You shall not... Oh. You did.

[bunn]

People have come and (not before time) have been resurfacing the Two Lanes of our village.   This is a good thing, in that both lanes were really at the point of crumbling away, particularly in the spot where there is a Mighty Hole beneath the lane, with only a metal grating to stop people, cars, horses, wandering piglets etc from falling into it.  From time to time the water comes down the hill with a great fury, picks up the grate and associated lumps of tarmac and flings them contemptuously into the hedge, leaving an alarming (and apparently bottomless) chasm.

Hence the arrival of diggers and tarmac-machines and pneumatic drills. OK, they didn't quite resurface the road, but certainly they dug up quite a lot of it and applied lots of nice fresh tarmac.  This is a considerable improvement over previous attempts at road repair, which involved two blokes in a small van, a bucket of tarmac and a small spade.

BUT once you have got all these diggers, drills etc into a road that in places is only about 8 feet wide with solid stone banks either side, there is little space for anything else,   So they closed the roads!  But of course those of us who live here have to get in and out somehow.

I have become familiar, as I walk the dogs on the bumpy unfinished surfaces, with the complex mime from the car driver coming the other way, which says 'The sign says the road is closed, but I can't work out how else to get to my house, is it really properly closed?'

The reciprocal mime, of course, says 'yes, you will be fine, the sign is lying, the road is open it's just a tad bumpy'.

(I have been practicing the mime that goes: 'no you will have to park somewhere else and walk, there is a monstrous digger, two trucks and a thing pouring hot tar ahead' but fortunately so far I have not had to use it).

Are these mimes in the highway code...?

Comments

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

This all seems quite appropriate, given that you live in a historic miming area (or so I often read the signs.)

Maybe you should go out walking armed with selection of placards for every occasion.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

*every* occasion? What, even greeting the second wife of a duke, and that sort of thing?

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

It's best to be prepared. Although there would be no need for placards to cover face-to-face situations when simple talking would suffice. You only need placards for situations when you need to communicate to people in cars, or on the far side of a chasm or river, or far off on a hilltop being bounced on by a lurcher, or something.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

If they are to communicate with the chasm-dwelling, hill-top leaping classes, they will need to be placards of a considerable size.

Perhaps the process of Being Prepared would be most wisely begun through the acquisition of a Placard Donkey.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

True. They'd be more banners than placards, really. And they'd need to be waterproof, for rainy walks, and visible in dim light, for twilight winter walks: fiery letters six inches high, or some such. The placard donkey would also have to be loaded with a portable beacon, and maybe a few distress rockets. You'd probably also need a minion or two - swift ones who could scurry over and deliver the message in person, if the fiery banners failed.

On second thoughts, best stick with the miming.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Kowtowing deeply normally gets me by in that situation.

[sally_maria]

My sympathies - we've had four weeks of them doing something very similar here in Winchcombe, and although we do have more than Two Lanes, our position along one side of a valley means that blocking off the main street at one end means that you couldn't leave town at all in that direction, the main route into Cheltenham.

Oh well, the new bus route gave us a new bit of countryside to admire.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

It's taken them long enough to get around to us, so we appreciate their effort really!

[anna-wing.livejournal.com]

A good-sized Maglite, and possibly a pocket mirror, for communication by Morse Code, in the manner of a heliograph. Since you live in the UK, obviously actual sunlight cannot be relied upon to be present.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I feel that the need to train all other road users in the use of Morse Code might be a minor obstacle. Still, why not Think Big!