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...?