(Monday) Moan 69

 

MY KIND OF COFFEE SHOP

I walked into a Costa coffee shop the other day and, for just about the first time ever, this one was devoid of any other customers.  No queuing for ages to get a drink, no trouble finding an unoccupied table, no pushing past the parked prams of the neighbourhood, no need for ear protectors against the noise of a thousand conversations, of chairs being scraped over the floor, of the coffee machine screeching away …….. Wait a minute, no coffee machine noise and no smell of coffee either …… what was going on?

 

It turned out that the coffee machine was broken and had been for two days. So no customers but a spotlessly clean shop and instant service if all you wanted was a cup of tea.

 

As a non-coffee drinker what could have been more perfect!  Thank you to whatever it was that caused the coffee machine to break. 

 

 

 

NOT MY KIND OF LOLLIPOP

I set off from my home the other day in my car and immediately I tried to turn out of my road there was a traffic jam.  Someone let me out when traffic eventually edged forward and 20 minutes and a few hundred metres further on I found the cause of the problem – a pedestrian crossing on which a lollipop man was taking his duties very seriously indeed.  

 

As I understand it, a lollipop man is supposed to help provide safe passage across the road for children going to school.  I’m OK with that.  But does this mean that the lollipop man needs to spring out onto the crossing (the use of the word “spring” is actually a bit of artistic licence, since the person in question seemed even less athletic and mobile than me) at the first sign of each and every individual child approaching?  Does this mean he should continue to hold up the traffic because he has spotted another child sauntering along who may reach the crossing in another thirty seconds or so?

 

I don’t think so.  Maybe some commonsense training would be in order so that everyone can go about their business in a more efficient way?

 

 

 

DRIVING ME MAD ON THE MOTORWAY

I have done a lot of driving this week, much of it on Motorways.  It seems to me that the irritation of the middle-lane blocker has abated considerably, no doubt as a result of the publicity earlier in the year around the introduction of new powers to fine people for lane hogging.

 

Good.  Not so much effect as far as I could see on  being in the wrong lane and then pushing into a queue of traffic when approaching roadworks or exits – where fines are also now possible.

 

Everyone has their favourite gripes about driving, and there is a very long list of things that can cause us angst.  My pet irritations remain the idiots who continue to hold their mobile phones in one hand whilst driving with the other – van and lorry drivers negotiating roundabouts being a particular gripe.  But on the motorway I have seen nothing that irritates me more than the lorry drivers who insist on holding everyone else up by trying to overtake an equally large and slow moving vehicle, particularly when approaching a hill, thus guaranteeing that they will lose speed and any chance of getting past for the next couple of miles or so.

 

Oh, and those people who ‘forget’ to switch off the variable speed limit signs for hours after the original cause of the restriction has cleared or been cleared away.

 
 

COMING SOON …….

Have you noticed the sudden proliferation of those large traffic condition indicator boards?  You know, the ones that warn you of a lane closure on the M62 when you are driving 200 miles away on the M25?  And when they have nothing to report from anywhere in the whole of the country they resort to safety slogans like ‘Take a rest’?

 

These boards are appearing everywhere – almost as if designed to clutter the landscape for no good reasons other than that the authorities can place them where they like and they have a bit of cash left in this year’s budget so want to spend it rather than give it back.

 

‘Take a rest’?  I’d say ‘Give us a break’.