Road-Menders

I woke early yesterday morning (Tuesday) to the sound of a high-pitched machine noise. At first I just couldn't work out what on earth it could be. Some machine running somewhere nearby, or a car left running. Then it occurred to me, why on earth would you leave a car running? As you would when the weather was cold in the morning before you drive off to work? To get ice melted off the windows with the heating on full blast? But it's baking hot at the moment. No excuse for a car not to run without the heating on. No sign of ice on any car's windows. When I later went into the bathroom to have a shave, I decided to stick my head out of the window, which isn't that easy, what with the toilet in the way and a load of things on the shelf, what with cans of shaving foam, shampoo, toothpaste and the like in the way. When I eventually managed to stick my head out of the window, at great peril to myself (no, not hanging out of said window, I hasten to add. I'm not totally mad.) I saw this vast, yellow machine, some sort of enormous road vehicle, a lorry making this noise outside, a few houses along from ours. A man behind, dressed in day-glow overalls, making him look vaguely like one of the original 'Ghostbusters.' He had this large hose in his hand, and out of this she hose, which was attached to the back of this vast monster of a machine, what looked like some sort of tar-substance and this was shooting out onto the surface of the road at it's centre, along where there had been marked by white paint, the gaps in the road surface, the pot-holed road's ancient surface. So, it was incredible to believe that at long last we were to have the road directly outside our house actually REPAIRED! They move along incredibly slowly (there was one more man involved along with a driver of the yellow vehicle) filling the holes as they went. Then a layer of loose clippings was put over the heated tarmac.

I had to drive out later on my way to Sainsbury's, but I decided to turn right out of our drive and take the long route out of the estate as I didn't want to drive over the newly-laid tarmac. I may have been able to drive out the usual way I leave, but it seemed sensible to not drive over the newly-laid surface. When I came back about an hour later, having completed my shopping trip to Sainsbury's, I drove in the usual way and the workmen were a good deal further down the road. But there was a lot of loose clippings all over the road and I had to drive slowly as I didn't want to throw any of these chipping up and damage the car's paintwork or glass. There were cars coming in later which were being driven far too fast and throwing up these bits of chipping, completely disregarding damage to their vehicles.