Magic Roundabout

As usual this morning a bit of road rage was going on at our famous Tesco magic mini roundabout. 

When I reached the roundabout I heard the screech of brakes and saw the usual macho shaking of fists and posturing, and I could hear the two drivers shouting and abusing each other.
 In the end one of the drivers screeched off in a cloud of tyre smoke. Unfortunately for him this was witnessed by a policeman in a plain car and he followed him. When I passed he and the P.C. were having words but I was disturbed to see a boy of about seven or eight sat in the front seat of the car. Its bad enough acting in this way anyway but to let a child witness it is truly moronic. 
The approach to our magic roundabout is the one place in Barrow I would consider speed humps. There is this unfounded faith in the idea that the faster and more aggressively you drive at it the better and that everyone will automatically give way to traffic from the right. This and the assumption that every driver will indicate are often proved wrong.
 Or do they just hope that everyone else has brakes and insurance.

Blue Badge

I see that down in the city of Manchester some cars have been impounded and the owners prosecuted for using fake blue disabled parking badges.(for overseas readers these badges allow parking on yellow lines for up to three hours).
 From what I see and hear every day on the streets of Barrow you don't need to fake a badge, it seems you get one even if it's your aunt's friend's sister in law that is suffering with an ingrown toenail. The town centre is littered with cars all badly parked using these badges as an excuse for their laziness and tightfistedness. 
I have watched these drivers park on yellow lines right next to a pay and display car park, and then stride several hundred yards across the car park to get to the shops, and even on occasion seen them run back for their forgotten walking stick. 
I had to double park and block traffic for a while today, as I helped my passenger a genuinely disabled lady into a shop. On the way back to the car I noticed that one of the cars blocking access was displaying a blue badge, but it was a large estate car filled with the tools and cable used by an electrician. 
There are obviously genuine users of blue badges but a large proportion are definitely taking the mickey. 

Lost

Now and again, I will pick some joker up who tries to catch me out by asking to go to a street with no houses on which very few people have heard of.

 A few local examples of these in Barrow in Furness are Water St, Reservoir St, Thomson St, and Wesley Place. The only time I do get caught out funnily enough is when at the end of a long busy tiring shift my mind will go blank when I am asked to go to somewhere I go to every single day.

But the fun really starts when I get jobs in the outlying villages and countryside especially when I am given vague directions to a place with just a house name.

 I always find that even in the most remote hamlets when I stop to ask the way it always turns out to be a stranger to the area or the local village idiot I pick.

 On one particular job a while back I picked a chap who looked sensible enough but when asked the way he replied “Ista gaan duwn yonder ginnel past meda wi sterks bur tat la left an gaas on abit lal git ta laurel hedge ista gaas onabit las lare. So that's exactly what I did and amazingly, I found it fairly easily.

But I couldn't  help keep laughing to myself after that thoughts kept entering my head of this guy doing the voice directions for those new fangled satellite navigation devices you get nowadays.

Black Gold

I noticed today that a coal truck had lost part of its load on Greengate St here in Barrow in Furness. 
Not that many years ago people would have appeared seemingly from nowhere with buckets and carried it off for use in the garden.
 But no not nowadays it was just left to be crushed under the wheels of passing traffic.  I sometimes wonder just how many people would actually know how to light a coal fire in this age of push button central heating.

Motorway Madness

A few times in the last 3 or 4 week I have had reason to make use of Britain's motorway network. Now consider these are suppose to be the safest roads to drive on then there should be no problem with a nice easy drive as you head out on your journey.

Speeds on motorways in the UK are 70mph (around 120kmh) and the roads are wider, usually 3 lanes or more. All traffic goes in one direction, no roundabouts or traffic lights, no pedestrians or cyclists and all you need do is obey the rules oif the road and you should be OK.

One of my pet hates when motorway driving is idiots that come right up behind you, (Tailgating). Its dangerous as they are not leaving a large enough gap to stop in time should you need to brake hard but this last few week its not been the tailgater, Its been the white van driver and the sales reps.

They think they own the road and feel that its ok to not use their mirrors, pull out without indicating, overtake without warning, undertake and generally swerve from lane to lane.

Each one I actually managed to drive passed I looked at them and everyone of them had a mobile phone to their ear and driving with one hand on the wheel and obviously by their manner of driving they were not concentrating.

One lady driver had a mobile phone to her ear and a map laid out in front of her whilst she was driving.

Perish the thought of an accident waiting to happen. Every single person that weaved or drove erratically was on the phone at the time. The fine is £60 and and endorsement on the licence but this doesn't seem to deter these people.

Is it a bird?.. Is it a plane?...

No..... Its low flying furniture.


about a week ago I got a call to an address in the flats on Barrow Island so off I trundles over the bridge and onto the Island thinking no more about this until I had to go through the one way system which meant driving down a street where objects were being hurled everywhere. A TV set came crashing down in front of me. There was already what looked like the remains of a wardrobe or bedside cabinet on the road all smashed up along with a few electrical appliances.

As I manoeuvred round the falling TV set I heard another crash on the floor behind me and a look through my mirror noticed that I had narrowly missed being hit by a low flying guitar, a lamp and a microwave oven.

Being a warm day I had the window down and could hear shouting and screaming between a male and female. It was a domestic and hard to say who was throwing the property but it was a stupid thing to do as its the school summer holidays, kids are normally playing there, traffic has to pass through the one way system and someone could have seriously got hurt.

It was pointless me getting out the car to try and calm the situation as I just needed to get the car out the way of any other low flying debris. At this point it was a quick phone call to the local police and I left it at that as it wasnt my problem, I didnt want to get involved and I had a fare to pick up and I`d rather be making money than trying to sort someone else's mess and lose money.

It got me thinking though.. Maybe time to change the highway code...

If you want to cross the road, look right.... look left..... and look up...

Country Roads - Take Me Home

Maybe its a title of a song but this week it was reality for us drivers as a small section of road was closed off due to a serious accident which left the road closed for a few hours.

This meant a good mile and half or more detour to get from Barrow In Furness to the next town of Dalton In Furness. The options were a detour along the bypass or depending on where you wanted to be in Dalton using country roads via our local tourist attraction Furness Abbey.

Around this area we are used to a wide variety of different styles of roads but the narrow country lanes and the backroads were kept busy as everyone was using them and travelling in oppsite directions meant a tight squeeze at some places to get through.

The passengers didn't mind as they understood the road was closed and seemed to enjoy the alternate scenic route but it makes you think.....

How much we miss a small section of road that is closed. A quarter of a mile section of road caused a mile to 2 mile detour.