sandra snogs Rob”, that “Carmel is a bitch” and definitely not that “Max has a big one”.

There is no real malice involved but, as an early morning welcome, it put drivers off their breakfast and really only leaves them with one option. To turn on the heater and see all the messages dribble.

Going above and beyond

NEVER have doctors and health staff been under such pressure as they are now, but many still go considerably further than the extra mile to help patients.

A Weymouth woman had a medical query but was told the doctor concerned was away on holiday.

She had resigned herself to having to deal with an unfamiliar figure, so she was understandably delighted when her usual doctor took the trouble to answer her query by email… even though he was on the other side of the world in the wilds of Tasmania!

He had apparently been monitoring his calls and had taken the trouble to seek out a spot from which he was able to send emails via his phone so this patient’s query could be answered.

She was extremely impressed and felt that her care really mattered to the doctor in question who had really put himself out to help her.

Trip down the mines

A WEYMOUTH man recalled the time he accompanied work colleagues on a special adventure trip down a coal mine in the Midlands.

Down and down they went and there was a certain amount of excitement when they reached the bottom and got out of the cage, surrounded by working lights and the sight of bright white lime scattered on the ground to help neutralise waste.

There was much chatter as the group made its way along a shaft led by a knowledgeable guide.

Then one of the women in the group asked the guide a question, saying: “What is all this white stuff on the ground?”

In a deadpan voice he replied: “That’s frost. It was very cold down here last night.”

There is no record of how long her colleagues managed to stifle their laughter.

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