Madcap inventor John Ward’s take on the constant battle with roadworks

Madcap inventor John Ward takes aim at the never-ending cycle of roadworks we encounter wherever we go these days...

Roadworks now seem to be the latest thing in ‘street furniture’. In recent times I have seen assorted ‘diversion’ or ‘diversion end’ signs with the only one that seems to be missing in the set (apologies to actor Bruce Willis who starred in the iconic films) being ‘Die-Hardly: The Hole’ in which innocent streets and roads are attacked by those with drills and shovels to make holes for sinister motives that don’t seem apparent to the untrained eye – or rather to the public who suffer indirectly with the usual chaos caused.

It doesn’t seem so long ago that if any roadworks were happening locally it was a focal or talking point as it was so unusual. But now it seems that no street or road is quite complete without assorted coloured plastic barriers around a hole and, if extremely lucky, the presence of real people actually working there.

It was while chatting the other week to a friend who lives in another county that the subject of the shovel and plastic barrier process came into conversation as it seems this ‘hole digging’ is now almost into pandemic proportions in his area as well.

He was of the opinion that it was the ‘icing on the cake’ to the assorted digging gangs to cause as much disruption and mayhem in the local town centre as possible with the erection of their signs, barriers with a sprinkling of assorted shovels and pickaxes for decoration.

However he had noticed that the supposed management element seemed to outnumber the diggers when they appeared on-site to natter around the hole with their clipboards, tablets (electronic variety) clad in super clean spotless safety hats, hi-vis posing jackets and unsoiled Wellington boots.

On his travels he saw a crew setting up their barriers and other paraphernalia and noticed one of the crew wore a distinctive baseball cap with a, possibly, obscene logo printed on it.

He thought no more as he went on to his destination but a few hours later he was driving on his way home when he saw a crew setting up shop and spotted the same chap with the baseball cap.

Being curious he did a bit of minor detective work and it seems the crew had two holes with ‘work in progress’ (or two he knew about) as they shuttled between the two doing whatever it was that needed. In effect it was one crew, one town, two holes in close proximity.

So he asked politely one of the Road Surface Rectification Operatives (RSROs) if this process was a routine thing - the multitasking of two different holes being sorted at the same time - as he was told it was ‘all depending, mate’ but only after being asked first if he was ‘a nosey newspaper reporter’ (!) which he wasn’t but he was not asked for any proof of identity.

The operative continued: “You can’t be too careful these days when people start asking questions as it’s liable to be blown up out of all proportion you know.”

What exactly ‘it’ being was not gone into, this was about hole digging, not giving away state secrets.

The saga continued as he lit a cigarette then he offered more enlightenment: “Cos if you are the press lot, I have to give you a phone number to ring and back at the office a paperclip counter will give out some waffle about how the job is progressing but then finish with offering apologies for any inconvenience caused.”

After a few more intakes of smoke from his cigarette it seems he had more ‘working knowledge’ to pass on. Recently he and his team members had started work digging at one location when a concerned neighbour, out with his dog, approached them to ask what they were doing as it was only a week beforehand that the other side of the road had been dug up.

The dog walker told him that judging by the name on the truck it was the very same people, so said operative rang someone to find out what was going on. It seems the old music hall joke about reading a map or the plans upside down applied here but the original, previous job had not been signed off as being finalised so was still ‘open’.

After a lot of this and that, he was told to cover the hole up as if ‘nothing had happened’ (it had indeed been done the week before by another team) then go back to the depot to pick the next job up to make a start on it.

The parting shot was: “This is the trouble with paperclip counters who don’t know one end of a shovel from the other and don’t even know when a job has been done.”