16 February 2004
Alien encounter on suburban road
No-one really knows what happened in North Park Avenue, Norwich, but it has been described as a close encounter of the tenth kind – infinitely stranger and more alien than anything that has yet been filmed. On one fairly straightforward level of reality, it was decided to resurface the road and put in new kerbs.
Then, on another level of reality, when that work was partly completed, a Liberal Democrat city councillor who is rumoured to have a strong dislike of cars decided unilaterally that it was time to enter a new dimension.
This is common in the Autonomous Republic of Hingham, where advanced forms of democracy jostle with time-space distortions – but not in North Park Avenue.
Without going through the normal procedures, she waved her magic wand and decided that the central section of the road should be made politically correct. I use this phrase because nothing else seems to fit the bill, and not because it means anything.
Overnight, simple resurfacing became a wholesale transformation of the road. It grew wider, and the pavement-and-verge area narrowed, so that parked cars which would formerly fit nicely on to the hard standings between roadway and pavement stuck out into the road or into the pavement – in some cases both. This was clearly dangerous. The only solution for residents and visitors was to park on the road, which made the effective carriageway narrower than it was before, and more hazardous for drivers to negotiate. This was described, I am told, as traffic calming. You may think that not much thought was given to this. I could not possibly comment, except to say that the kerb now has to jut out into the road at one point to go round a post. It does not look neat.
You may think that such an operation might cost up to ten times as much as was allotted to the original work. Again I could not possibly comment.
More mysteries surround this strange series of events. Why has the councillor who “authorised” it become invisible? Why did another councillor lose her temper when it was raised in a council meeting? Why have various council members and officers done their best to ignore the whole thing?
Why have reasonable inquiries been described as complaints and shuffled into a procedure which might look to a normal person as if it were designed to dig a large black hole and bury it? Why was a discussion on a grass verge described by the council as a public meeting?
Why did a councillor, on receiving a perfectly civil letter on the subject, reply curtly: “I acknowledge receipt of your letter of 28 November, which I have passed to the city council’s legal department.”
Why did the council’s chief executive send a city-born resident a leaflet on how to refer to the matter to the local government ombudsman – in Bengali?
Has the council gone boldly where no-one has gone before? Is it a lost in a completely different galaxy? Will it ever beam down? The signs are not promising.
Bag of salt a crispy solution
A bit late, maybe, but intrepid Norfolk explorer Richard “Volcano” Meek has come up with a method of ensuring that Norwich city centre is never gridlocked by snow and ice again.
He suggests: “If everyone carried a 50kg bag of salt in the boot and allowed it to trickle onto the road – possibly through a series of holes drilled strategically through the floor of the car boot – they should have no trouble in town.
“As for the rural areas, I have consulted Easton College and ascertained that most combine harvesters see little or no use at all during January and February. They could be adapted to bale the snow in neat blocks and eject it onto the roadside. It is perfectly possible that this could be sold subsequently to fishmongers and the like.”
Mr Meek is submitting his ideas to the School of Penguins, Chess and Road Surfacing at the UEA, who he hopes will launch a feasibility study. Prof Ian “Sam” Aufmerksam, who heads the school, said last night he would see what he could do, but he was pretty busy producing letters to the editor on behalf of the Green Party at the moment.
They canter here, they canter there
Mysterious notice number 5684, spotted between sexy Saxlingham Nethergate and shimmery Shotesham in South Norfolk, at the entrance to a muddy field path: “Strictly no horses. Please keep dogs on leads. Horses cantering.” Can horses canter if they don’t exist? Let’s hope someone is shutting the stable door.
Indefinite offer
As I was walking past a hair and beauty shop in the small-card area of Norwich the other day, a small card was placed in my hand.
I was delighted to see that it contained a special introductory offer involving express massage. (Presumably this is different from implied massage.) I was even more delighted to see that it was valid until “February 30th 2004”. This must mean it is valid indefinitely, so I shall take my time.
Quick response to brick
Many more astute observers than myself have noted the phenomenon of the disappearing policeman. So few of them are now visible on our streets and in the countryside that a kind of selective alien abduction has been mooted.
But I must be fair. A couple of weeks ago a brick came through our back door – presumably thrown by someone who was too angry even to write abusive letters to the editor.
Arriving home an hour or so later, I notified the police on their non-emergency number, and within ten minutes a suitably laconic detective constable was there, taking notes and interviewing neighbours. He was followed at almost breakneck pace by a forensic gentleman, who spent some time examining the scene of the crime.
As far as I know, no-one has yet been apprehended for the attempted burglary (the intruder was frightened off by the alarm), but the speed of response was undeniably impressive.