With all due apology for lack of taste, here's a minor item of local news from here in East Lothian. Apparently, council workmen painting lines along the road near Longniddry managed to paint over a patch of horse manure. Shock horror. My first reaction was that it obviously must have been the responsibility of a different department to shift the stuff, but the council have already explained.
They claim that
(1) it wusnae us - it was a contractor - so that's all right then
(2) it's no so easy to spot this stuff, they paint the lines with a special wagon, you know, and the driver is in a cab, well above the road. Anyone who thought that the painter would be on his knees in the road, working with a big brush and a ruler, go and stand in the corner.
While I was looking for a better picture, I found a much more graphic example, but this is from Kirklees, courtesy of the Huddersfield Examiner [a Mirfield Conservative Councillor described this as "careless" and "beyond belief" - anyone who regards this as evidence of some lack of imagination may also go and stand in the corner].
Since I was now on some sort of roll, I looked online to see if this is a more common problem than I had thought, and came across a show-closing photo of a road line painted over a dead raccoon, from California, at which point I decided to stop. I'll spare you the dead raccoon - I'm sure you can find it through Google if you really want to.
The joys of semi automation. My real question is why was the horse in question straddling the centre line?
ReplyDeleteThat's a very reasonable question, but in both these cases I think the line is marking the edge of the road. The Scottish picture was actually taken of recent work on the A198, which is a single carriageway road, though not a particularly narrow one. There is a heavy requirement on roads in these parts to mark the edge of the roadway, since there are usually no sidewalks and the edge of the road otherwise is likely to be a thorn hedge, or some sort of a variable bank, pothole, heap of gravel (or whatever). Occasionally, when they resurface these minor roads (which is very occasionally, in fact) it takes them a while to re-do the white lines, which makes night-time driving even more fun than usual, to say nothing of being a pedestrian at night. You don't realise how much we rely in them until they are not there.
DeleteHorses, of course, can go where they like, though they have to carry lights at night. We have a great many horses in these parts. It seems odd that dog owners have to clean up a few ounces of muck in the street (which I am all in favour of, by the way) on pain of being fined heavily, while horse riders may drop a barrowload at a time without restriction. Perhaps nappies for horses are on the way?
There was a report on the BBC a while back of workmen painting double yellow lines on a road (I think it was down on the South coast somewhere)and they had painted round a dead badger leaving an odd brock-shaped bulge in the parking restrictions. "Badgers, mate? No, not my job."
DeleteAh, of course. If I'd looked closer at the picture I'g have seen the shoulder.
DeleteIts odd we moved the white line from the middle to the edge in the 70's but I still forget occasionally when not actually looking at a road.
The badger outline is specially good - this could give rise to a whole new hobby. We would have deer-shaped and pheasant-shaped bulges here, foxes and badgers, lots of hares...
DeleteWhy does the idea of a painted badger outline make me think of OJ Simpson?
Ross - like us, you must have problems with low-angle sunlight at this time of year - here, it's probably more of a visibility hazard than driving at night, so we need all the white lines we can get.
DeleteExcellent. My grandfather, having got a car in the early 1950s apparently kept a shovel and a bucket in the boot, in case he saw some horse muck. Good for the garden, of course.
ReplyDeleteSplendid - presumably friends and relatives would be queuing up to put their shopping or their best coats in his car boot?
DeleteHe was a nice old man - very clean.
DeleteFor your information and amusement, we file this under "meanwhile, in Australia": http://www.smh.com.au/national/road-kill-outrage-highway-workers-paint-white-line-over-dead-animal-20150910-gjjlpl.html It happens a lot.
ReplyDeleteI am mightily uplifted by Queensland's Main Roads Dept's pride in their delivery of high-quality outcomes - all these years later, it's still great that Dilbert had such a positive impact. I'm also delighted to note that, many thousands of miles from East Lothian, the spokesman claimed that it wusnae them, either.
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