12 May (Part 2) - A ha’porth of tar
For months I have been making an almost
daily photographic record of the work
being done by F.M. Conway in Gayton Road, Abbey Wood. I am a little annoyed to have been
forced to miss the main event, the resurfacing of it and the adjacent Wilton and Florence Roads.
Fortunately I have been sent some pictures by sympathetic readers. Those taken
on phones demonstrate why I choose to lug around a great chunk of a camera but
beggars can’t be choosers and I am grateful for what I can get. I’m never sure why
most people insist on taking landscape type scenes with the phone held vertically,
most of the time the sky holds little of interest, but time to stop moaning! But
maybe not for long.
The first 15 photos you see here are by litter picker Roger Keene who knows how to capture a scene properly; he’s
obtained some fine shots. By the end of the day you should see even more in the Photo Gallery.
I’ve not often commented on the work except that the jobs run months late for
various reasons - sometimes in excess of a year - but the standard of
workmanship seems pretty good to me. Whoever decreed that the corners at each end of Gayton Road should be
blocks bedded on nothing more than compressed sand may live to regret it
especially as it is now confirmed that the 244 bus is to revert to its original
route. My front drive was built the same way and the blocks have migrated
slightly where I make the turn to the garage. My vehicle is red but it is not a bus.
A small journalistic annoyance is that I have sometimes managed to get hold of inside info
from Bexley Council about what was going to happen next, report it here, and then they do something entirely different, like the paving right next to the Abbey Arms.
The resurfacing was finished on time just as I expected it to be complete with
road markings to indicate it is a one way street. Unfortunately it is still a
two way street blocked at the station end. As far as I know there have been no
accidents yet but maybe Bexley Council could be held accountable if there were.
If I am allowed one more complaint it is that when I finally got home late last
Friday evening there was no pedestrian access from Abbey Wood Road (Greenwich) to Abbey Road (Bexley)
across the top end of Wilton Road without walking in the road mingling with the
traffic. I was not alone in cursing that oversight.
The real moan is about trees. Bexley’s publicity shots show 15 to 20 trees in
Gayton Road. Provision has been made for only three. I wonder if we wil ever get those benches. The drinkers and druggies will welcome them.
