8 October (Part 3) - It’s madness
Belvedere has its
galvanised steel cob, Erith has its ceramic fish and not to
be left out, Crayford has a herd of tin cows right opposite
the new Bourne Road roundabout.
Inviting well deserved ridicule, the cows are marked ‘Madder’.
Only a few paces to the west the road sign
that Brian Barnett photographed last
week is unchanged. It is still there telling everyone they are about to encounter
a slightly weird T junction.
The junction, now a mini-roundabout, environs are still being landscaped
and the south eastern corner cycle path is not quite finished. Photo 2 below.
Adjacent to that cycle path and next to a footpath still under construction is a new permanent artwork to complement the tin cow - only even madder.
It looked like old railway line but a helpful passer-by told me it was tram line
which was dug up when the new junction was excavated. Well put it in a
museum then or plant it in one of the new raised flowerbeds! But only a mad cow
(Officially Bovine Encephalitis) would think that plonking it between a cycle path and the pedestrian route makes sense.
If a car hits it It won't be pretty and a cyclist might be severely injured but
an inquisitive child trotting alongside mum on the new footpath who fell on it would
likely find itself in A&E. Some of the edges would do King Gillette proud.
Leave your hedge uncut and it becomes a pavement hazard. Bexley council will
take enforcement action.
Park your car with a wheel on the footpath and it’s a criminal obstruction
punishable with a fine but block a path for a week with brown bins and it is perfectly alright.
It’s the same with littering the highways with rusty lethal weapons. As long as Bexley
council does it. it‘s absolutely fine.
Once
again there was not a great deal of traffic about; for that I had to go
along to Station Road where long queues were forming every few minutes when the
pedestrian crossing went red. (Adjacent photo.)
By the way, following my minor altercation with the Conway man
in Crayford someone emailed to say the reason he didn’t want to appear in a
photo could be because their workers are not always happy to be associated with
damn fool projects. Maybe my correspondent makes a good point. As you may have
noticed I blurred the worker’s image.
Unlike the bus driver that day who had
probably put me in a bad mood, Mr. Conway was perfectly polite.